I am sorry that noble Lords are hearing a lot from me today, but there will be other days that will be much more pleasant for them. Amendment 8 again stands in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Stevenson. It is to ensure that when consumers decide to buy something they do so in the full knowledge of the total costs of what they are signing up to. I cannot be the only one who has been attracted by a bargain offer, only to find that there are additional fees that have not been signalled upfront. We get four or five pages into an online purchase, only to discover, usually just at the point we get the credit card out to pay, that there is an additional £10 delivery charge, a fee for installation, or the ever popular booking fee on theatre or concert tickets. The amendment is to ensure that the total cost is signalled upfront.
We know, because it has been debated in the other place, that the Government’s arguments against this amendment are, first, that the consumer contracts regulations 2013 require traders to make consumers fully aware of the costs before a sale is made—though, of course, they do not—and secondly that requiring such information to be contained in all public communications would be enormously burdensome to businesses, because every time the price changed they would have to alter their communications. However, that underestimates the extent to which prices are now online. Most of these sorts of things are online purchases. We are not talking about the old days, when I was younger, of having to pulp umpteen advertising leaflets every time a change was made. The bad practice we are looking at here is mostly online.
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The Minister in the Commons also cited research done by the National Consumer Council from 2007—a time when the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, was not in office but when I was in the Commons—which showed that consumers do not take in too much information. However, in our view and in the view of the NCC at the time, the full price of a purchase is not too much information and is of such significance that it really cannot be classed as “too much information”. We also know that that is excluded from being assessed for fairness elsewhere in the legislation, so it is even more important that the price is known in full and up front not just before the purchase is actually made—the moment when you click—but when you are contemplating and getting very close to saying, “That’s the one I want”. This amendment is really to make sure that the total costs are clearly signalled at the stage when the consumer is entering into that process of purchase. I beg to move.