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Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Bill [Lords]

It a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend across the tramlines, or rather, across the tracks—if I may call him that. He has put a lot of effort and thought into the measure and speaks with a good knowledge of the background. I was not on the Public Bill Committee because of the habit of not putting Government party critics of Bills on those Committees, so I am catching up from behind and cannot speak with his wealth of experience. I want to echo the concerns that he has expressed. The bailiff provisions are one of the worst parts of the Bill. I have no great quarrel with the rest of the Bill. It would be better to omit part 3 and start again, but as the Government are determined to press on with it, it is important that the provisions fit into the social background. Society is being engulfed by a rising tide of debt. The problem is that the poor, who are struggling against debt and trying to rise above it, are in danger of being pushed down by over-harsh debt recovery provisions. Debts abound. We are a society built on debt. Not only do we have student debt, which will have to be recovered at some stage, we have mortgage debt and the possibility of negative equity, which I hope does not arise again. More and more people have bigger and bigger mortgages. We have fines and fixed penalties, which will have to be recovered at some stage, local government fines and charges for council tax, bank charges, credit card debt, hire purchase debt, and tax credit recovery. All that will pose an increasing problem—a problem that will press on the poor, in particular. We do not want that section of society to be threatened by a massive and brutal recovery process. But, unless the new clauses and amendments are accepted, the Bill will do exactly that. Bailiffs are a big business, and the reputation of the sector is not high. There are instances all over the country of brutal, and in many cases misguided, enforcements of debts. Sometimes those debts were never owing. People report their bad experiences with bailiffs. The situation is largely unregulated. Councils and courts have contracts with firms of bailiffs, but the contracts are weak. Many of them are not published, and it is difficult to get at them. They do not set a fair basis for charges and they do not set the fees, which can escalate. We have a system in which there is an onus on bailiffs not to recover the debt or trace the person, because they make their money by enforcement—by distraint on goods or by clamping cars, and by charging for that service. The whole system is slanted towards charges of that nature. A regulatory framework is needed. My hon. and learned Friend the Minister, who has listened to the complaints with care and consideration, unfortunately still persists in saying that the regulatory framework will be provided through the Security Industry Authority. My new clauses would create an independent regulator for the industry, because the Security Industry Authority, to which, under regulations, the Minister proposes to give the powers, is not adequate. We are not talking about people who are bouncers at nightclubs. Some of them may behave like thugs and brutes, but they do not fall into that category. In many cases, they are acting as agents of the state, the court or the council—particularly in respect of road traffic fines. We need more effective regulation than the Security Industry Authority can provide. We need registration. We need that kind of structure to impose discipline. New clause 5 proposes a new method of taking control of goods. In practice, one of the Liberal Democrat new clauses is better, and I would be happy to accept that instead. The nub of my argument is dealt with in new clause 6, which proposes an independent regulatory authority for bailiffs and enforcement agents. It would apply to all people enforcing debts, whether they are from the court, the council or the Government. It proposes a framework that involves licensing the businesses that employ those people and accrediting the professional bodies that represent them. The authority would set standards of conduct, which is the key point. Standards of conduct and behaviour vary widely, and in effect there is no redress for a person who is afflicted by the behaviour of bailiffs. If we had an independent authority that set standards, people could appeal to it and take their complaints to it. It would monitor performance. Much of the performance is unseen. The state and the courts want debts to be enforced. Bailiffs bring in money on an enormous scale, so there is, in effect, a kind of conspiracy between the authorities and the bailiffs. By monitoring performance, an independent authority could ensure that standards were maintained. It could investigate complaints, punish failure to comply with proper standards of conduct and provide the redress that is not presently available—or at least, it is extraordinarily difficult to secure—for anybody who suffers from the activities of bailiffs or mistakes made by bailiffs. We know of large numbers of cases involving the distraint of goods, and in particular, the clamping of vehicles, in order to enforce debts. People are charged massive sums to take the clamps off. Those people need some machinery of redress and complaint, and the Security Industry Authority will not provide it. The Government have wavered on whether there should be some machinery of redress and complaint. First, they said that there should, and then they changed their mind and said that there should not. New clause 6 would require the provision of some machinery of complaint, because that is a basic democratic right. The amendments in the group are less important than the new clauses. Amendment No. 37 is, in effect, covered by the new clauses. Amendments Nos. 21 and 24 provide that distraint and clamping should be done by bailiffs, not by somebody acting in the name of bailiffs, or even somebody supervised by bailiffs. Several cases have been brought to my attention in which the work was done by people who were not qualified or registered as bailiffs, but who said that they were acting under the supervision of bailiffs. My daughter’s car was clamped by somebody claiming to be a bailiff, who was not in fact the bailiff and was not registered as such. We might need more bailiffs—it is true that the numbers are not large, given the amount of work that is to be done—but it is important that they be registered, to ensure that they are supervised and working to proper standards. That is better than having the work done by untrained unqualified subordinates. Amendments Nos. 33 to 35 would put Government officers on the same basis as bailiffs, so that only constables would be exempt from the relevant enforcement provisions. Amendment No. 42 would provide simply that the enforcement procedures would not come into force until an effective and proper independent regulator of the type that I want had been established. I have given a quick tour d’horizon of my amendments, which resulted from burning the midnight oil to try to bring easement to the situation. However, I will want to press new clause 6 to a Division, because it is crucial that we have an independent regulator. I am not satisfied by the proposals put forward by my hon. and learned Friend the Minister. Although she has modified the Bill considerably and effectively, I am not happy about the Security Industry Authority, so I want the independent regulator for which new clause 6 would provide.