My Lords, I thank my noble friends Lord Knight and Lord Whitty for the questions they raised and for their support. The public service issue is really interesting. It is no secret that now that universities have realised that it will affect them, one or two are getting a little jumpy. That shows what a very good Bill we have here. There is an interesting thing between those students who would pay a fee—the word in the Bill is “consideration”—and those who would not, where the latter would not be in as good a position as regards their rights. We will come back to this when we move an amendment on higher education. It might be useful at that stage—I give a bit of notice—to tease out some of those things. There was a lot of interest in this from colleagues around the House, many of them chancellors of universities, who I think have already been in touch with the Minister. Certainly, those of us interested in consumer rights are very happy that it will cover this, but I know that some clarity will be needed.
Working backwards, I am very sorry about the comment on regulators. As someone who chaired one of the consumer panels, was vice-chair of another panel and sat on another, it was not the same as being embedded in and a member of the regulator. Partly, you do not get things until they are more or less in the public domain, by which time of course decision-making is a long way down its route. Actually, it is in getting questions asked at the beginning, and the beginning of the formulation of policy and decision, where we want to embed a real consumer voice.
5.14 pm