Consumers, Estate Agents and Redress Bill [HL]

My Lords, when I looked at the speakers list, I saw that I was fortunate enough to be the last speaker before the Statement. I then saw that I was to follow the noble Lord, Lord Borrie, who is the great acknowledged expert in this field. That was one of the very good reasons why I reappointed him to the job of Director-General of Fair Trading when I was Minister of State. I am also very grateful to the noble Lord for straying into the political area. I was not going to do so but he has provoked me. The Conservative Government whom he criticised were the first to create a Minister of State and a whole department of consumer affairs; they also introduced the Fair Trading Act 1973 and the first Consumer Credit Bill, which was carried on by other Governments. I subsequently introduced, as Minister of State, the Competition Act, which he supported. Well, well, well, my Lords—we now have a major consumer Bill from this Government, who over the past nine or so years have downgraded ministerial responsibility for consumer affairs from the level of Minister of State to that of Parliamentary Under-Secretary, then to Parliamentary Under-Secretary with mixed responsibilities, and then to having no ministerial person responsible at all. They filleted the Office of Fair Trading, they desiccated the NCC and they condensed the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. I suppose that a deathbed conversion is always welcome. When news of the Farepak disaster broke—here I definitely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Borrie—there was no officially designated consumer affairs Minister in the Government to comment. It fell to Back-Bench MPs and eventually the Chancellor to ask people, as he usually does, to put their hands in their pockets to help people, which they very generously did. I therefore hope that, in Committee, we will find it possible to take steps in Part 4 to regulate the industry. Christmas clubs are very popular; I am not sure that they are the best form of saving for consumers but they certainly need to be regulated. So we now have, after nearly nine years, a Bill that appears to cobble together a vast range of new duties and powers for a new NCC, the implementation of which will not be helped by the vagueness of some of the drafting, and which will certainly be very costly—as it will have to be if it is to function properly—despite other savings that may be made. Despite what the noble Lord, Lord Borrie, said, my main concern is to support what my noble friend Lady Wilcox said about the independence of the new NCC and other bodies which may criss-cross around and in front of it. I, my predecessors and my immediate successor, my noble friend the very notable Lady Wilcox, who was an excellent chairman of the NCC, were completely free to investigate whatever we wanted, and we could report and publish our findings without submitting them to the Government. Indeed, I remember the publication of two particularly controversial reports when I was chairman of the NCC. In one, we published the fact that British consumers were at a great disadvantage as a result of the CAP; in another, we called for greater access to justice for consumers. That has subsequently been dealt with under legislation by this Government, for which I commend them. I turn to the subject of the new NCC’s new functions relating to utilities and the Post Office. I am not as unduly concerned as others that they are to come under the same body so long as the NCC is given the manpower and resources for all the new functions, which will be vast and costly. Without them, the task could be overwhelming and could not be carried out correctly. I particularly welcome the NCC’s new role of giving advice and pursuing redress in certain defined cases, limited though they are by their definition. Both as a Minister and a chairman of the NCC, one of my major concerns was the lack of this kind of provision across the board. As already illustrated, as a result of CABs harnessing the information that they were gaining on doorstep selling, there are now welcome provisions in the Bill to help to deal with that practice. They have come about because of complaints which have been gathered and analysed, and that is why I should like to see something far greater across the board than the provisions that are limited to the utilities. When I was a Minister, I wanted to introduce an across-the-board scheme of this kind. I was frustrated in that ambition because the cost would have been prohibitive. Perhaps tragedies such as Farepak would have been avoided if greater counselling, advice or gathering of evidence had been available. In my experience, the General Consumer Council for Northern Ireland was free to carry out such functions and it did so very successfully. I am not sure why it has been left out of the Bill, and perhaps the Minister will let us know. Another of my objectives as Minister was to simplify the law so that consumers knew what their obligations and rights were. To that end, I produced the consumer education pack for schools, which was circulated throughout the system. I took a number of the classes myself and they proved popular and informative, as well as being very cost-effective. Therefore, I am sad that there is no mention in the Bill of a responsibility to carry that forward. Finally, I wish the NCC very good luck, especially in dealing with British Gas and Post Office complaints. It will need it. It will also need time and patience and, as I have said before, resources. I am sure that a very interesting Committee stage awaits us. I shall not comment on the estate agents part of the Bill because that area of consumer affairs was never within my remit in the department. Nevertheless, I welcome many clauses in the Bill, which, again, will have to be studied very carefully. No doubt the Minister will enlighten us and help us further in this matter at later stages of the Bill. I hope that by the time he has to oversee the implementation of the Bill, he will have become Minister of State for Consumer Affairs, as this important responsibility warrants.