York MP calls for crackdown on 'rogue' bailiffs after disabled man 'threatened'
Luke Charters said firms should be put on a statutory footing to drive up standards in the industry.
The Labour MP for York Outer said vulnerable people were being made to feel "absolutely petrified in their own homes".
Mr Charters introduced the Regulations of Bailiffs Bill through a 10-minute rule motion in parliament. It would require the Secretary of State to publish an assessment of the effectiveness of current regulations, and report to Parliament on the potential merits of statutory regulation.
He said: "We are in this place to speak up, when others can't, to put right what is clearly wrong.
"This Bill, to get a grip on rogue bailiffs, does exactly that."
During his speech, Mr Charters raised the case of his constituent, Adam, who "got into debt through falling behind on council tax and card repayments after losing an agency job and struggling to find new work".
He added: "As is often the case with rogue bailiffs, the visits were aggressive and intimidating. One forced his foot into the door, threatening to come in and, of course, this breaks virtually every rule in the book.
"Adam told me, 'it was like someone was trying to boot down the door'. He immediately told the bailiff that he had a disability and was classed as vulnerable. The bailiff said he didn't care and would take away Adam's belongings regardless.
"The bailiff saying he didn't care - what cruelty. The enforcement system is broken and punishes those already struggling when rules allow such passive, cruel indifference to people in crisis."
Mr Charters said the bailiff also threatened to take away Adam's "government-funded equipment for his disability, a specially adapted device".
According to Citizens Advice, one in three people who have had contact with a bailiff have experienced behaviour that breaks Ministry of Justice expectations.
"And even among the bailiffs that are regulated under their current scope, 1% of visits were deemed too aggressive by the ECB (Enforcement Conduct Board). And by the way, that would equate to hundreds, if not thousands of visits a year.
"That is why we need a fair and proportionate debt collection system."
Mr Charters also referred to another constituent, Michael, a soon-to-be father who was "left without carpet, with a broken bed and a broken boiler".
He said Michael was involved in a "horrific" motorbike accident which left him "bedridden" and "getting by on sick pay alone" after losing his job.
"Michael went from being a homeowner with a near perfect credit score to nearly losing everything, and I'm pleased to say that he's back on his feet and, although he's still paying the debt off, he is hoping to clear it soon,"
The MP concluded his speech by suggesting that while the Enforcement Conduct Board do a good job, there are many bailiffs not in their perimeter.
The ECB was set up in 2022, with ministers of the then-Conservative government promising to review whether it needs to be put on a statutory footing within two years.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
21 minutes ago
- The Guardian
People held under UK's ‘one in, one out' asylum deal say they had not heard of it
Asylum seekers locked in detention centres as part of Labour's 'one in, one out' deal have said they had not heard of the scheme before arriving in the UK on small boats and were terrified of being returned to their home countries. The prime minister, Keir Starmer, has said the plan to send one small boat arrival back to France in exchange for accepting another to live in the UK would deter the thousands from crossing the Channel. Since the first group of small boat arrivals were detained just over a week ago on 6 August, 2,363 people have crossed the Channel. More than 50,000 have crossed since Labour came into power. 'I was so happy to survive the journey across the Channel and to reach land in the UK. Then the Home Office locked me up. I'm still in a state of shock,' said one man from Eritrea, speaking to the Guardian by phone from a detention centre. 'We did not understand what was happening to us when the Home Office moved us from Manston [the former military base in Kent] where we were processed, straight to this place which is like a jail. 'When we asked why they were bringing some who arrived on the same boat as me here but letting others go free, they did not answer us. They just said it was because we crossed the Channel illegally.' The man said that neither he nor anyone he knew in northern France knew anything about the 'one in, one out' deal and was not sure it would prevent people from continuing to try to cross the Channel. 'I am very frightened here. There are people who have committed crimes in the UK locked up with us. We have done nothing wrong apart from trying to find a safe place.' He claimed to have been trafficked and tortured when he passed through Libya on his journey from Eritrea. 'I believe if I am sent back to France and the smugglers find me they will kill me,' he said. A second man from Afghanistan also spoke to the Guardian from detention. He said: 'The Home Office have just locked us in these rooms and said we cannot go from here. We are frightened of the dangerous criminals locked up with us. We are so afraid of what Home Office will do to us. 'The Taliban tried to kill me so I escaped from Afghanistan. I thought I was free when I reached [the] UK but instead I am in this prison. We knew nothing about the 'one in, one out' deal when we left France. I don't know if it will stop people crossing the Channel.' The Home Office says the first group of detainees are expected to be returned to France within three weeks, with the UK referring potential returnees to the French authorities within three days of their detention and the French expected to respond within 14 days. A leaflet given to detainees by the Home Office says those returned to France may be offered a financial incentive by the French authorities to return to their home countries. It asks detainees to notify the Home Office if they are seriously ill or a victim of rape, torture or violence, although officials are supposed to screen for these vulnerabilities before detaining people. Karris Hamilton, an advocacy manager at Gatwick Detainees Welfare Group, which is supporting those earmarked for forced return to France, said: 'We are extremely concerned about the wellbeing of the men being detained for the 'one in, one out' scheme. 'Those we have spoken with so far are in acute distress and many have been victims of torture, exploited by traffickers on their journeys or victims of modern slavery in Libya. 'People are finding it difficult to eat and sleep due to being in a prison environment, not knowing how long they will be there and fearing that they may be taken back to France. We are very worried that we will see a rise in self-harm, suicide attempts and hunger strikes due to this.'
Telegraph
21 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Labour council to remove ‘dangerous' British flags from city streets
A Labour-run council is facing a backlash over its plans to remove 'dangerous' British flags from lamp posts. Residents in Birmingham have installed hundreds of Union and St George's flags on the city's streets in the past fortnight in a 'patriotic outpouring'. But the city council plans to remove them after claiming they could put the lives of pedestrians and motorists 'at risk' – despite them being 20ft off the ground. 'Placing unauthorised attachments on street furniture, particularly tall structures like lamp posts, can be dangerous,' the council said in a statement. The Labour-controlled authority, which has been beset by bankruptcy and bin strikes in recent years, has now been accused of showing 'utter contempt for the British people'. 'This is nothing short of a disgrace and shows utter contempt for the British people,' Lee Anderson, the Reform UK MP, told The Telegraph. 'We should be flying our flags with pride. Our nation has a rich history of hospitality, generosity and innovation – something to be celebrated, not condemned. 'Any elected official who supports removing the British or English flags, restricting personal freedoms, or silencing free speech should be removed from office for betraying the very country they serve.' Councillor Robert Alden, leader of the authority's Conservative opposition, added: 'Our national flags are nothing to be ashamed of. Seeing our flags flying gives us all pride in our shared history and achievements as a great nation. 'Birmingham City Council should be proud to fly them across the City. Labour rushing to rip them down is shameful.' He said the council has not previously acted as speedily to take down other types of flags and 'flyposted' advertising on street lamps and traffic lights elsewhere in the city. The plans to remove the flags came just a day after the authority lit up the city library in green and white to mark the 77th anniversary of Pakistan's independence from Britain. Palestine flags have also flown elsewhere on the city's streets since the war in Gaza began in 2023. The council last year announced a crackdown on the Palestine flags – which fly mainly in the predominantly Muslim east of the city – but has not succeeded in completely eradicating them. The Government has previously issued guidance saying it wants 'more flags flown, particularly the Union Flag', as long as they are erected with 'the permission of the owner of the site'. The British and English flags have been installed in suburbs in the south-west of Birmingham since the start of August by a group of residents – the 'Weoley Warriors' – who climb halfway up them with ladders and affix flags using cable ties. Funded by £2,500 in public donations, the campaign is intended to show 'Birmingham and the rest of the country of how proud we are of our history, freedoms and achievements'. Simon Morrall, a Conservative councillor for Frankley Great Park, said the flags were a 'clearly peaceful movement'. 'When the city council can't fix potholes, are closing down youth centres and selling off assets, all while fly-tipping piles up in our community and graffiti is out of control, then finding resources to remove Union flags sends the wrong message,' he said. The suburbs now decked out in red, white and blue include Northfield, Weoley Castle, Bartley Green, Selly Oak and Frankley Great Park. The campaign has been welcomed by local residents who warned there would be 'trouble, even riots, if they take them down'. Hayley Owens, a 40-year-old former police officer, said: 'We are sick of having to apologise for being British. The flags have had such a positive impact on the community – people love them. There is nothing political about it.' Dr Helen Ingram, a historian from Northfield, said: 'We are a small mostly working-class community, and these flags have reinvigorated our collective pride and community spirit. I doubt we will win this, but we will fight our hardest to show that we are British and proud.' Birmingham City Council said it only opposed flying flags on publicly owned 'street furniture' and would not take the Union or St George's f lag down from council housing or private property. A spokesman said its policy was to remove flags, posters and signs of any kind from street lamps or traffic lights. They added that its programme to upgrade lamp posts to energy-efficient LEDs cannot continue if the flags are not removed. The council spokesman said: 'People who attach unauthorised items to lamp posts could be putting their lives and those of motorists and pedestrians at risk. We are continuing to do this every week, and would ask that staff doing this work are allowed to continue this work unhindered.' Birmingham's streets have been blighted by mounds of uncollected rubbish this year amid an ongoing bin strike by refuse workers. The industrial action began in January after the Unite union claimed the council told the bin workers they would face pay cuts of up to £8,000. The council declared effective bankruptcy in 2023 and has since been forced to make £300 million of budget cuts.
The Herald Scotland
an hour ago
- The Herald Scotland
Sturgeon fails to be frank on education failures in new book
Over the past ten years, when I've been speaking about the state of Scottish education, or analysing the latest data on attainment or teacher numbers or classroom behaviour, lots of people have asked me variations of a simple question: how did we get here? Very often I have responded with the following explanation: Basically, Nicola Sturgeon was under pressure on education, and she went on a wee field trip to England, where people told her about a thing called the London Challenge. She listened, didn't understand, then came back up the road and decided we'd do the same things in Scotland. This, I should stress, was an obviously oversimplified explanation that I used to get a laugh from whatever room it was in, followed by a more detailed critique of the policy development process and the political implications. It was meant to be a joke. But it turns out that my depiction wasn't the caricature I thought it was – it seems instead to have been an exercise in unexpected realism. Read more: Keep up to date with our coverage on Nicola Sturgeon's memoir On page 255 of her new book, the former First Minister briefly deigns to address education issues when she tells us about visiting London in February 2015. This short visit to a single school, she explains, was 'instrumental' in the development of a policy direction that, by the end of the current parliament, will have wasted a full decade of potential progress at a cost of £1.75 billion of public money. Education pops up again a little later in the book during a section about getting 'Back on Track'. We are told about the decision to abandon a flagship Education Bill 'in favour of a non-statutory approach' to handing headteachers more autonomy. This was, allegedly, done because it would allow faster and more successful change, all without giving the opposition the chance to 'frustrate the legislation'. The reality from that time was that the government's own consultation on the Bill showed that there was little if any support for the changes the government wanted to impose. The decision to pull the Bill was, quite plainly, about avoiding a political humiliation. This thread, where everything would have been fine if it weren't for bad actors trying to stop her (because of course she couldn't possibly have just been wrong) continues when she discusses her decision to force standardised testing on schools. Read more Lessons to Learn: Once again, the reality is quite different from her presentation. As I proved at the time, the policy was based on almost no written evidence whatsoever – I fought a year-long FOI battle to force Sturgeon's government to release what material they had, and then discovered that it amounted to four unsolicited emails. What's more, although Sturgeon tries to present this policy as something that the other parties opposed, the truth is that both the Tories and Labour had been demanding the introduction of standardised testing, albeit for political reasons. When the policy was announced it was met with widespread opposition and condemnation from teachers and education experts – people who knew a lot more than Nicola Sturgeon and her circle of political advisers. Later, she frames the introduction of standardised testing as having been influenced by her 'sympathy' for the view that 'we had moved away from a rote approach'. The problem, if we're going to be speaking frankly, is that Nicola Sturgeon is a career politician who was a lawyer for five minutes in her twenties, so her views on the correct pedagogical approaches for literacy and numeracy are worth precisely nothing. And yet they set the direction of travel for the education policy of an entire nation. Unsurprisingly, the former First Minister declines to mention the specific and measurable targets for 'closing the attainment gap' that were included in the 2017 Programme for Government, which she says was the strongest of her period in office. There's a good reason for that: her government never, at any stage, even came close to achieving them. The closest that Sturgeon's book comes to offering an honest assessment of her education record is when she writes that her underlying problem was 'one of diagnosis' – even that isn't really true, because it still gives her too much credit. She didn't know enough to make any sort of diagnosis, and still doesn't seem to understand that fundamental point. At the launch of the book she went a little further, admitting that she didn't grasp the complexity of the issues she was tackling. But that's a cop out as well. Here's the truth: she had no idea what she was doing, and didn't even know enough to be able to recognise the things she didn't know, but dragged us along regardless. Acting from a position of ignorance, she pursued policies that have not only failed but have also been major contributors to the enormous problems currently facing schools, teachers, and pupils in this country. There are exceptions to these failures, the most notable of which is her decision to back the campaign for LGBT-inclusive education in Scottish schools. There are various other SNP politicians who might have been leader other than her, and without needing to name names I think we all know that many of them would have behaved very differently. Scotland became the first country on earth to introduce inclusive education and, as I have told her in person, Nicola Sturgeon should be proud of her role in that. But on the whole, and certainly with respect to the 'attainment gap', Nicola Sturgeon failed when it came to education. And now she has also failed to be frank about those failures. Having made this the central pillar of so much of her time and office, and promising that she would be judged on her record, Nicola Sturgeon's reflections on education are incredibly brief and a long way from honest. But what did you expect from a politician's memoir?
