Consumers, Estate Agents and Redress Bill [HL]

This is a rather pointless amendment but, none the less, it should be addressed. As far as I can see, we have an argument in favour of smart metering which is totally irrelevant to anyone who has had any dealings with Ofgem in the recent past. Meters were made to last and they will last for 40 years. It would cost an incredible amount of money to get rid of all of them. It would be possible but the carbon effect involved in the manufacturing of their replacement would greatly outweigh the savings to which the noble Baroness has alluded. She surely wants to read again and think about this part of her brief. It is a great idea but it would cost an awful lot of money. The cost would have to be borne by consumers who, frankly, balance up the advantages to the environment against the advantages to their own pockets. While smart metering has, to an extent, been tried in Northern Ireland with the blessing of Energywatch and the regulators operating over there, I am not sure that that is the best argument for it if we are going to abolish our consumer protection body which I think most people will agree has been fairly effective. Consumers have confidence in it, the regulators get annoyed by it and the companies do not really like it. By and large those are three substantial ticks in the boxes. If the regulators feel at times uneasy because the consumer watchdog keeps spurring them on to do other things, that is a good argument for the watchdog. There should be an atmosphere of creative tension between the two. If the companies find it uncomfortable, the regulators are doing their job. The test is whether this is only about saving money. If it is not, we have to give it a fair wind. I think that part of the problem we have with the energy industry in this country is that successive Governments—certainly the previous Conservative Administration when they privatised the energy industries—gave precious little thought to liberalisation and effective means of consumer protection. They did not think through anything other than the amount of money they were going to get through the privatisation sell off. We are slowly but surely picking up the pieces. As we have seen, consumer protection can take a variety of forms but, in large measure, the reforms that took place in the early part of this century tidied things up a bit, but you still had regional committees with varying powers in different parts of the country. Equally, we had a National Consumer Council that was certainly not a giant but which was sleeping a fair bit of that time. Those of us who have watched consumer affairs from down the Corridor were not greatly impressed by the record of the National Consumer Council. It was barely reactive and only rarely proactive as a body. In recent years, it has improved its game somewhat, but it still has an awful lot to do. If it is reinforced by people from Postwatch and Energywatch, who have shown themselves to be effective representatives and defenders of the consumer, we will begin to see something happen. On energy matters and postal matters—I know that we will go on to look at postal matters in a moment, but I think that the two can be taken together—there has been effective consumer representation. There has not been that kind of effective consumer representation by the National Consumer Council. It has commissioned worthy studies; it has made general points; but it has not made many businesses fear its activities or made their flesh creep. Energywatch has certainly done that for a number of energy companies. I am concerned that the momentum that has been gathering in the past few years as a result of Energywatch’s actions should not be stopped. Later this afternoon, we will be looking for assurances on specific matters, such as the speed with which consumer complaints should be addressed. Although the Minister gave us assurances on Second Reading, we need rather more substantial detail and flesh on the bones than that. The test of the Motion is: if the Government cannot give assurances, the clause may later be voted down. If it was, that would probably wreck the Bill, so it would become, instead of a probing amendment, a wrecking amendment. The Minister has a case to make and I hope that he will be able to make it this afternoon. It is, at leastin the first instance, that we have a new body ofwhich the umbrella will be the National Consumer Council, that it will initially take in the functions of Energywatch and Postwatch and will ultimately include water as well. If it is that successful, it may persuade the Treasury that it can take in financial services later. That is for other legislation because it is not within the Bill, although I have to say that if it is a sufficiently good idea for energy, in my view, it is a good enough idea to include financial services in something independent of the Treasury—although you might say that in any Government few things are independent of the Treasury. If there is an argument for the Bill, it is that it will continue the necessary shaking-up process of the National Consumer Council, but it will also bring energy matters into the mainstream of consumer issues. There are some specific problems—metering, people knocking on doors, switching and so on. Although in most other areas people switch between one service provider and another, in utilities, it is a wee bit different. But if we are to have an argument about switching and say that it should be a function of the National Consumer Council, why do we not include telecoms in the Bill as well? Telecoms are still a shared function between the DTI and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. There is an awful lot of untoward activity against consumers in that area, but at the moment we have an organisation that, frankly, I believe to be far too close to Ofcom to be doing its job independently. My only concern about the absorption of Energywatch and Postwatch into the National Consumer Council is that it becomes a wee bit too close to some other operations. That is what worries me because we must ensure that in their new form those consumer bodies continue to be able to act independently against companies when a challenge has to be made. They do not necessarily need to have a confrontational approach all the time, but, let us face it, energy companies in the United Kingdom are not bywords for philanthropy. They have to be challenged, harried and held to account. So far, Energywatch has not done badly in that regard, while the record of the National Consumer Council has been less than compelling in its ability to have a go at some of the big abusers of market power in Britain. Therefore, I am happy to give the Government a fair wind on the amendment, which I know is probing. Does the noble Baroness wish to intervene or ask a question?