TV licence spies 'target lone mothers'
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Your support makes all the difference.THE BBC will face hard questioning from the Labour Party this week after claims by TV licence fee inspectors that they were encouraged to pick on single mothers as they were 'easy targets', writes Nick Cohen.
Lynne Jones, the Labour MP for Birmingham Selly Oak, who has been campaigning to cut the number of small debtors jailed because they cannot or will not pay magistrates' fines, has been given evidence of how private licence fee inspectors, on contract from the BBC, get tough with soft cases.
One officer said that single women were regarded as most likely to open doors to licence fee inspectors and were more likely to confess.
Ms Jones said the collection of the licence fee was another sign of the 'disastrous effects' of contracting out public services. 'The contractors are paid on results, so they go for the easy targets,' she said.
Last year, 22,754 people were sent to prison for non-payment of court fines - 845 of them TV licence non-payers. In the past two years the number of women jailed for not paying TV licence fines has increased by 115 per cent.
The National Association of Probation Officers last week highlighted the case of Sylvia Williams of Croydon, south London. Left on social security after her boyfriend died in a car crash, she was unable to pay a pounds 286 licence fee fine in March and asked Croydon magistrates to wait three hours for a relative to bring the money to court. Instead she was sentenced to 14 days' jail and her sons, aged four and nine months, were taken into care.
A U-turn by Kenneth Clarke, when he was Home Secretary last year, has led to a massive increase in the number of fine defaulters in prison. Mr Clarke abandoned the Government's policy of matching fines to ability to pay after a storm of protest that middle-class offenders had to pay too much.
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