My Lords, I, too, welcome the new Minister. I know what she will go through for a while, sitting there, so she has my sympathy and I wish her great success with the Bill.
The line,
“where angels fear to tread”
is a good one for me to come in on. A long time ago, when I chaired the National Consumer Council, as it was called then, this very subject came up. Why could we not do it? Small businesses, et cetera, were referred to, but at the end of the day it was difficult to identify a small business and a consumer. A consumer, as we did then call them, looked for six particular things, and if we found that they were missing out on two, we could take their case for them. Those were: access to what it was they wanted; choice to make sure that they had it; information on it; safety; equity; and redress—very much for the individual consumer, and not for the citizen. All the rules that were made for the consumers were made for somebody consuming. We could never quite get to the point whereby we felt that we could move over into taking forward these very small businesses. It was to the small business organisations that we spoke, to see if they could look after this side of business. It is fortunate indeed for the Minister that her next Bill is the small business Bill. She might want to take this forward there.
There is only one question I would like to ask, not of the Minister, but of Her Majesty’s Opposition. They were in government for a long time; why did they not do it then?
3.45 pm