Consumer Credit Bill

I intervene as someone who served throughout the Committee stage of the first Consumer Credit Act in the Commons and who led for the Opposition on the Bill again when it returned and a different government was in power, so there is a bit of déjà vu going on. The Committee will breathe a deep sight of relief that I have been unable to lay my hands easily on the Hansard reports of those proceedings. I say to the right reverend Prelate that my late father would certainly have been on his side, because his favourite saying was, ““Banks are there to give you an umbrella when the sun is shining and to take it away when it rains””. That is a neat way of putting it. The importance of the amendment is the part of it that relates to parliamentary scrutiny. I am sure that the Minister will already be aware that when any regulations under the Bill come forth they are completely incomprehensible to anyone other than the person who drafted them, because they have by their very nature to be so complicated. Therefore, this amendment provides a way of simplifying that very complicated procedure. The amendment is complicated, but its purpose is to clarify what is to be expected in the regulations when they come, and to give Parliament the opportunity to reject or refine them in some way, when regulations come up not meeting the requirements of this amendment. It is a way of simplifying and of seeing whether the regulations are going to work and if they are going to be comprehensible. The amendment may not be perfect as drafted at the moment, it may seem slanted one way or the other, but the need for this process in the Bill, certainly in later stages, is a good point to have made, and I would not like to see the amendment completely lost.