Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what estimate he has made of the average number of people how many people prosecuted for non-payment of the TV licence fee who do not enter a plea.

80% of defendants dealt with at the magistrates’ courts for TV licence evasion entered no plea in the year to September 2020 (latest available).

Plea information at magistrates’ court is published as part of the Criminal Court Statistics annually released ‘magistrates’ timeliness tool’ which is available at the link below:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/criminal-court-statistics-quarterly-january-to-march-2020