My hon. Friend tempts me to talk about football, which is one of my favourite topics. I will resist that temptation, except to say that I share his concerns about that.
Returning to our amendments and what the industry could do, I understand that there are differences of opinion about how best to tackle the problem. As we have seen, however, technology is available. The Veritech software is, I understand, used in 14 states in the US. Arguably, lenders would have the resources to bring that in if they wanted to. If lenders will not do something voluntarily, surely it will make sense to require them to do that, because in the meantime consumers are falling into debt. The Government should therefore act as soon as they possibly can.
Interestingly, we have heard that this issue is not just about the impact on consumers. The 118 118 company has told us that it believes the introduction of data sharing would enhance levels of competition, arguing:
“It is probable that if real time data was available, and lenders could be more confident in their lending decisions, many more of them would be attracted to this market segment. We would hope and expect that the FCA would be very cognisant of this point in view of its explicit competition objective”.
That is an interesting view. Where lending is being done, we want to know that it is being done by reputable companies, backed up by the proper technology and proper principles.