Privatising fines

The PCS civil service union has called on the government to scrap plans for the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) to hand over the collection of court fines to private security firms. The announcement came amid revelations about over-charging by private security firms G4S and Serco.

In a letter to Peter Handcock, chief executive of HM Courts and Tribunals Service, the union’s MoJ group president, Jacqueline Green, said that “the proposal to privatise criminal enforcement needs to be thought through and the timetable for implementation needs to be halted with immediate effect”.

The union is instead calling for the income from fines collection to be used to fund enforcement as well as the wider courts and tribunal service.

www.pcs.org.uk/en/news_and_events/news_centre/index.cfm/id/3FF9B3A6-742B-48CA-8782FB606772FD73