UK Parliament / Open data

Consumer Rights Bill

My Lords, I hesitate to intervene. This may be the first time that I have intervened on the Bill, for a variety of reasons. I should declare my interest as chair of the National Trading Standards Board. I am now confused. I thought that I understood what this debate was about, but the Minister has raised the interesting topic of how people can understand what they are entering into. She has talked of the fact that different companies have different business models. That is all very well and good, but it is surely incumbent on them to ensure that those business models are transparent to people who might enter into a contract with them.

As we seem to be hung up about airlines and booking airline tickets, there is a particular issue about price comparison sites. That applies not just to airlines but to other services. The price comparison site will try to identify the headline figure for the cost of a particular service. That is where suppliers who operate a business model which adds in a series of extra charges further down the line can score. People say, “I will go for the cheapest”—the one which seems to be the cheapest—and then discover that they are being hit for all sorts of extra charges. I would be grateful if the Minister could tell us how she feels that the Bill addresses that problem.

Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
756 c255GC 
Session
2014-15
Chamber / Committee
House of Lords Grand Committee
Subjects
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