Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 16: 16: Schedule 12 , page 209, line 31, leave out paragraph 18 The noble Lord said: My Lords, in movingthe amendment I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 17 to 20. I shall not trouble the noble Baroness for a detailed reply on why these amendments work or do not. I want to use the opportunity to note two ways in which I think the Government are going wrong in principle in the Bill, to urge them to use the Bill’s progress in the Commons to think further on these matters, and perhaps to urge my colleagues in the Commons to take these matters seriously when they have the chance. The first issue is the use of force against the person. The Bill authorises regulations that will authorise the use of such force. That is an unnecessary and unhelpful evolution in the relationship between a bailiff and a debtor. I can see some arguments for that in theory but think it is something we will come to regret in practice. It is not the way in which a relationship should exist between a bailiff and a debtor. The use of force generally between the agents of the state and the citizen is something that we need to be very careful of. We have seen how easy it is to tread the wrong side of the line in several recent police cases. They have to exercise immense restraint in these circumstances. It is all too easy for something to go wrong. I do not think that this is a danger that we should introduce into bailiff legislation. Beyond anything else, I do not think it is really necessary. There is only a tiny constituency in the bailiff community that thinks that it might even be of use. I do not think that we should endanger our social arrangements. Once you allow this sort of thing, it has a tendency to become commonplace. I would not like to see that happen. Secondly, I would like to go back to some arguments we had in Committee and later concerning Semayne’s case and related matters—an Englishman’s home is his castle, or not—and to the basic principle, which I thought had largely been followed, that although a criminal fine derives from a criminal prosecution, the recoupment of a criminal fine is a civil matter. Those principles are transgressed by the idea—which I agree is not new in this Bill but derives from an amendment made in 2004—that criminal fines and certain government debts can allow bailiffs to force entry without a court order. We do not have the history on it yet, but that seems to me something that will turn out to be a step in the wrong direction. It should not be the relationship between a government and the governed that they can break into one’s home without the matter having been carefully considered on an individual basis. If the use of these powers becomes at all commonplace, I believe that it will add—in the way that many practices that we have allowed to grow up do—to the discontentthat the citizen feels towards the Government and to the disillusionment with politicians and the political process. We have to recognise that just because we are the government and we are owed money it should not give us rights beyond those which accrue to somebody who is owed money in the ordinary way of things. We should not allow ourselves privileges of harm against the citizen that we do not allow other people and which disrupt the relationship and make it seem a more oppressive form of government than I should like to see. We have to be careful about doing damage through little things because it is in little things like this that the damage is done, not through some great big purpose to oppress the citizen. Damage is done through little things that allow the citizen to come off worse in circumstances where they ought to have a better right of justice and be treated better. I hope that the Government will think again about going down this route and that my noble friends on the Front Bench here and in another place will use this opportunity to set their minds against the measure when they get the chance to reverse it in another Bill, should that be the way in which elections turn out. This is a wrong turning and not a direction in which we should go. In the end it will be harmful to all our interests if we continue down this route. I look forward to the Government’s reply. I beg to move.