Yvonne Fovargue MP: A bailiff regulation breakthrough

It’s welcome news even if it has taken the consequences of the pandemic to get us over the line.

Regular readers of this column will know that I have long been critical of the use of bailiffs.

Not just because of their tactics – which can be bullying and threatening and sometime unpleasant in the extreme – but because their deployment by creditors can so often leave people in debt far worse-off than they were before.

What people who owe money need is an affordable repayment plan to help them get their lives back on track, not to have their worldly goods carted off in front of their children’s eyes and to then be presented with fees to the bailiff for the privilege!

The pandemic has brought these issues to the fore and created a new urgency, as people adjusted to lost jobs or reduced hours.

The fact that the Government moved quickly to ban bailiff enforced evictions as part of its package of support during the first lockdown showed they at least understood the dangers.

But the real question was always going to be what would happen when the various government support schemes came to end – would we see, as some predicted, a “tidal wave” of debt sweeping the nation, and a surge in bailiff action for the recovery of council tax and other debts built up over the last eighteen months?

Fortunately, the calls for a permanent solution to the bailiff problem started to be taken more seriously by ministers.

In February this year, I had been invited to a Zoom call with the Justice Minister, Alex Chalk after I had raised the issue on the floor of the House.

I took along with me representatives from Citizens Advice, the Money Advice Trust and StepChange, three members of the Taking Control campaign calling for an independent complaints body and regulator for the enforcement industry.

Though there were no promises made, it was a good, positive meeting with the minister which gave me hope for the future.

Then five months later in July I had the opportunity to raise the issue of bailiff reform once again in the House, this time with the Secretary of State for Communities & Local Government, Robert Jenrick.

I had previously been approached by the think tank the Centre for Social Justice to discuss proposals they had for a new independent body – the Enforcement Conduct Authority – following discussions with bailiff firms and advice charities.

I was impressed by their ideas and I wanted to be sure that the Secretary of State was aware of them.

To my pleasure, he had and was interested to meet with me to discuss them further. This meeting has yet to take place because of the Parliamentary recess, but there is every indication that the Government is now on board.

The Centre for Social Justice’s proposals are not perfect. The Enforcement Conduct Authority does not amount to the full statutory regulation that many campaigners have been calling for. But by setting up an independent body with clear rules for bailiffs and sanctions imposed for those who break them, as well as a two-stage complaints service, this is a clear break with the failed self-regulation of the past.

I see this very much as a pragmatic solution that the Government is prepared to get behind, which is why it should be supported.

The job now is to ensure that the new body has the powers it needs to be as effective as possible and that it is able to deliver its clear mandate to raise standards in enforcement and to better protect people in debt.

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