Financial Guidance and Claims Bill [HL]

Baroness Meacher Excerpts

Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 13th September 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, I am pleased to bring forward this amendment, and in doing so I express thanks to all the organisations that have offered me advice and guidance on preparing it. Perhaps, in the light of the Bill we are discussing, I should not have used either term, advice or guidance, but just thanked them for the briefing in the spirit in which it was offered. Not least among those organisations was Macmillan Cancer Support, which demonstrates brilliantly how a charity can operate in 21st-century Britain not only by offering superb palliative care, nursing services and the like, as we would expect, but by fundamentally understanding just how important financial services are and how people are affected when they get a cancer diagnosis.

I am pleased to speak to Amendment 70 not least because we have gone over the ground of the SFGB at Second Reading—which takes me back to a previous life, when SFGB stood for the Swimming Federation of Great Britain. Bearing in mind my previous life, it seems only appropriate that I should dive straight in.

The purpose of Amendment 70 is to create a duty of care on claims management services to act for all customers, not least those who find themselves in a vulnerable situation. My desire in Committee was to bring forward an amendment that would impose a duty of care across the whole financial services sector but, sadly, that was deemed to be outside the scope of the Bill, so this amendment is far more limited and relates just to claims management services. However, I hope that, within that, noble Lords can see the potential and the need for wider application and an amendment at a future date that will address duty of care across the whole financial services sector, not least when we look at where financial services came from.

At one stage there was truly a sense of a relationship between customer and provider. In many ways we need to get back to that, not least because there is so much that financial institutions can do to assist people. Indeed, many financial institutions and claims management services may well do things to assist people, particularly when they find themselves in a vulnerable situation—not least if they have had that most awful news of a cancer diagnosis. But when we look at the evidence, only one in nine people who receive a cancer diagnosis reveals it to whichever financial institution they are dealing with. The reasons for that are pretty clear. But if that were not enough evidence, survey data illustrate that of the small number who did declare to their financial provider, 23% said that they had a wholly unsatisfactory experience. We can deduce from that that there is a really low level of declaration but, even within that small number, almost one-quarter have a negative experience after declaring.

I believe that Amendment 70 will go some way, in the specific claims management arena, to demonstrating the need for such an amendment and the benefit it can have on claims management services. There is a lot more for the Financial Conduct Authority to consider in terms of this duty and, indeed, the general duty of care. We know that the FCA is considering putting out a consultation paper on a duty of care across financial services, but we also know that it has stated that there will be no change at least until 2019. Consultation could last until 2019, then there would be a proposal, then pre-legislative scrutiny and then the process of implementation. I think we can all agree that there has been more than enough delay already in making sure that vulnerable consumers get the level of service that they should expect to receive from claims management services and the entire financial services industry.

I ask the Minister to support Amendment 70. Will he also say something about the Government’s view on placing a general duty of care on the FCA across the whole financial services sector? This would bring benefits not only to consumers but to financial institutions and the nation. Amendment 70 and a general duty would both in their own way clearly help to deliver a financial services sector and a nation that work for everybody. I beg to move.

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 70 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Holmes. As he indicated, what we really need is a wider power, but it is outside the scope of this Bill. I want to challenge that, at least for the moment. I refer to Clause 2(3), which makes it clear that:

“The single financial guidance body may do anything that is incidental or conducive to the exercise of its functions”.


This is an attempt to build on the powers that that subsection suggests.

The fact is that the prevention of debt is even more important than helping people once they fall into debt. In terms of preventing debts arising, the duty of care is particularly important to people with serious health conditions and disabilities, for whom financial problems can quickly become overwhelming, as the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, has indicated. I want to concentrate on the particular plight of sick and disabled people. For example, 400,000 people in the UK with cancer struggle to pay their household bills because of their diagnosis. Banks and building societies have a vital role to play in helping such people; it makes a huge difference if a bank or building society offers flexibility in mortgage and other payments or interest freezes on credit cards and other loans. Although the Bill highlights the importance of early help, there is a growing consensus that greater leadership is needed from the Government to make it clear that providing this support to vulnerable customers must be a priority for financial institutions.