My Lords, I, too, support this amendment. As the noble Lord just said, it does not apply just to old people like me but to many people who do not have access to the internet, or they or their carers are unable to use it, as other noble Lords have said.
I should point out one thing one has to watch if one is doing things electronically—that is, how do you file things? It is fine getting a bill on your mobile phone, but what do you do with it subsequently? How do you keep a record of it? There are many ways of doing it but it is not just a question of paying it directly through bank transfer, you have to keep a record and feel comfortable that it is secure. Security is becoming more and more difficult so these regulated monopolies, as many of them are, need to be aware of the importance of people getting paper bills if that is what they want.
When you read a meter you can put the reading on a postcard, if you want, or you can fill it in online. One of these days, I think that meters will be read down the
phone line or the electricity line with no human input. They might get it right. If they do not, heaven help us. A friend bought a house from me and six months later he got a bill for £10,000 for water because there had been a leak. That had probably been happening since the war, about 50 years before, and it had soaked away into London gravel. You can imagine how you end up with a bill like that electronically but it was all quite difficult.
The other issue is paying by cheque. I tried to pay my EDF bill by direct debit this weekend and failed completely. My bill did not say how you could do direct debit, although there was lots of detailed stuff on the back of the paper bill. So I thought I would phone them up. I hung on for half an hour for a nice, friendly voice but got nothing at all, so in the end I went on the website. I found that EDF has a new website and you could do it on the web. But how many other people will think, “What do you do?”. You get a second reminder every two months. You put a cheque in the post or whatever you do but you cannot even talk to them down the phone. A friend of mine in the Isles of Scilly has four BT lines because they have four houses that they let out in the summer. This weekend, she told me she spent a total of six hours on the phone to BT. They have not had two of the lines working for a month. They tried dealing with this electronically and down the phone. Today they spoke to five different people at BT and still do not know if it is working. Before the utilities start charging people, they should get the service right. This is a very important amendment for both the paper/electronic debate and paying things by cheque. I strongly support it.