My Lords, I start by congratulating my noble friend Lord Mitchell and the noble Lord, Lord Sassoon, on a very great achievement. However, as everybody seems to understand the amendment in every way except for me, I have three questions in case I have misunderstood what the noble Lord said.
I read the amendment as saying that it gives the FCA the power to do all the things that we want it to do. However, I was not very clear whether he was then saying that, under its consumer protection mandate, it follows immediately that it must exercise that power. This is our favourite “may” and “must” question. You can give someone power but they may not use it. However, am I right in understanding that this amendment, coupled with the whole of the rest of the remit for the FCA, essentially means that it will now have to go into this field and deal with it in the way suggested, or is it still up to it whether it bothers with it? I would like the answer to that question.
The second question we had—if we recall our little debate on this last week—was on the concept of transparency. The great reason why this is a racket is of course that the average consumer/borrower who is not an expert in this field does not know until he has signed up what he is signing up for. Am I right in assuming that this amendment will make sure that the one thing that would happen as a result of this—do not let us worry for the moment about bankruptcy and all that for these firms—is that consumers will definitely know what they are letting themselves in for? Certainly my attempt to look up at least one site on this showed that you do not get to what you are letting yourself in for until you are virtually locked in. Am I right that this amendment is both transparent in general and also transparent with regard to what you have let yourself in for?
I do not say this in a negative way in terms of saying we do not want this; this is a tremendous achievement. I am looking for a bit of enlightenment to make sure that I understand what it means.