My Lords, as has been clearly stated, the proposed new clause addresses what my noble friend Lady Drake says is the extraordinary absence from the Bill of any mention of the EU directive on ADR, the absence of any right to go to independent redress, and indeed the absence of any reference to what has just been mentioned—the competent authority to be set up to approve such schemes according to the EU directive.
The amendment would also add a very welcome missing element from the directive: the right for a consumer to have their complaint heard by such an alternative dispute scheme. Without such a scheme, we wonder what will happen to consumers when they cannot agree on the remedies set out in the Bill. Elsewhere, the Government have said, “They should go to Citizens Advice”, which I hope will be well funded to do all this. However, even if they do so, Citizens Advice cannot adjudicate; nor can it enforce any remedy. As has been said, the only alternative then is for the consumer to go to court for damages, and the reality is that that will not happen. At the moment, legal and financial clients, social housing tenants and patients can all go to an ombudsman; there are statutory ombudsmen for all those. The Government are in due course going to implement the directive, so they agree with us that consumers should have access to ombudsmen across the whole market.
The BIS Select Committee asked the Government why on earth the EU directive had not been included in the Bill. Which? regretted that it was omitted, and
the OFT, as it was at the time, asked for the incorporation of the directive into the Bill. Two really quite good things are happening. I know that I am not allowed to say that the Government are doing good things—but they are with the Bill. Some people would not like me to say that the EU was doing good things, but I am happy to say that it is with its directive. So we have two good initiatives coming along, but would you know it? They are being handled in different ways with different legislative processes and on different timing.
It is not as if this is a difficult issue. The British Retail Consortium and the Federation of Small Businesses welcome the alternative dispute approach to dealing with problems, rather than going to court. As Martin Lewis commented when he was giving oral evidence to the Public Bill Committee, unless the Bill and the directive are joined up,
“you are going to have a wonderful Bill that gives people many new rights”—
he went further than I would about the Bill—
“that they are never going to be able to use”,—[Official Report, Commons, Consumer Rights Bill Committee, 11/2/14; col. 55.]
because they will be without redress. The Government have assured us that the new directive will be implemented by spring. However, we still await their response to the submissions that BIS got to its consultation, which I think finished five months ago. The clock may be slow in this Room today, but it is ticking. We may have no chance to debate BIS’s response to the consultation because it may not be dealt with in primary legislation, which also seems a shame.
Most importantly, the two items are two sides of the same coin, so we hope very much that the noble Baroness the Minister will accept the amendment today. Whether or not the exact words please her we understand, but if she could accept that there should be reference to and embedding of the ADR in the Bill, that would be to the credit of the Government. We will then try to seek credit for it, but we will give it to the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, instead. It would be a wise Government who did this and took the full credit for it.