Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask His Majesty's Government what range of sentences have been received by people who have been prosecuted for non-payment of the BBC licence fee within the past five years.

The Ministry of Justice publishes data on TV licence evasions at criminal courts in England and Wales be in the Outcomes by Offences data tool, that can be downloaded from the Criminal Justice Statistics landing page here: Criminal Justice Statistics Quarterly: June 2024.

The number of prosecutions for TV licence evasion in the past five years and the percentage of which are women can be found in the following table:

Table 1: The number of prosecutions for TV license evasion, at criminal courts, between year ending June 2020 and year ending June 2024, in England and Wales (1,2,3,4,5,6)

Source: Court Proceedings Database

The sentence outcomes for TV licence evasion in the past five years can be found in the following table:

Table 2: The sentence outcomes for TV license evasion, at criminal courts, between Year ending June 2020 and year ending June 2024, in England and Wales (1,2,3,4)

Source: Court Proceedings Database

Notes:

1. Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from large administrative data systems generated by the courts. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when those data are used.

2. These figures are presented on a principal offence basis - i.e. reporting information relating to the most serious offence that a defendant was dealt with for. When a defendant has been found guilty of two or more offences it is the offence for which the heaviest penalty is imposed. Where the same disposal is imposed for two or more offences, the offence selected is the offence for which the statutory maximum penalty is the most severe.

3. These figures are presented on a principal disposal basis - i.e. reporting the most severe sentence issued for the offence.

4. Only rows with non-zero values within the specified time period will appear in the table.

5. Demographic information, such as a defendant's age, sex, ethnicity, etc. can be sparsely recorded for summary offences. This is because prosecutions for summary offences do not always require an individual to physically attend court (e.g., Single Justice Procedure cases) where this information would typically be recorded. Therefore, if the information held by police or other prosecutors is incomplete, demographic information may not be captured within the court data.

6. The total number of prosecutions includes cases where gender is not recorded

7. The female prosecution rate is based on the total number of prosecutions where gender is recorded