My Lords, I have to start my remarks with the words, “Oh dear”. We have reached a disappointing spot in the advance of the protection of consumers, with the part of the Bill to which the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, referred leaving out, as it does, all the references that he wants to add about consumer protection. One reason is that the CMA and the consumer body are very different from what exists today. There is direct access for consumers to the Office of Fair Trading. If that is not enough and can be improved, why not improve it? The same applies to all the competition clauses throughout the Bill. They may be good—some of them probably are—but I do not see that what exists today warranted such a total and revolutionary change in the way that these matters have been discussed, enacted and valued by those consumers, consumer organisations and others who have benefitted from it in the past.
The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, spoke in particular about the phrase “promoting competition”. I am not quite sure how you promote competition—I have no idea—but what is important is to ensure that there is protection against anti-competitive practices that are directly harmful to the interests of consumers. It is as simple as that. I do not see the proposed amorphous body getting to the kernel of the problems that will affect consumers.
The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, rightly said that the trading standards departments will need a great deal more financial support than they are likely to get. They are respected by consumers and others alike. They have dealt successfully over the years and most people have thought of them as among our most trustworthy and available resources. They are being given a much more important role, which I am content about, and I am confident that they will, given the right resources, be able to carry it out. They have had the experience and, as long as they are given the opportunity to digest the role, they will know what they will be required to do in borderline cases.
Once again I come to the point about access for consumers. This will now go because the Office of Fair Trading is going. Apparently, collections will be made from the experiences of citizens advice bureaux and of the trading standards officers themselves. They will receive information about the big consumer concerns that will confront them but, once again, there is no clear process in the Bill—and certainly not the funding—for the citizens advice bureaux, which are all staffed by voluntary and diverse workers, to go to their top echelons. They will have to collate the information and carry out research on it, which they have not yet had to do to such an extent, and then pass it on to the trading standards officers. They will discuss it with them and then decide whether the matter—it could be a competition matter—should go to whichever of the respective bodies. That will be their responsibility.
As I pointed out in Grand Committee—I apologise for raising this matter again—the funding of the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux, which was
announced by the noble Lord, Lord Marland, at Second Reading, was going to be £1.7 million. I was able to look up the figures for 1979, when we were closing some citizens advice bureaux. The National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux said that it needed more money, and I gave another £1.7 million then, making the amount up to £3 million altogether. In today’s money, goodness knows what that would be. Since Grand Committee, I have looked even further and have found that in 1981, while the process was still going on, I increased funding to £4 million for the citizens advice bureaux alone. If it cannot do its job properly because it has not got enough money, then the whole chain of information going down through trading standards, to the CMA, to whoever will be receiving it, will not have strong enough links. I hope that my noble friend will be able to tell us something encouraging about that.
I do not propose to say anything about the Monopolies Commission replacement part of the CMA at this stage. That may be more appropriate later.