Mick McAteer, Chair, Registry Trust
Tuesday, 9th January 2024
Time is running out for civil society organisations to respond to the Ministry of Justice’s important consultation on including the name of the claimant on the Register of CCJs. The consultation closes on 16th January 2024.[1]
Sometimes opportunities arise to make a small change that can have a big impact. This is one of those moments. A small change to legislation could improve public data on the nature of UK debt, enhance regulatory effectiveness, improve corporate accountability, and protect vulnerable consumers and small businesses. With the TUC forecasting unsecured debt is on course to reach a record £17,200 per UK household by 2026, exceeding the previous high of £16,800 in 2007,[2] we need the best public data possible on debt.
Due to a historical legislative quirk, the claimant’s name (usually an organisation taking out a CCJ against a defendant) is not included on the Register of CCJs for England and Wales, operated by non-profit Registry Trust. England and Wales is by far the biggest UK jurisdiction so this leaves a huge gap in our understanding of debt.
Registry Trust’s Lex Jones[3] and Mark Sargeant[4] argue compellingly elsewhere that including the claimant name would lead to a better service for Court Service users, and allow for more holistic credit decisions. But, there are other significant potential benefits.
Including the claimant name would enhance corporate accountability. Civil society organisations, debt advice charities, and campaigners could identify those firms that are behaving responsibly towards vulnerable consumers and those that are not.
Regulators could supervise firms more effectively as they could readily see from the Register which firms are aggressively enforcing debts and compare actual behaviours to corporate policies on 'treating customers fairly'. Specifically, in financial services, it could help monitor compliance with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)’s flagship Consumer Duty initiative. But, note that this would benefit all the major consumer protection regulators, not just the FCA. It would help identify where more robust consumer protection is needed.
Public claimant data would help researchers better understand the source and nature of debt. It would also allow for fairer funding of debt advice as we would get a much better idea of which firms are disproportionately responsible for problem debts. The good guys are picking up the tab for less responsible firms. This is not fair on consumers or responsible firms.
So, please do respond to the brief consultation. The more support we can gather, the greater chance we have of making a small change that could make a big difference.
Survey here to access the survey consultation.