Speeches

Baroness Afshar – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Baroness Afshar on 2015-11-03.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many (1) men, and (2) women, were imprisoned for non-payment of council tax in (a) 2012, (b) 2013, and (c) 2014.

Lord Faulks

Data showing how many people were imprisoned for non-payment of council tax in 2012, 2013 and 2014 are presented in the table below:

Year

Female

Male

Not Specified

2012

41

62

4

2013

41

60

7

2014

33

45

11

It should be noted that there are a few cases where the gender of the defendant has not been specified and these have been shown separately in the table above.

These data are sourced from the Libra Management Information System (MIS). As such this data set is not subject to the same levels of quality assurance as national statistics

In extracting this data only offences of complaint for council tax committal application have been included where the court hearing date occurred within each year reported (i.e. between 1 January and 31 December).

It should also be noted that, although committals to prison are reported as occurring within a particular financial year, the non-payment of council tax itself may relate to a previous financial year or even a period covering more than one financial year.