DEFENDANTS in Somerset are being "encouraged" to plead guilty in court to crimes they would previously have denied, a Taunton-based lawyer claims.

Ed Boyce has slammed the criminal courts charge (CCC), which sees people who admit offences in magistrates' or Crown courts having to pay between £150 and £1,200 on top of any other penalties.

The idea of the charge, introduced shortly before May's General Election, is to cut the cost of the justice system to the taxpayer.

But Mr Boyce claims the reality is it hammers people who cannot afford to pay and is "an expensive bureaucratic nonsense".

He said: "The basis for the criminal courts charge is to make the courts pay for themselves.

"But you end up with a situation where a homeless person who steals a sandwich, beggars or people without any money have to pay £150.

"It's simply not fair to impose a flat fee on people who don't have the means to pay and it creates a perverse incentive for people to plead guilty.

"If you plead not guilty and get convicted in magistrates, you're going to have to pay £520 and in Crown Court it's up to £1,200 - some people baulk at the figures involved and are tempted to plead guilty."

Mr Boyce says another consequence is that traditionally defendants who plead guilty or are found guilty have been ordered to pay a contribution towards prosecution costs, but magistrates and judges are now reducing the amounts to lessen the blow of the compulsory CCC burden.

"Anyway, the reality is that only a small fraction of the CCC amount is being collected - it's an expensive bureaucratic nonsense," he added.

"You can have penniless people committing very minor crimes and the court has to whack a £150 charge on top and then go through the process of trying to enforce that, often without success. It ends up costing a lot to collect."

A recent case in Taunton Magistrates' Courts saw a speeding driver fined just £1 "due to lack of means and extreme mitigation".

But Brian Thomas, 64, of Selbourne Place, Minehead, had to pay a £150 criminal courts charge, as well as an obligatory £20 victim surcharge.

Meanwhile, MPs on the justice select committee suggested the non-means tested charge is not "compatible with the principles of justice", concluding it has created "serious problems" and is often "grossly disproportionate".

The Ministry of Justice said it has noted the committee's concerns and the charge is "under review".

Frances Crook, chief executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform, has called for the charge to be scrapped.

She said: "The innocent have been put under pressure to plead guilty, and ordering indigent people to pay money they simply do not have is never going to work."