My Lords, I rise to ask the Minister some questions about the transfer of the regulation of the providers of credit to the FCA. I had understood that it was the Government’s current intention to repeal as much as possible of the CCA and replace the relevant clauses with a new rulebook written under FiSMA and that the Government have been proposing to finalise this new rulebook by March 2014 to be implemented the following month. The Minister will be aware that a lot of the industry feels that this will be physically impossible given the necessity of wholesale change to the credit industry’s computer systems and the need to retrain staff. It is also questionable whether the new rulebook will be ready by March 2014, as none of the main features of the new regime has yet been agreed—and some may not have been discussed.
The Minister will be aware that much of the industry accounting for some 65% of UK credit is urging the Government to take advantage of the flexibility in the Bill by keeping much of the existing CCA in place in April 2014. The FCA will be able to enforce the CCA using its new powers which exceed those of the Office of Fair Trading. This would allow time for the design of a generally proportionate new regime. If such an approach is not taken, tens of billions of pounds of existing credit currently available to ordinary consumers in the high street and elsewhere could be at serious risk.