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Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Bill [Lords]

I thank the Minister for her comments. As she pointed out, the Bill tries to achieve a number of ends. In many ways, it is also quite a skeletal style of Bill, because of the meat that will have to be put on the bones through regulations, and we accept that. We have subjected the Bill to substantial scrutiny in Committee, and I am grateful to the Minister for her forbearance and understanding and for ensuring that we have not had to guillotine the Bill at any stage. We had full debates in Committee and all the different concerns that we have put to the Government have been looked at. Although we cannot claim that we have had satisfaction on every single count, we have been able to put strong points of view on various fronts and we have had some of the concerns answered and some of our worst fears put to rest. There are still areas that concern us. They have been gone through and I will not rehearse them now; it is not the time to do it. However, as a result of the Bill, we will have a far more efficient and effective unified tribunal system. The taxpayer ultimately will get better value for money if we look several years ahead. In the short term, there will obviously be implementation costs for the new unified tribunal system and I still have my concerns about the general tax commissioners. I always take the view, ““If it ain’t broke, don’t try to fix it.”” Certainly I deeply regret the fact that the general commissioners have been included in the unified tribunal system. The Government have done the right thing as far as judicial appointments are concerned. There has been a great deal of debate about enforcement by taking control of goods and the enforcement of judgments and orders. We were right to push the amendments that we did and to have votes on some of the key issues. I am sorry that the Minister has not conceded all the different points that we would like her to concede. On the other hand, by subjecting the Bill to substantial scrutiny, we have at least put the points of view of many of the organisations that stand up for people who are likely to get into debt and have bailiffs knocking on their doors. It must be a horrifying experience to go through all that. That is why we, as parliamentarians, were quite right to spend a substantial amount of time looking at the new procedures and powers, and the rights that people have to protect themselves. I am still concerned, because, including the Committee stage and the debate this afternoon, we have had something like 10 votes on the key issues relating to bailiffs and on not one of those issues did the Government concede a great deal, although to be fair they have made it clear that—through regulations, possible changes to schedule 12, and the flexibility and power that Ministers have to issue guidelines and rules—they will encompass many of the concerns that we have put forward. Obviously we will have to wait and see what happens. With a Bill of this nature, which gives so much power to the Government to issue regulations and to make changes over the next few months and years, we are putting a great deal of trust in Ministers not to deviate from the course that this particular Minister has assured us they will follow. We were quite right to keep pushing the point about the regulation of bailiffs. If we give bailiffs more power, we must have a proper method of protecting the wider public and give them the chance of redress and recourse to a proper complaints procedure through a body that imposes regulation. I thank the Minister for acceding to some extent to our wishes by bringing bailiffs within the remit of the SIA. That is a positive move forward and it would not have come about were it not for the representations made by Members on both Opposition Front Benches. We have pushed hard for this measure. I know that it is not everything that we wanted, but we have to be grateful for half a step forward, rather than the full step forward that we would have liked. There is a great deal in the Bill that concerns debt management schemes, administration orders, and debt management and relief. Much of that has been well thought out. We have not subjected it to the same level of scrutiny as other parts of the Bill, but the Government have put a lot of time and effort into it and hopefully it will lead to a far better system. As far as the protection of cultural objects on loan is concerned, this afternoon’s debate was important. The Minister went a significant distance towards putting the mind of the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Mark Fisher) at rest. He composed those amendments from his hospital bed. He was in hospital with septicaemia of his leg and was involved in negotiations with various different organisations when working on the amendments. He was brave to come to the House today to talk about the amendments, and I am pleased that the Minister is going to listen to some of the things that he said. We hope that the part of the Bill that relates to cultural objects will become far better and more effective, because we all realise that galleries and museums are a vitally important part of our cultural life. We are not going to vote against the Bill, because there is too much good in it to justify doing so—even though we have some ongoing concerns. I hope that we can continue the dialogue that we have had so far about those areas of concern. The Minister has always made it clear to us that, although we may disagree, her door is always open and she is prepared to discuss matters and listen to us and to the outside organisations that have been so assiduous, thorough and professional in briefing me, my colleagues on the Front Bench and other colleagues who take an interest in the Bill. We will not oppose the Bill, but we will be looking carefully at how the legislation develops and how it is implemented over the months and years ahead.