Of course not. The point I am making is that we should have the freedom to choose. I am one of those who for contrary and bloody-minded reasons goes to the Post Office in the Central Lobby to collect £145-worth of postal orders to pay my TV licence. I do that because I resent the fact that the Post Office is losing that business. It costs me an extra £10 or £12, but over the years I have despaired as all Governments have accidentally or deliberately driven business away from the Post Office and have moved more and more things on to direct debit. What would we have said 30 years if a Government had said, “We’re going to drive all those old age pensioners into getting their money in their bank accounts and they won’t be able to get it in cash”. We would have been appalled, but we are rapidly heading that way. All Governments are enthusiastically persuading pensioners to do that.
7.30 pm
When it comes to direct debit, if we were looking at legislation 20 years ago which said that by 2014 nearly everyone will be on standing orders and direct debits for paying their gas bill therefore we must encourage everyone to do it and must have disincentives for those who pay by cheque, we would have been appalled, but our attitude has changed so much over the years that we take it for granted that most things will now be direct debits, standing orders or the people I meet in
Starbucks every morning paying with a mobile phone in one hand with another mobile phone to their ear in the other, which I consider to be dashed rude.
It is not just old or middle-aged people. My noble friend Lady Oppenheim-Barnes said that there are about 7 million people unable to use direct debits or standing orders, whatever age they may be. There is a fundamental point of principle in this, whatever age one is. We are entitled to see our bills on paper before they take the money from our bank account. To give a personal example, when I came back to London on 7 January, I found a BT bill on the mat dated 22 December demanding payment by 5 January, I think. It arrived only on 6 January in any case. I paid attention to it for the first time. I always sent BT a cheque, but I had never bothered to check the bill. I found there was a late penalty charge on it and a processing charge. I assumed that after 10 days BT would charge me a late penalty. I went back and looked at my other bills. They all had a late penalty charge. Even if I had paid the bill within seven days, five days, three days or 24 hours, I got a late penalty because I was not paying by direct debit. There was an arrogant assumption that if you do not pay by direct debit you should be penalised with a late penalty charge. Then there was a processing charge of about £7.50.