Bailiffs: Regulatory Reform

[Mr Nigel Evans in the Chair]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered bailiff regulatory reform.

As ever, Mr Evans, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, and I wish all hon. Members a happy new year. As we embark on a year that will be dominated by Brexit—as we saw in the Chamber just a minute ago—it is good to focus on another concern of our constituents. I called for this debate on reforming the regulation of bailiffs because a shocking case of aggressive behaviour by bailiffs in my own constituency was presented to me at an advice surgery, and I have heard countless other examples from hon. Members and from the charities involved. I thank my local paper, which published an article on the topic over the Christmas period, and members of the public who got in touch with me.

My main message to the Minister is that we simply cannot let bailiffs become a law unto themselves. The Government need to take urgent action against bailiffs who break the rules, behave aggressively and act with apparent impunity. According to the evidence presented by Citizens Advice, StepChange and other organisations, this is not just a few bad apples, but a widespread problem. Although I welcome the call for evidence that the Government announced last year, I stress to the Minister that we are not discussing a minority of bailiffs, and I urge her and her Department to recognise that. After all, we have to face up to the scale of the challenge if we are to find the right solutions.

Some 2.2 million people in England and Wales have been contacted by a bailiff in the past two years. The regulations that the Government introduced in 2014 are welcome, but there are huge problems with the lack of enforcement. Since the introduction of those reforms, Citizens Advice has recorded a 24% increase in problems with bailiffs. One person in three who has experience of bailiffs has seen them breaking the rules, and 40% have suffered intimidation. Unfortunately, the fee structure has created a perverse incentive for bailiffs to make visits and reject repayment offers, which we have seen time and again, as they can charge fees of £235 for every debt they collect in person.

I first became aware of the severity of this problem last year, when a disabled constituent came to see me at an advice surgery. Let us imagine for a moment being in her shoes: you and your partner are just getting up. You hear a knock at the door. Your partner goes to answer it. You hear loud voices, then feet on the stairs. A total stranger strides into your bedroom. You are absolutely terrified. The first thing he does is pick up your purse and take out all the cash. You think you are being burgled, but you are not: you are being visited by bailiffs. My constituent’s experience, unfortunately, is not an isolated case. Another man told me that bailiffs used humiliation in front of his neighbours to gain entry to his home. He said:

“They tried to push their way into my house saying they have a right to. When I asked to see the court papers the bailiff said—you have already had them and he would only discuss the case in the house. He then started shouting so that other people”

including his neighbours

“could hear him—this was obviously to embarrass us”

and to intimidate the man.

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this important debate on an issue that is faced by people across the country. Regarding the point she has just raised, does she agree that the current regulations give perfectly innocent people no opportunity whatsoever to prevent a visit by bailiffs or verify the authenticity of visiting bailiffs when they are not the debtor concerned? One of my constituents faced that situation—a traumatic ordeal along the lines that the hon. Lady has outlined.

From all the cases that I have heard about, those experiences are traumatic and have a lasting effect on the people involved. In many cases, they are not necessarily the debtor—they are not the person who owes the money—but they are still treated in an appalling manner. That is not to say that the debtor should be treated appallingly either, but bailiffs do not seem to have regard to the rules, which is that they can seize possessions that belong only to the debtor.

That brings me to another example—a person from the constituency of the hon. Member for Harborough (Neil O'Brien), whose son was in debt and who bravely spoke out on the radio today about his experience. He said:

“We invited these men into our home so that we could understand what was going on and in the belief that we could then work with them to resolve the problem. All they did once inside our home was to threaten us with public humiliation. At no time did they advise us of any of our rights. We were told that although we were in our own home that the only way we could prevent them seizing our property”,

including this gentleman’s car,

“was if we could produce receipts.”

I do not know about other Members, but I would not have a receipt for my car at hand if someone were to knock on my door. I know that the hon. Member for Harborough will speak in more detail about his constituent, whom I thank for coming forward.

In another case, a woman told me:

“I went to close the door and the bailiff put his foot in to my hall to prevent me from shutting the door. I got through to the police, explained the situation, was told he had no right to demand to come into my house. The bailiff had gone by then and did not return but I felt very intimidated and for a while found myself checking through the window before opening the front door.”

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this debate. I wanted to raise the case of a constituent of mine, in which a bailiff put his foot in the door because he wished to enter the property, but the property he wished to enter did not belong to my constituent—the bailiff wanted to see a tenant of my constituent. Even so, not only did that cause a lot of problems when the police were eventually called, but of course the body camera worn by the bailiff was not working at the time, so no one corroborated whether my constituent was indeed assaulted.

How very convenient for the bailiff involved! We had a similar case in my constituency. At one point, we were told that there was a body cam, but when we pressed to see the footage, we were then told that there was not a body cam. The hon. Gentleman raised that in the form of a written question to the Minister and we should consider it. It will not solve all of our problems, but it would go some way towards helping to look at these disputes.

One man told me that, although he had moved out of his mother’s house and the debt was his and not hers, the bailiffs told her that if she did not pay, her son would go to prison. They marched her to the post office, where she was pressed to withdraw £550 to cover the debt. His mum was 73 at the time. There are countless examples of bad practice from all over the country.

Like other Members, I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. Is she aware that there is a private bailiff trade body called the Civil Enforcement Association? Its code of conduct says that its members should be

“professional, ethical…polite, honest and non-threatening”,

yet all the examples that my hon. Friend has given are of behaviours that are the exact opposite. In 2016, the Civil Enforcement Association received 255 complaints about its members yet expelled none of them. Is that not a perfect example of why we need better enforcement and regulation of the bailiff industry?

I could not agree more. I have had contact with that trade association. It is simply not realistic to expect a trade association, which is there to represent its members, to take action against those members. In fact, the lead of that organisation was on “World at One” on Radio 4 today claiming that there was a robust complaints procedure. I beg to differ and will address that point towards the end of my speech.

The worst case of this kind that I have heard—I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones) has raised it with the Minister and will speak about it today—is the devastating case of Jerome Rogers, who took his own life. He had offered to pay back the debt in stages, but the bailiffs refused. I pay tribute to the brave campaigning of his family, who are here today. We owe it to them to do all we can to change the culture of the bailiff industry so that they are there to help, not penalise people. There is a positive example from Hammersmith and Fulham Council in London, which has stopped using bailiffs to enforce the collection of council tax arrears because it thinks it is better to try to work with the people involved and help them pay back that debt rather than forcing them into a spiral of ever more debt.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for mentioning Hammersmith and Fulham Council, which as she correctly said stopped using bailiffs to enforce council tax debts from April last year. Collection rates have not gone down since. One council cabinet member said:

“We have done this by intervening early with residents who may have trouble paying council tax, speaking to them in a respectful and supportive way to develop a sustainable repayment plan that both protects the council’s income while avoiding forcing people into making bad financial decisions to avoid bailiffs, such as resorting to payday lenders or missing rent payments.”

Should not all local authorities and anyone trying to enforce debts adopt that as their philosophy?

I could not agree more and would love to see other councils around the country follow that example, for which I thank my hon. Friend, who I am sure played a part in bringing that about. When we hear these cases, it is incumbent on all Members of Parliament to bring them to the Government. It is incumbent on all councils and any other public authorities that are owed money to seek a constructive way to get that money and to help people pay that debt back rather than threatening them with bailiffs.

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. Five or six years ago, I had a Bill that would have established an independent body to regulate bailiffs. I had some very nasty cases in my constituency at the time, which prompted me. Unfortunately, the Bill did not go through because the Government stopped it. I hope my hon. Friend’s Bill gets through, because it is important that we regulate bailiffs properly and give them proper training.

An independent regulator, training for bailiffs and standards that are enforced are essential—I will come to that towards the end of my speech. I put on record my thanks to my hon. Friend for trying to push the issue a few years back. I hope I can follow in his footsteps. I have applied for a ten-minute rule Bill, and I hope I can get something on the statute book, although I also hope the Government will beat me to it.

The examples I quoted remind us that anybody could end up in this situation, although in many cases, the people involved are vulnerable. Often it starts with a small fine or debt that escalates, and it can spiral out of control. Citizens Advice recently found that such experiences have a very negative impact on people’s mental health and financial position. Some of those who are likely to fall into debt already have a mental health problem.

Bailiffs are supposed to have training to identify vulnerable people and to behave appropriately, but the reality is that it is not always obvious that someone has a disability or is suffering from mental ill health. Much more robust legislation needs to be put in place to protect those people.

We need more robust rules and we need more robust enforcement. My constituent is disabled and was facing a fine because her disability badge was out of date. That was because she was moving from disability living allowance to the personal independence payment—that is another story. She was told by the bailiff that she did not look disabled. Her vulnerability has been questioned at every turn when I have raised her case. I thought it was obvious, because she is disabled, that she is vulnerable, but it is not always that obvious, as my hon. Friend says. We need much better procedures in place so that bailiffs recognise that.

Of those who had a negative experience with a bailiff, Citizens Advice found that seven in 10 reported increased stress and anxiety. I am sure that that very much chimes with the experience of the constituents that Members are here to represent. It certainly chimes with the experience of mine. Eight in 10 felt that the experience had a lasting effect and one in two saw their finances deteriorate further.

Is the practice by bailiffs of not accepting affordable repayments a cause for people getting further into debt, thus exacerbating the problem and leading to unfortunate experiences for those people?