The Scottish Government has been accused of bringing back warrant sales under plans to simplify the law on borrowing.
Campaigning lawyer Mike Dailly warned the impact of the Moveable Transactions Bill could be "extremely prejudicial to the rights and financial wellbeing of Scottish consumers".
Warrant sales were scrapped in 2001 in one of the first landmark pieces of legislation passed by MSPs at the reconvened Scottish Parliament.
The controversial practice was previously used to recover unpaid debts such as council tax.
But Dailly - a solicitor advocate at Govan Law Centre - warned new legislation would create "a new form of warrant sales".
A draft version of the Moveable Transactions Bill was published in May and is supported by legal experts including the Law Society of Scotland.
It sets out to modernise the law on borrowing against moveable physical and intellectual property to create an easier way for businesses to sell unpaid invoices to banks.
Speaking at the bill's publication, public finance minister Tom Arthur said: "If businesses cannot fully take advantage of their assets to raise finance they might otherwise have to resort to riskier and more expensive types of borrowing."
But Dailly claimed the bill would "expand the scope for individuals to virtually pawn their personal possessions worth £1,000 or more as a new form of security over debt".
"Worse, it would create a new form of warrant sales in Scotland," he wrote in a column for the Glasgow Times. "At present in order to raise money on moveable goods you generally have to deliver those goods to a creditor."
He added: "The Scottish Government thinks that in a modern age the need to hand over goods is 'out of keeping with commercial realities'. That may well be true for business-to business lending, but why expand the concept of pawn broking for ordinary householders, particularly in a cost-of-living emergency?"
Jackie Baillie, a Scottish Labour MSP who supported the scrapping of warrant sales in 2001, said: "I was pleased to announce to parliament that the Scottish Labour government would back the ending of poindings and warrant sales.
"Over 20 years on and the SNP want to bring it back in. Truly shameful. This has no place in modern Scotland."
Top QC Roddy Dunlop insisted the new law was a positive step. He said: "Warrant sales were when any debt over the minimum could be enforced by seizing debtor’s goods and selling them. Rightly abolished.
"The bill does not propose reintroduction. Rather it allows a specific piece of moveable property to be 'pledged' as security, bringing Scots law into line with many other systems. There may be potential for abuse, of course, but in general this is a positive step and not a regressive one."
A spokesman for the Scottish Government said: "These claims misunderstand and misrepresent the Bill’s provisions. The Bill will not apply to ordinary household goods worth up to £1,000 and that value could be increased in future as appropriate.
"Consumers would benefit from these proposals because securing the debt against previously untapped moveable assets would generally result in lower interest rates than an unsecured loan. The Bill in no sense represents a return to warrant sales of property belonging to those unable to pay debts."
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