I thank my noble friend Lady Drake for her help on this. I cannot believe that she has ever fallen for one of these. In a sense, that is the point. It is at the very last moment, and so is technically before the contract but is not in all communications. I have been looking a lot at travel ads, which still use the construction of a price being “from” something, and you go a long way through buying it before you realise that there are some supplements at the end, or that if you want to go from a certain airport the price will change a lot. It is correct that that is all before contract, but it is certainly not happening on all the advertisements.
I am the consumer from hell, I am afraid; every time I see this, I complain. My last complaint to the ASA was before these regulations came in after the noble Lord, Lord Borrie, was looking after it. It was over a travel ad, and at that point the ASA was not
dealing with travel advertisements for some reason. Holidays were still being advertised and at the very last moment some would add to their prices.
Clearly, some of these regulations are very new and it is therefore no good asking how many have yet been prosecuted under them. The other issue is how well consumers know them. One of the good things about the Bill and all the work that is being done on its implementation by BIS and its implementation group is that there is some really careful thought about how consumers will know about them. As with the earlier amendment, the main worry is that if some of the protections are elsewhere they will not be swept up in the advertising, promotion or education around the Bill. That will clearly be the case here, where some of these are covered by the Consumer Protection (Amendment) Regulations 2014. It is a shame that this will not be in the Bill, because we support what the Government are trying to do in putting all the rights in the same place. For the moment, however, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.