Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 57: 57: Schedule 12, page 200, line 34, at end insert— ““4A (1) The following fall into the definition of exempt goods so as to preclude seizure of— (a) any goods which are fixtures or fittings attached to the premises including goods which are plumbed in or connected to water, fuel or power supplies, (b) domestic animals and animals kept as pets, (c) guard dogs, (d) any dog on which a blind person relies, (e) any animal which is kept for commercial gain, save as is allowed through common law and where provision for the welfare of the animal has been arranged in advance, (f) in the case of domestic dwellings no sum of money of £500 in cash or below, (g) in the case of domestic dwellings no sum of money which would leave the debtor with less than £500. (2) In the case of domestic dwellings no sum of money above £500 is to be removed without the civil enforcement officer recording the purpose for which the money is to be used.”” The noble Lord said: My Lords, first of all I would like to say a word about the groupings. The next few groups—those down to Amendment No. 73—are almost all in my name. I had an opportunity to change the groupings when I got an e-mail this morning telling me what they were but, for one reason or another, I was not able to do it. I have no complaints about that; I had every opportunity. I merely want to say that the two main speeches that I am going to make are on Amendments Nos. 57 and 62, although I will be speaking to quite a lot of the other amendments on the way. I hope that your Lordships will help me to steer my way through this considerable maze of amendments and I thank the Minister for all the work that she has done in this area and all the people she has seen and talked to about it. The crucial paragraph is, where a person falling into the above category, "““is discovered by an enforcement agent to be the occupier … the matter shall be referred back to the court and no seizure of goods may proceed without leave of the court; and the person may be bailed to appear at the court by the enforcement agent””." I have been told of a case in which a lone mother with two children under 16 was, in her absence, fined £175 for the truancy of one of them. The enforcement agent put her on bail to appear in court on a certain day. It was discovered by a volunteer who prepared her means statement that the child in question was deaf, the mother was long-term unemployed on income support—which is below the Government’s poverty threshold—and their home was more than three and a half miles away from the school. They were vulnerable people. The education authority had failed to inform the magistrates of these essential facts. When they heard them, the magistrates set their decision aside. The case was tried again, and she was acquitted. Under the present regime and the proposed regime of collection orders and warrants for forced entry, the most likely outcome would be that the fine would have been enforced, threats would be made to force entry, goods could have been seized and the magistrates could never know the facts. Compassionate allowance must be made for the difficulty of paying for transport and telephones for impoverished families to reach and communicate with the court. Lone parents on benefit who do not get to the court for minor misdemeanours, such as the absence of a TV licence or truancy by their children, are all treated as hardened criminals in the Bill. The Government’s list of those in vulnerable situations, set out in a letter to me, to be covered in bailiffs’ training does not include people who are unemployed on benefit with no assets, those who are illiterate or those who do not yet speak English. A clear procedure should also be set out for dealing with a wrong address, wrong name and other bureaucratic errors, which are all too frequent. In my experience, an awful lot of debt enforcement authorities are totally illiterate. I receive at about 10-day intervals debt demands for someone who has not lived in my house for the past 16 years. I explain this in considerable detail—much more than I think is called for by the law—and send back what I receive, but I get no acknowledgement and, sure enough, in a week’s time the same notice appears. There are considerable inaccuracies in this kind of work. The only mention of vulnerable groups or persons in the document produced by the DCA relates to the training that enforcement agents will need to undertake before they receive a certificate. Page 9 of the National Standards for Enforcement Agents, which covers vulnerable situations, is ignored. Training is not enough. It is certainly possible that, once the bailiff has received his certificate, he will forget his training under pressure from his management to collect their fees. Mistakes will be made in good faith or bad, and remedies should be sought on behalf of vulnerable people against legal criteria. Although an upfront fee will be paid by the Government, we do not know how much it will be, and the vast majority of the companies’ profits will come from fees paid by debtors and defaulters. Bailiffs should earn that upfront fee by ensuring that justice is done when they find themselves enforcing disproportionate fines against vulnerable people. At this stage, I add that, in our experience, bailiffs are only too ready to do that. Very great powers are being given in the Bill to thousands of civilians to exercise force against the persons of other civilians and force entry into their homes. Enforcement agents should receive training on the laws governing their behaviour when they encounter vulnerable situations. That requires description in the Bill under the provisions covering vulnerable people. It is said by the department that these powers will be used only in the last resort, but what that means in practice is a state secret. The Zacchaeus 2000 Trust has at last been sent the magistrates’ courts’ guidance about the search-and-entry powers in the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act. It has 31 pages, 15 of which have paragraphs redacted. I am far from clear what the word ““redacted”” means but, so far as I have been able to see by looking at the document, it means ““crossed out with a black pencil””. The public are not to be told the secret instructions given by the Government to bailiffs about how to knock on their doors and seize their goods. That information is needed by the volunteers of NGOs working with vulnerable households, because they are the only people who can monitor the performance of the bailiffs against government guidance and call them to account if that guidance is not adhered to or the bailiffs are dishonest, perverse, unreasonable or unlawfully violent, all of which can happen. I should be grateful to be given assurance that certification of an enforcement agent will apply to agents enforcing fines on behalf of the magistrates’ court and collecting council tax on behalf of local authorities. Short of there being a regulatory body, certification is the only route to a remedy against enforcement agencies exceeding their powers via a complaint to the court issuing the certificate. I beg to move.