Local Government Finance Bill
Debate between Baroness Hollis of Heigham and Lord Lucas
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
What the noble Lord is saying is important. As we are in Committee, can he give the Committee any detailed information of the actual cost to a local authority and the alternative charge given in addition to the debt to be recovered from the individual, so that we have some evidence that local authorities are to some extent profiteering from their bailiff actions?
Lord Lucas
My Lords, is the process of getting a liability order, which costs £100, really 10 hours’ work for somebody? That is ridiculous. It is something that is done in bulk; the requests are sent to the magistrates’ court in bulk and signed off in bulk. Doubtless the council can argue that there are associated costs, but if it is spending £100 a time on these things it is being grossly inefficient. It should be able to do the business for £20 a head; that would be a fair estimate of what it should cost a council, if run well, to get a liability order, rather than the £100 that they charge. There is nothing that I am aware of in the legislation requiring them to be slower about it than that, but because there is no statutory limit on these things it has become a practice to charge a large amount.
The other destructive thing that councils are doing is that when somebody falls behind for a month or two with council tax payments, they say that they will not accept instalment payments any more—the whole lot is due. That is daft. As the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, was saying, the right way in which to deal with these things is to agree proper staged payments. To withdraw that and put the debtor through the whole business of bailiffs and additional charges, in order to come out at the other end with some kind of agreed staged payment, is ridiculous. It is a great injustice to the person who has fallen behind with paying the council tax, particularly if they find themselves in positions of hardship rather than just forgetfulness.
Councils should be taking a more sensible and rational attitude to this. They should look at the citizens who they have charge of and say that if those people are in difficulty, they will work with the sort of organisations that the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, represents to enable them to pay their bills over a sensible period or to otherwise get out of the difficulties in which they find themselves. It should not be necessary immediately—without question and without thinking—to go to the bailiffs. I can encourage the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, because I think that we will get bailiff legislation and reform. I saw the Minister a few days ago and have committed to give a half-hour speech on the subject in November. I am seriously optimistic that I will have something to say when we get there, but it has been a long road. I quite agree with the noble Lord.
However, councils are the employers of bailiffs and it is terribly important that when they employ them they have a care for the people whose—
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
Nobody wants to see bad practice, but I have not experienced councils behaving in that way in my time as a local councillor. Using bailiffs was the last, not the first, thing you did. I am perfectly willing to believe that there may be bad councils in this field or that one or two cases may be badly handled. Obviously, that may well be the case. If there has been impropriety in that way at all it should obviously be remedied, but I hope that if the noble Lord is coming back with that argument he will back it up with some information and not just broad assertions about how local authorities behave. I do not recognise his description of that. Certainly, before I sent in any bailiffs we would have gone through hoops to see whether we could have gradual repayments or otherwise help those people through their hardship, perhaps by getting them into a debt counselling agency. To send in bailiffs and make that person homeless is the last thing that a housing authority wants, because then it would have to send them to a B and B.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, my experience of this comes entirely from the bailiff end of things and in particular from the complaints that people make when the bailiffs come through. The complaints are not necessarily about the bailiffs but about the process that has led to them finding the bailiffs at the door. The level of liability or of the charges is a matter of public record, as is their volume. The policy of councils to make the whole debt due immediately if there is a failure over a couple of months to pay instalments is there on council websites. Both of them are fundamental injustices. The council may be good-hearted in the way that it deals with things. I do not have data on which councils are good or bad; I am merely looking at the overall practice, and I am conscious of the level of complaint and anguish that reaches those who deal with complaints against bailiffs, which is where my understanding comes from.
However, coming back to the basic figures, if you charge £100 for a liability order, it seems to me that you are grossly overcharging, and if you say on your website, as councils do, that if you miss a couple of payments the whole lot is due, that is a fundamentally mistaken way to deal with debt. I therefore like this amendment because I read it as putting some of the onus back on councils, which is where it should be.