Gregory Campbell – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Gregory Campbell on 2014-05-01.

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people in England and Wales per 10,000 of the population were prosecuted for non-payment of the television licence fee in each of the last three calendar years.

Mr Shailesh Vara

The number of defendants proceeded against at magistrates’ courts for offences relating to installing or using a television receiver without the appropriate licence, per 10,000 of the population in England and Wales for the years 2010 to 2012 is shown in Table 1 below. The Government has indicated that, in line with the amendment to the Deregulation Bill, it will consider whether evasion of a television licence should continue to be a criminal offence.

It should be noted that court proceedings statistics for the year 2013 are planned to be published by the Ministry of Justice on 15th May 2014.