Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Bill [HL]

If the amendments had been grouped better, I might find it easier. I seem to be speaking to Amendments Nos. 68, 69 and 73, which cover a particular subject. Different rules apply under different jurisdictions. If you are being pursued for a VAT debt, people can take the bath; if you are being chased under the rules of bankruptcy, the rules are different. It is pointless to so impoverish someone that they cannot then earn a living and continue an ordinary family existence. By giving the creditor his money, you create more problems for society than you solve. It seems to me that having started down this path—which is entirely laudable—we ought to try to reach the position, over time, where we have a common understanding of what can and cannot be done under all kinds of similar circumstances. The Minister produced quite a good list of proposals in the policy statement on delegated powers she distributed. I would prefer to see something in the Bill making it a principle. I agree that once you start getting into details it gets impossible—the detail has to be in regulations—but to have the principle in the Bill is a good thing. In Amendment No. 73 I have extended what other people have spoken about to import a continental concept of anything that it would be morally offensive to seize. It would cover, for instance, a wedding ring. I am not wedded to any particular version but I am keen to see something in the Bill to anchor an extremely important principle. I agree with Amendment No. 70. If we make progress on the group of amendments beginning with Amendment No. 98, which are to do with the regulation of bailiffs, if I may call them that, I hope that we will cover a lot of these matters. There should be rules that are clearly understood by both bailiffs and debtors as to what should happen and when, and what people’s rights are at various points. Turning to Amendment No. 71, it is quite common practice at the moment for bailiffs, having sent a notice to the wrong address, to use inquiry agents to find out the right address and to turn up out of the blue. It would be interesting to know what the Minister thinks the practice will be in future under similar circumstances. In other words, where bailiffs have to discover an address, do they have to take a step back and give notice or can they just turn up and start the enforcement process on that day? As I said, in some circumstances, that is the current practice. There are a large number of amendments in the group to do with taking control. The principle we are all aiming at is that a bailiff acting reasonably should, in general, be able to leave the goods where they are if he feels that it is sensible to do so in order to allow the debtor time to produce the money. Bailiffs should not be put into a position where they have to take the goods because of the wording of the Bill. In her letter to me, the noble Baroness said that she thinks the Bill allows bailiffs to act sensibly and to enter into an agreement with a responsible person who happens to be there. But it is very hard to read the Bill that way. I would like to see the Bill reading—in English, as it were—in the way it is meant to read and making it clear that such agreements can be entered into with a responsible person. That is the thrust of a number of the amendments in the group. As to dealing with the vulnerable, I would like a better understanding of how the process of assessing the vulnerability of a debtor is supposed to happen. It used to be the case that you could rely on the local authority or the court to carry out an assessment before sending the bailiffs in, because the process of establishing the debt would have involved some kind of assessment of the position of the debtor. But, with the common use of bailiffs now for PCNs and other instant fines, that is no longer the case. Camden will chuck tens of thousands of these notices at the bailiffs every year without making any assessment at all of the position of the debtor. If we are to have protection for the vulnerable, we must ask the bailiff to make that assessment, but on what basis and how? We still have a clause in law which states that if a bailiff fails to collect his money he can be personally liable for it. We are putting the bailiff in a difficult position by forcing that personal liability on to him and at the same time expecting him to assess and take account of vulnerability. How does the Minister see this happening in practice? It is perhaps one of the attractions of the idea that the creditor should pay a sum towards the bailiff’s costs and should not be able to get the bailiff’s services for free, as they do at the moment, and that, by imposing some responsibility on the creditor, the creditor will be inclined not to start chucking bailiffs at people from whom they will get no money back at the end of the day. I am not at all sure that this will work in practice. Councils really have no other way of getting their money back. They will still chuck these things at the bailiffs, and the bailiffs will still have to assess and deal with people’s vulnerability in very fraught situations and in ways in which they are certainly not trained at present. If we are to go down that route, the bailiffs absolutely must have protection so that when they decide that someone looks vulnerable and they choose not to collect the debt, they do not become liable for it. Local authorities in particular should not be allowed to penalise them under the terms of their contract or when renewing their contract simply because they have not collected money from vulnerable people. We must be careful about this and get it right. That is all I want to say on this group of amendments.