Worth Richard: Courts and Criminal Matters Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Worth Richard: Courts and Criminal Matters Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:626;Page:21705] 
Dr RICHARD WORTH (National—Epsom) 
: 
 Part 3 of the Courts and Criminal Matters Bill which National supports is clearly important legislation and there is no need to hurry through it. I am concerned that we appear to be proceeding at breakneck speed and I look ahead to see that there are nine parts to this bill. So there is every opportunity that we could spend tomorrow in concerned and critical debate about some of the key provisions. 
I would just like to focus on one particular aspect that comes quite dramatically out of Part 3 which is the references to the word “bailiff”. That word first appears in clause 9 “Where judgment debtor does not appear at examination or order cannot be served” and reappears in clause 12 “Contempt procedures” where wide-ranging changes are planned to section 84O(6) of the principal Act. I have just been looking at the definition of “bailiff” in the District Courts Act because Part 3 is concerned with the District Courts Act and I have been reflecting on what the implications might be of this change. 
The word “bailiff” is from the Latin  
bajulivus 
 and is the adjectival form of  
bajulus 
. It means a governor or custodian. So in its modern context it is used to describe a legal officer to whom some degree of authority care or jurisdiction is committed. I would just note that because the definition is an open one in this statute a number of possibilities are certainly thrown up. 
The term was first applied in England to the King’s officers generally such as sheriffs and mayors and more particularly to the chief officer of a hundred. So the county within which the sheriff exercises his or her jurisdiction is still called the sheriff’s bailiwick while the term “bailiff” is retained as the title of the chief magistrate of various towns and the keepers of royal castles. 
Members may know that under the manorial system the bailiff the steward and the reeve were important officers. The bailiff managed the property of the manor and superintended its cultivation. 
I have been asked to make some comment about the position of the reeve and those special responsibilities and I may seek leave for an extension of time to deal with that at some length but I would say that the bailiff of a sheriff is an under-officer employed by a sheriff within a county for the purpose of executing writs processes distraints and arrests. It is in that context that I believe—subject to the Minister making some comment about this in a moment—we are perhaps most appropriately concerned. 
As a sheriff is liable for the acts of the officers acting under his warrant his bailiffs are annually bound to him in an obligation with sureties for the faithful discharge of their office. As a result of that they are called bound bailiffs. They are also often called bum-bailiffs or shortly “bums”. The origin of this word is uncertain. The new English dictionary suggests that it is an allusion to the mode of catching the offender. 
Special bailiffs are officers appointed by the sheriff at the request of a plaintiff for the purpose of executing a particular process. There have been significant changes to the District Courts Act 1947 since that legislation was enacted. Members of Parliament who are lawyers would I think mourn some of the changes that have been made in the context of the enforcement of judgments and in particular the very critical role that bailiffs have performed over the years since this legislation was enacted.