Curbing the powers of the bailiffs

Published: 22 April, 2010

• I TRUST I was not alone in my indignation on reading of the single mother, Kate Walters,  who was pursued by bailiffs over a £1.50 fare (£1.50 tube fare turns into £200 nightmare, April 15). 
It is obvious from this and similar cases that an investigation is needed into the powers and activities of bailiffs and how and by whom they are regulated.
It is difficult to believe that they can legally break into people’s property and remove their possessions, threaten them with violence and obtain money from them by intimidation. Yet this is what they frequently do, and without fear of prosecution apparently.
I know two cases personally of people who have suffered at the hands of these thugs, one where they threatened to kill a woman’s dog and another where they said, “we know where you park your car...” presumably intimating that they proposed to damage it if she was “difficult”.
In a country which has no written constitution and in which civil litigation is beyond the means of most people, the distress these can cause is very great. Kate Walters should, with the support, I hope, of a newspapers like your own  demand that her MP put a question to the Prime Minister about the steps open to people who are subjected to such outrageous treatment.
Hers could be the cause celebre which leads to an official inquiry into the conduct of bailiffs and to law reform. 
PETER MARTINS
Woburn Place, WC1