My Lords, I will not detain the Committee too long in moving my amendment today. There are a number of other excellent amendments on the Order Paper. I am particular conscious that the next one is in the name of my noble friend Lady Kennedy of Cradley, who also happens to be my wife, so I will be very brief.
We have discussed many times in Grand Committee and your Lordships’ House the issue of payday lenders, and their practices have come under a lot of scrutiny. I am pleased that the Government finally took some action to curb some of the worst excesses, although they did not do that voluntarily; rather, they were forced to react to a wholly unacceptable situation. The most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury, other noble Lords, many Members of the other place and campaigners are to be congratulated on the work they did on this, forcing the Government to finally act.
However, my amendment seeks to deal with a particular problem. On some gambling websites there are adverts from payday lenders, which make it possible that while you are gambling you can log on to a payday lender and borrow more money when you may not be in the best frame of mind to do that. You could have lost money and think, “I can win it back in the next game. All I need is a hundred more pounds, but I’m still two weeks from pay day and I’m already overdrawn at the bank”. In front of you is a little thing flashing in the corner telling you to log on and get a payday loan. My amendment seeks to stop gambling websites from accepting payday lender adverts on their sites—it is as simple as that. That is a real problem. I look forward to hearing the Minister telling the Grand Committee what the Government will do to deal with this issue, which needs to be resolved.
Before I conclude, I should have mentioned in the previous amendment that I have a meeting with the Economic Secretary to the Treasury in a couple of weeks’ time. We all hear reports in the media about all these dreadful practices that financial companies get up to, and the Government keep fining them. That is
very good; the Government fine them hundreds of millions of pounds. All the money goes to what is called the Consolidated Fund—it is tipped in, disappears, and is never seen again. I am trying to persuade the Government to use a small amount of that money to support the credit union sector, debt counselling, money advice, or maybe an advertising campaign to show that there are alternatives to payday lenders. We would need a tiny amount, perhaps £10 million, rather than it disappearing into that fund. I therefore hope that I will get some positive news from the Government in a couple of weeks’ time, and I will bring that back further on. I beg to move.
5.45 pm