All I can say is that the consultation will be published shortly. I confirmed that the implementation date for the directive is 2015. The noble Baroness anticipates what I was going to say at the end, which I will say now. I assure your Lordships that our implementation plans for the Bill, which we discussed on Monday, will also advise businesses of their forthcoming responsibilities under the ADR regulations. Similarly, information to consumers will be available in one place—to meet the point that we will be joined up.
If I may elaborate, our response will explain how we intend to make ADR widely available and accessible for consumer disputes and our plans for competent authorities to monitor the provision of ADR. I hope that noble Lords will understand that I cannot set out the full detail of the Government’s response before publication. We consulted on whether a consumer complaint helpdesk would be useful to help consumers and business to access ADR, which was a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Drake.
We will publish our intentions in our consultation response document. Once we have published our response, we will work with partner bodies to prepare for implementation. We will then publish draft regulations to transpose the ADR directive by spring 2015.
I would not want to affect the ongoing work to implement the ADR directive in regulations by amending the Bill. The noble Baroness, Lady Howe, said that her amendments would achieve consistency and simplification. However, the ADR directive contains many provisions, several of which are linked. That is why we feel that it is far better and more straightforward for businesses to implement the ADR directive in one package. Our consultation response document will set out our plans for doing so. We certainly want to avoid any unhelpful confusion that could be caused by implementing the directive partly through the Bill and partly through regulation.
The noble Baroness, Lady Drake, raised an important point about the need for the implementation of the ADR directive to complement consumer rights. I am glad to say that the changes that we will make to implement the ADR directive will complement the reforms in the Bill and improve access to and awareness of the ADR. We want to take the same comprehensive approach to ensure that we deliver the best possible ADR framework. Our plans for implementation allow us to do so. I therefore ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.