Consumer Rights Bill

Debate between Baroness Neville-Rolfe and Lord Tebbit

Wednesday 26th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

My Lords, we are living in a digital age, and many of us welcome the convenience of receiving and settling bills online. I have had an interesting discussion with my noble friend Lady Oppenheim-Barnes about the many issues she raises, and I certainly understand that many people want a paper bill. As she says, not all people can manage online, and we empathise with them. As the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth of Breckland, said, some people have no relatives to help. I also take the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, about the poor and the vulnerable. However, all utility companies will give a paper bill on request. Bills can also be settled by cheque, which was another point made in the amendment, although I accept that certain payment types may attract discounts.

I was glad to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Clarke of Hampstead, about the importance of the universal postal service and that he found our exchange of correspondence helpful. Perhaps I may write to him again on the point that he raised. Some noble Lords referred to identity. Although paper bills are useful for the purpose of establishing identity, that is not their primary function. More reliable forms of identity are available, such as passports and driving licences. Going forward, as regards the transition, the Government Digital Service is leading work on the development of the ID assurance programme which will enable people to prove their identity and access government services in a digital world. That is an important bit of long-term work.

I have mentioned the availability of paper bills and I should summarise the current position in each of the utility areas. In water, companies do not make a charge for paper bills and offer a choice of payment methods including cheques. In telecoms, blind or visually impaired consumers who have requested bills in an accessible format, such as large print and Braille, and consumers on social tariffs, such as BT Basic, are not charged for paper bills. Ofcom requires that if there are charges for paper bills they must be set out in a clear, comprehensive and easily accessible manner and providers must publish clear and up-to-date information on these charges. In energy, paper bills are available and companies are already required under the terms of their licence to ensure that any differences in charges to consumers between different payment methods reflect the cost to the supplier.

I do not want to play party politics but we have reduced energy bills, and of course the energy companies have been referred to the Competition and Markets Authority. I am sure that we will all be very interested to see the progress of its study. As to other communications providers such as broadband, while paper bills might not always be provided, the main suppliers such as BT and Sky make them available and all companies must make a basic level of itemised billing available to all subscribers on request, either at no cost or for a reasonable fee. It is worth noting that the nature of these services is, of course, online.

In my very good meetings with my noble friend Lady Oppenheim-Barnes on various amendments to the Bill we discussed a number of the issues that are before the House in this amendment. I understand my noble friend’s analysis that paper transactions can sometimes cost relatively little, and I can agree that it is sometimes costly for a utility to sort out a problem caused by queries, for example a failure to pay electronic bills. However, these are not many cases compared with the total volume of bills. The reality is that utility companies save money by communicating electronically with consumers. That is a cost saving which is then passed back to consumers. As the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, said so elegantly, that is occurring at a time when the cost of living is a really important issue. According to the Digital Efficiency Report, transacting online with the government will deliver more than £1.1 billion in savings because the average cost of a digital transaction is 20 times lower than on the phone, 30 times lower than a postal transaction and 50 times lower than face-to-face contact.

[Lord Tebbit]

I wonder if I could make a helpful suggestion. Perhaps the Minister could suggest to the utility companies that, before they start to charge customers for issuing paper bills, they will guarantee that they will stop pestering customers with letters to “The Occupier” offering their wares. After all, it must be enormously expensive to do that. So they could save some money there, and that would help cover the costs of what my noble friend would like.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

I thank my noble friend for his intervention and indeed for that suggestion. The whole business of costs, benefits and so on in this changing world is a very important one and the obvious answers are not always the right ones. I was trying to say that the savings are considerable and, with direct debit in particular, there are savings on both sides. In fact, 50% of those in fuel poverty use direct debit to spread the costs—so there are advantages. I do not want to discourage firms from innovating to protect and empower consumers in different ways. I do not want firms to get the message from this House that we are the enemies of progress. We have to be careful about that.