Consumers, Estate Agents and Redress Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 100: 100: Clause 29, page 16, line 43, leave out subsection (2) The noble Lord said: Amendment No. 100 would prevent the abolishment of Postwatch and is intended as a probing amendment. I note that the noble Baroness, Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer, has tabled a Motion to oppose Clause 29 standing part of the Bill. While I look forward to hearing what she has to say, I reserve judgment until I hear the Minister’s response on the wisdom of merging Postwatch with the new NCC. The question of Energywatch will be addressed in our amendments to Clauses 42, 48 and 49, Energywatch and Postwatch being two different organisations. We are concerned on several counts about the merger of Postwatch into the NCC. It is vital that consumer voice does not result in a dilution of the sector-specific expertise essential in postal services. This is particularly important for the postal services market, which has only recently been opened up to competition. The role of Postwatch has been vital in ensuring that the interests of all consumers of mail services are upheld in this uncertain and changing marketplace. It is essential that consumer voice continues to represent businesses in the same way as Postwatch has done. The fundamental changes taking place within Royal Mail and within the market overall are affecting and will continue to affect all businesses, no matter what their size. It is therefore imperative that there is an effective voice for businesses dependent on mail services. We should not forget that an effective consumer voice is also an essential sounding board for the sector regulator. I am sure that Members of the Committee will have taken great interest in the Statement repeated by the Minister in your Lordships' House before Christmas. In our response to it, we welcomed the Government’s U-turn on post office card accounts, but unfortunately that is all we have to welcome in the Government’s policy on post offices. There was no real answer on the anticipated effects on rural post offices, or inner city ones. The Minister guaranteed that 95 per cent of the rural population would be within one mile of a post office but did not identify whether that would be a post office in the traditional sense of one open every day of the week or whether that figure would include the new outreach programmes. I should be grateful if he could expand on that point. This matter is close to our hearts. My noble friend Lady Byford made a valuable contribution to the debate on the Statement, and I had hoped that she would be able to make a contribution this afternoon. In the light of the fundamental changes being made to postal services and the vast reductions being made in the number of post offices, which will affect not only small local businesses but also the most vulnerable consumers, I should be grateful if the Minister could present his own forward work plan for consumer services under the new Postwatch arm of the NCC and say whether it will do as much as Postwatch has done—or, indeed, more for consumers using postal services. I beg to move.