My Lords, the amendment deals with cross-market issues and, I hope helpfully, suggests some flexibility. Other amendments simply insert a clearer reference to the consumer interest. I greatly welcome the reference in this part of the Bill to cross-market cases. Often, consumer or supplier abuse found in one sector is also rife in others. Traditionally, monopolies commission, OFT or Competition Commission references and investigations have tended to be siloed in vertical divisions. There are some horizontal abuses, in particular in relation to what I would call trading practices rather than necessarily market dominance. I suspect that with the growth of digital selling, we will have more consumer detriment arising from techniques which apply across a whole range of sectors.
Amendment 25B is a probing amendment to try to find out how this will work. I am not clear whether the cross-market reference has to designate both the practice and the sector in which it is suspected that it applies,
or whether it just has to designate the practice. That is unclear in the Bill. If it requires reference to the sector as well, then Amendment 25B says, if you have found it in one sector, or two or three sectors, and you are starting an investigation or a reference, you need to provide for that to be extended to others. One frequent market or unfair trading abuse is the misuse of prepayment. That is a traditional one. That can apply in different respects to everything from paying for a ticket to a pop concert to buying a sofa or booking a holiday—there were tragic issues with the Christmas club and Farepak a few years ago—or paying for gym membership. If the service does not transpire or the goods never arrive, it does not really matter which sector the business is in, the practice needs tying down.
I hope that that is what is covered by the cross-market reference. I need confirmation, however, that you do not have to stipulate sector by sector where the suspicion arises. An investigation could start out knowing that there are problems in one sector but not until well into the process identifying them in another.
The other amendments in the group simply re-emphasise the need explicitly to look at competition from the point of view of the long-term detriment of consumers. Schedule 9 again does not once mention consumers. Amendments 25C to 25E would simply write into the key paragraphs of that schedule,
“to the detriment of consumers”,
to make it clear. I beg to move.