Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 84: 84: Schedule 12, page 202, line 34, at end insert— ““( ) Entry without a warrant by an enforcement agent to premises containing domestic or living accommodation is restricted to the normal methods and places of entry used by visitors to the premises.”” The noble Lord said: I should like to speak to Amendments Nos. 86 and 87 as well. These deal with very much the same matters as Amendment No. 88 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Thomas. As he said, we have previously believed that an Englishman’s home is his castle, except when it is in Wales, when it is a bonfire. I share the last concern expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, that here we are allowing a bailiff to invade premises with force at his discretion, without specific permission for that from the court. I understand the attractions of that, but it is not necessary in the proper process of a bailiff getting control of goods. The ordinary experience is that, once there is a court order that says, ““You may enter forcibly””, things get sorted out pretty quickly, unless you are in a difficult situation. People generally respond to that. They know that they have come to their last chance to behave reasonably, and under those circumstances they will. To allow bailiffs to invade your home under other circumstances without the specific permission of the court, and to do so forcibly, seems to me to go—entirely unnecessarily—against our long tradition of allowing a person’s home to be a place of safety to them. In these sections I am also looking peripherally at various related matters. We seem to have two different definitions of ““domestic accommodation”” in the Bill for two different purposes. I have attempted in Amendment No. 87 to set out a definition that I hope would apply here and also later, when it comes to rent arrears. It seems to me common sense that one should not treat as commercial premises a desk with a computer in the living room, but that is what the bailiff section does at the moment: it makes that whole room commercial premises. The opposite problem seems to apply in the case of rent arrears, where having an occupied or occupiable flat above a shop makes that shop domestic premises. We should have a common system between those two situations that follows the commonsense arrangements which, without being a lawyer, I hope I have expressed reasonably well in Amendment No. 87. There is also the question of methods of entry. There are traditional bailiffs’ methods: climbing through an open window and sticking your foot in the door. We saw the latter in the recent BBC programme. My understanding is that the Bill will make both of those unlawful, and that claiming permitted entry by having stuck your foot in the door will not be allowed. I would be grateful for the Minister’s correction or confirmation of that, and that climbing through an open window or other feasible but unusual methods of entry will not be permitted. If that is right, I would like to know it; if it is wrong, I would like to understand what the position is. I beg to move.