My Lords, I am speaking today to the amendment to the Consumer Rights Bill in the name of the Bishop of Truro. He sends his deep regrets that he cannot be in his place
today. I extend my and his thanks to the noble Lords, Lord Mitchell and Lord Alton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, for supporting the amendment in Committee. Peers from all sides of the House spoke in favour of the amendment.
In recent years, we have seen a massive increase in the use of payday loans and therefore in the advertising of them. As we know, in Birmingham and other parts of the country, access to affordable credit is extremely difficult for vulnerable families. In September this year, the Children’s Society published a report on the effect of advertising and telemarketing of payday loans. The report had a number of findings on which noble Lords spoke in Committee and I would like to remind your Lordships of four of those.
More than half of children aged 10 to 17 are seeing payday loan advertisements “often” or “all the time”. A third of teenagers would describe payday loan adverts as fun, tempting or exciting. These teenagers are significantly more likely than their counterparts to say that they would consider taking out a payday loan in the future. Three-quarters of parents back a ban on payday loan advertisements before the watershed. Parents aged 18 to 24 are twice as likely as those aged 25 to 34 to have taken out a payday loan. This amendment proposes the watershed as the sensible cut-off point to protect children best. The 9 pm watershed is a well known, well rehearsed and established tool for parents, who are able to have some control over how much television their children watch. Even if in the real world we are all aware that some children will watch television after this point, banning adverts of this kind before the watershed would prevent them seeing the majority of them.
In the government response to the amendment in Committee, the noble Baroness the Minister described how new rules on payday loans advertisements with regard to signposting and risk warnings would be significant enough to protect vulnerable families. The rules are welcome but regrettably, warnings, although important in protecting adults, do not always protect children from detrimental impact on their long-term attitudes to debt and money management. In that debate, the noble Baroness also outlined the recent changes to the curriculum which made financial education a statutory requirement. That is another welcome change to help combat the inappropriate marketing practices of lenders. Now we need to make sure that that work is not being undone when children go home from school and sit in front of the television.
The amendment has gained support both in the House and outside. Major organisations have added their names in support of this change. Organisations such as StepChange, the Money Advice Trust and MoneySavingExpert have all seen the point of using the watershed cut-off. I hope that the Government will respect that widespread support and take the opportunity not only to give your Lordships a firm commitment to look at the issues in depth but to consider changing the regulations on scheduling of payday loan adverts.