As I understand it, debt is either simple debt with a 6 year period in which the creditor has to start action to recover the debt or specialty debt such as mortgages where the period is 12 years. There seems to be a grey area around when exactly the 'debt' is incurred, with lenders saying that it is when they sell a re-possessed property in the case of mortgage shortfall liability claims, although another view might be that the debt arises out of the original contract default ie. missed mortgage payments. As far as I can tell from regular reading of the postings here, this point has not been tested in the courts.(posted 8046 days ago)I'm not sure that the 6 / 12 year limitation is relevant once the creditor has started action, since it is a limitation on commencing debt recovery action, not a deadline for recovering debt.
If your shortfall debt is ten years old and you haven't been contacted by your lender or their agents then perhaps they will write it off if they have adopted the Mortgage Lenders Council code of practice limiting MSL claims to six years.
There doesn't seem to be much activity in Parliament for changes to the law on debt recovery. With the current trend in house prices and borrowing based on equity in property, I would not be surprised to see another 90's style crash and negative equity problems, increased repossessions etc.. Most people are too busy checking how much better off they are this week as compared to last to dwell much on the thought that the whole house of cards might come tumbling down.
The events of the Middle East ought to give everyone cause for concern though. If oil supplies are disrupted then the oil price will go through the roof, followed by industrial slow down, redundancies, slackening of demand, interest rate rises, run on the pound etc.
As someone who lost their property as a direct result of 15% interest rates due to what I consider to be criminally incompetent government by the Tories, and is now fighting a MSL claim by the Halifax, I would support the petition idea. I think it should call for a moratorium on MSL claims which date from pre-1997, as well as bringing the 12 year limit down to six or lower.