Crime and Courts Bill [HL]

Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope Excerpts

Tuesday 18th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I should declare an interest as chair of the Enforcement Law Reform Group. As such, I count many bailiffs among my acquaintances—and do not know one who would not support this amendment. Everybody in the bailiff industry, from those who have spent a lifetime in it to the most vocal advocates of the poor, wants regulation and a complaints system. This has been an active subject in government since 1980. We have had several times when action has been promised and no times when action has resulted. It is high time that the Government did something. The previous Minister in charge of this promised that he would do something, and it was delayed and delayed. We have a new Minister in charge and again we are promised that something will happen, but nothing substantial has come forward. It is time we had action. It is no bad thing that we in this House should pass an amendment signalling just how seriously we regard this constant delay. It is very important that whatever we do about regulation, we have an appeals process: some way in which bad behaviour can be brought to book and in which complaints can be heard.

There are pros and cons of doing it in any particular direction. I have had very good experiences with ombudsmen—not in this area, but others; it is a system that works well. But it is not good enough to have no appeals process. Having done bailiff regulation in whatever way the Government propose to do it, we cannot even think of not having a serious system of appeal and for dealing with bad practice. Without it, the bad practice will not disappear. The serious members of the bailiff profession very much want it to, but they need the Government’s help. The Government have set up a system of remuneration for bailiffs which invites bad practice, because it makes it uncommercial and uncompetitive to behave according to the rules. Under those circumstances one should not be surprised that things get pushed a bit. Proposals and studies on the proper system of remuneration for bailiffs have been around for a long time; we have not yet seen them implemented. The Government ought to make progress, and I should be delighted if the Minister would give a firm promise on this to prevent the noble Baroness pressing her amendment. However, if she does press it, and if I am unhappy with what the Minister says, I shall be in the Lobby with her.

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope]

I follow my noble friend Lord Lucas and concur with what he and the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, said. The House owes her a debt of gratitude for pursuing this matter to Third Reading. After these proceedings the House has many important duties and discussions, so I want to be brief. I concur with everything said by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher. However, unusually for me given the context of the discussion, I want to ask my noble friend on the Front Bench a party-political question. It is a very simple one. The governing coalition agreement makes specific reference to more protection against aggressive bailiffs; that is what we as a coalition Government in 2010 undertook to do. Can the Minister assure me that in 2015, when the coalition agreement runs its course, he will be able to provide me with an answer to the question, “What additional protection against aggressive bailiffs have we as a junior coalition partner been able to provide?”? That is a very important question and I am certain that it will be asked.

That is the first point I want to make. The second point is that time is now running out; I know this as well as the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher. April 2013 is not a cliff edge that will suddenly cause an explosion of debt-enforcement proceedings. However, that date marks a significant change to the risks faced by low-income households against a very difficult financial background, which we all know about. It is not safe to leave in place the current inadequate proceedings—the framework within which debt enforcement is conducted—against the background of what we all hope will be a short-term period of financial distress. These low-income families have nowhere else to go. They are, by definition, the most vulnerable people in the country. Sometimes their heritable property and homes are at stake, so the stakes for them could not be higher. It is therefore essential that we do everything in our power to make sure that the rules are observed.

No one is suggesting that debt enforcement cannot be pursued. That would be quite wrong. There is no party politics in this, and I am not making a party-political complaint, but the department has been sitting on this for far too long. Speaking for myself, if the Minister is not able to give the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, her amendment as stated, I want to know how long it will take for him to bring about the change that the amendment requests. I know the Minister very well, and I know that he takes these issues seriously. I know that he has strength as a political operator and a huge amount of experience. I do not believe that it is impossible for someone of his stature to go back to the department and say, “You have a maximum of 12 months to sort this out, otherwise my reputation as a Minister will come under attack”. That is all he needs to do because if I was his senior adviser on this matter and he raised an eyebrow and uttered sentences of that kind, I would not think twice about trying to sort the problem. Time is not on our side.

People get touched by debt-enforcement proceedings after they have had personal experience. I know this because when I was fledgling provincial solicitor I used to instruct sheriff officers who were subject to the control of the sheriff. Any sheriff officer who got on the wrong side of the rules in front of Sheriff James Patterson in Jedburgh Court got a dose of Jedburgh justice himself. As a solicitor for organisations such as the then South of Scotland Electricity Board, I found that the operation of debt enforcement was perfectly controlled but deeply affecting. I remember as a young solicitor understanding the effects of properly enforced debt obligations on families in a small rural community. They made a real mark on me. My experience since is that anybody who is touched by any element of debt-enforcement proceedings is traumatised in a way that few other occurrences—domestic, personal or otherwise—produce, so we have a double obligation to try to get these things right.

I am about to retire as a lay member of the General Medical Council. For the past four years, I have had an engaging and enjoyable time watching the beneficial effects of a sensible, light-touch regulation system with licences, appeals and complaints that put a framework around everything that the professionals in the system do. I am absolutely persuaded that it is in the interests of bailiffs, debtors, creditors, courts and everyone else to have a playing field on which the rules are absolutely clear. The essential elements of that are an appeal system that people understand, a competent complaints service and licences that can be withdrawn if people flagrantly abuse the rules. It works in medicine and in other walks of life—it will work in debt-enforcement proceedings.

In conclusion, I say to my noble friend that, as coalition partners, we not only have to provide an answer before 2015 to the urgent political question of providing more protection but, more importantly, we have to get the system in place before universal credit compounds all the benefit problems, council tax debts and other issues to which the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, referred. Time is running out. We must get this done. I know the Minister understands the importance of this, so the key thing for me is the timeline. If the Minister does not in his response put his own imprimatur that he will get this done in a reasonable time, I may follow the noble Baroness into the Lobby if she decides to press this to a Division.

[The Lord Bishop of Lichfield]

My Lords, I too am glad to support the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, and her amendment which seeks to establish a statutory ombudsman for complaints about bailiffs. I am glad to do so also because Wednesbury, of the famous Wednesbury rules, comes from the ancient Black Country town in my diocese where the recession and austerity have acquainted many citizens with bailiffs for the first time.

Most of us have had the infuriating experience of having our wheels clamped by a private company and of officials who then would not listen to reason. How much worse it must be to have one’s personal possessions, or even one’s home, taken away. It is vital that those authorised on our behalf to collect fines should be properly accountable and their behaviour regulated.

The second reason I want to support this amendment is that the citizens advice bureaux, the Zacchaeus 2000 Trust and the Money Advisory Trust are all behind it. They have been concerned about the practices of some private bailiffs for many years. As we have heard, CABs dealt with getting on for 250,000 problems to do with private bailiffs this past year. They have some heartrending examples of people being pushed into unpayable debt by bailiffs acting illegally. We must do all in our power to prevent vulnerable people being led to believe that the justice system in our country is all about the rich punishing the poor. The present system of certifying county courts fails to monitor individual bailiffs’ behaviour; it is intimidating and costly for vulnerable people to bring complaints and there is no power for a court to award redress.

The Zacchaeus 2000 Trust helps 650 impoverished debtors a year in London. It is convinced that there is a relationship between debt and mental illness and between destitution and poor maternal nutrition and, consequently, babies with lifetime mental and physical illness. Zacchaeus 2000 meets bailiffs when they are enforcing council tax and fines on impoverished debtors. Of course, the courts must be supported and their penalties enforced but we do not want the ethos of the car clampers to be repeated in debt collecting in our poorest boroughs.

The present system is widely perceived as unsatisfactory and toothless. A legal ombudsman would give debtors and the advice sector a proper remedy when bailiffs do not comply with the Wednesbury standards.