Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Bill [HL]

There are a number of amendments in this group in my name. I have put down amendments at the urging of Zacchaeus 2000 and in consonance with the policy of the Green Party to protect the poor as much as possible. The helpful document produced yesterday by the DCA provides some useful information on Amendment No. 69. I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, my quondam friend, for the way in which he introduced the grouping, which I wholeheartedly support. There are some specialities in Amendment No. 69, and there are one or two others amendments in my name to which I shall speak to separately later. We were relieved to read in the DCA’s helpful document that the pet cat or budgie will not be seized. I should be grateful for confirmation that the proposed regulations covering exempt goods, pets and cash to be left in domestic premises will also cover bailiffs enforcing fines on behalf of magistrates’ courts and council tax on behalf of local authorities. I would also like assurance that a computer, which these days is an essential tool in a child’s education, apart from being of necessary assistance to the rest of us, will be on the exempt list for families. Many families on low pay would not be able to afford another, and many families receiving unemployment benefits cannot afford one at all. May I also be assured that a telephone also means a mobile phone? BT has cut off more than 1 million landlines, and many impoverished families rely on a pay-as-you-go mobile for emergency and other calls. They can be brought for £19 and charged with a pre-payment of £5 when money has not already run out by the end of the week. In addition to the proposed regulation ensuring that the value of goods seized is not disproportionately large in relation to the debt, fine or council tax debt, I ask that in homes where the value of goods is very small or non-existent, the goods seized should not be disproportionately small in relation to the debt, fine or council tax debt. I have been told of a case in which goods of little value belonging to a lone parent receiving unemployment benefit, with a child aged four, were seized and sold at auction for £70. Thirty pounds was given to the auctioneer; the total of the fines outstanding, which were for motoring offences, came to £1,072. It is surely totally disproportionate that goods of very little value should be seized for a debt that size. When the parent went back to court, the magistrates settled for £5 a week deducted from benefit to pay off the balance. That could have been done without the trauma of bailiffs entering the premises by threat of force and seizing goods of ineffective value if the enforcement agent had told the vulnerable defaulter to go back to court or the police had taken her back to court on a warrant of arrest. As I said, I will speak to one or two of the other amendments in my name when they come up. I hope the Minister will respond to the points I have just raised.