Consumer Rights Bill

Debate between Baroness Oppenheim-Barnes and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Wednesday 19th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, this is a different sort of amendment, which stands in the names of my noble friend Lord Stevenson and myself, and which seeks to protect the consumer who has had something done in their house and a faulty installation has occurred—not simply a faulty installation such as a table being put in the wrong way round, but where there is a risk to the person concerned. Instead of having to have the installers back in to try to put right whatever they have done wrong, it would give the person concerned the right to move to a refund without having to accept a repair first.

The rest of the Bill is very good where it says that there should be only one repair, and that, if that does not work, you can get the money back. However, there are circumstances in which we think they should not have to have a repair done first; they are in their own home and something has happened which makes them feel at risk. Examples of this sort of thing are where a trader has tried to install a dishwasher but floods the whole kitchen, a bathroom floods the kitchen below—which I have seen happen quite recently—or an electrician is sent to install a new shower, and manages to wire the shower to the electric light bulb rather than to the mains. Again, sadly, that is not just a figment of my imagination. A gas engineer may make a complete mess of putting in a new boiler and cause a gas leak, leaving the consumer thinking, “I don’t want these people back in my house—they don’t know what they’re doing. I want them out before they do any more damage, and I want my money back so that I can get someone in who’s a little more trustworthy”. However, as the Bill stands at the moment, the trader may say, “No; I’ve got the right to come in and sort it out before I give you any money back”.

Our amendment would provide clarity for both parties in those circumstances, allowing customers to say: “I no longer trust you because I feel at risk—I want my money back”. I know from Committee that the Government have some sympathy with our point and with our concerns about this, but they argued that in such cases—which I think the Minister understood—the consumer retains the option to seek damages in court. However, that is not what the Bill should require. Taking a trader to court is very difficult for a consumer; they have to instigate legal action, which itself is complicated, expensive and uncertain. More than that, it takes a long time, and if you want a hot shower the next day you probably do not want to wait until your case comes to court before you can get someone in to put the hot water in the right place.

A survey undertaken by Which? showed that nearly half of consumers thought that you should not have to give the trader the chance to fix the problem in those circumstances. We know that the aim of the Bill is to provide clarity on consumer rights, both to the trader and to the consumer, so surely any of these sorts of disputes should be kept out of court and dealt with in this way. If a kitchen fitter says, “I don’t need to give you a refund now; I have the right to come back and repair this”, we do not want that conversation to end with, “I’ll see you in court”. We want the Bill to make it clear that the consumer can get a refund at that stage.

I hope that the Bill will mostly avoid taking the legal route, but it is a shame that it seems the Government felt that that would have to happen in these circumstances. We therefore hope that the Government, having thought about this amendment again, and given that it is only about residential premises, will support it. I beg to move.

[Baroness Oppenheim-Barnes (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness missed one sort of case. The plumbers, electricians or whoever they are make a charge for coming in the first place, and when they get there, say, “This will need a part that we’ve got to order”. You have already paid for the visit, they demand the money for the parts before they go any further, and they sometimes never turn up again. The noble Baroness can add that to the list.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

If I have understood the noble Baroness, Lady Oppenheim-Barnes, correctly, it was probably the noble Viscount who, on 13 June, signed into law those rights. I congratulate him on that and on writing into law that all these rights should be made available. That is very welcome and I thank him on behalf of consumers that he does want them in law, although, at the moment, I think he is saying that he does not. Anyway, we congratulate him on what he did on 13 June.

The noble Baroness, Lady Oppenheim-Barnes, is absolutely right that this amendment is crucial to whether the Bill will work. It will not work if consumers do not know their rights. The little placard that is often next to the till which says, “This does not affect your statutory rights” is completely meaningless. We know from work by BIS that two-thirds of consumers do not know that if a major appliance breaks down 18 months after purchase they still have a right to have it repaired or replaced, even though they did not purchase an extended warranty. So we know that people do not know their existing rights.

The difference is that we agree with Citizens Advice that these rights can be set out briefly and simply. You do not even need to say, “Under the Consumer Rights Act”, although it is very nice to give credit to those who put it through. You can simply say, “You have 30 days to return this item if it is faulty”. That does not seem very difficult. I think people can understand it. I think it is all right if it is on the bottom of their till receipt rather than by the side of it. These things can be done quite easily.

There is a political difference here; it is a difference within the implementation group. The consumer groups want this information clearly written and available so that consumers keep on seeing it. Businesses do not want it. The Government are saying, “Let’s listen to business. They don’t want to do it”. I think if we listen to consumers, they would want to do it. The ongoing champion of consumers is right. Let us get this in the Bill and let consumers know what their rights are.

[Baroness Oppenheim-Barnes]

I thank my noble friend for his intervention. I knew that he laid those regulations under the EU directive in your Lordships’ House, so I hoped that he might be here and I am delighted that he is. My noble friends and the noble Lords opposite will realise that this is a great disappointment to me. I can see that the Government are not of the same mind. The objections which have been put forward are a bit punitive to what is a very simple—

Consumer Rights Bill

Debate between Baroness Oppenheim-Barnes and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Monday 27th October 2014 Grand Committee

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

I think we will just call the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, a brave man. I would not take that lot on.

The noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, is right. We had a brief canter around this area last week on his amendments. I just want to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Oppenheim-Barnes, for focusing the Government’s attention on this. As I think the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, said, this is a Consumer Rights Bill and this is a very basic right: to be able to have a choice about whether to have your bills on paper and to pay by cheque—without paying for the privilege.

We need to keep at the centre of our debates those customers who struggle to get paper bills, and easily accessible and understandable information. The figure of 7 million has been mentioned of people who do not have internet access. We have a lot of people who find that even reading is quite difficult, let alone trying to do it on a small handheld telephone. But as we mentioned last week, there are other people as well, not just those who do not have access to printers, but who, for example, need a domestic bill to prove their identity, as my noble friend Lord Harris of Haringey has said. But there are also carers and cared-for people, as the noble Baroness, Lady Maddock, has highlighted. There are also divorcing couples, which is the time when you have to start splitting bills; the self-employed who need to make claims; people who work away or are in hospital for a long time, who may not have access to their normal internet and can quickly lose track of what is happening.

I will take two minutes to tell you the very sad story of a friend of mine who was virtually battered to death. She was in hospital for a very long period after this. But the only way she was able to help the police find the culprit was when she woke up in hospital. The usual thing happened, her post came in. Her bills came in and she was able to see that a credit card had been used. The police could then go and see where that money had come from, and find a photograph of the culprit. I am glad to say that the attempted murderer is now well locked away. But there are all sorts of reasons why people feel secure when they are able to see that sort of data on paper.

That may be an extreme example, but people want to check on what bills have come; they want to check on who paid them; flat sharers want to be able to divvy them up; and people who have got any problems, particularly with paying bills, as we mentioned last time, where they have to work out which bill to pay when in order to make sure that nothing is cut off. They literally do this with paper. I sometimes think that those who run the utilities just do not understand how people live. Maybe they should spend a day with my noble friend Lord Clarke of Hampstead sitting in a post office and hearing about how people do things; they would learn a little more.

Finally, some companies take particular advantage of their poorer customers. On the wider issue of price, we know that energy suppliers target their lowest price at the big users and actually penalise their smaller customers for not using very much, and then go on to make it even worse by charging those very customers if they want their bills on paper.

It is great that some people can do all of this electronically, but they are likely to be younger, and more savvy. I wonder whether the utilities really have to make life difficult for the rest of us—who want paper bills and the use of cheques—to encourage others to take up the electronic option. People who choose to do it electronically do not do it to save £6; they do it because that fits in with their way of life. I doubt very much they need a £6 bribe, if you like, to go electronically. That may have been the case earlier on, but now it is not the reason. Rather it is an excuse for the utilities to get a bit of money out of people who want to pay by cheque rather than, any longer, acting as an incentive. I hope that the Minister hears the strength of feeling. She may recall when we had the debate in the Chamber that this was the feeling across the House, and there will be a lot of support. It would be advisable for the Government to take the initiative and do this rather than have the sort of defeats that we have seen tonight in the Chamber.

[Baroness Oppenheim-Barnes]

My Lords, I would like to make a point in the limited time remaining, which is that the companies that continue to give paper bills and continue to give the sort of services we have asked for are not losing anything, because of all the extra money they have earned from the vast majority of people who are paying online. So there is no financial loss to any of these companies, and particularly to BT.

Consumer Rights Bill

Debate between Baroness Oppenheim-Barnes and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Wednesday 15th October 2014 Grand Committee

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, as has been clearly stated, the proposed new clause addresses what my noble friend Lady Drake says is the extraordinary absence from the Bill of any mention of the EU directive on ADR, the absence of any right to go to independent redress, and indeed the absence of any reference to what has just been mentioned—the competent authority to be set up to approve such schemes according to the EU directive.

The amendment would also add a very welcome missing element from the directive: the right for a consumer to have their complaint heard by such an alternative dispute scheme. Without such a scheme, we wonder what will happen to consumers when they cannot agree on the remedies set out in the Bill. Elsewhere, the Government have said, “They should go to Citizens Advice”, which I hope will be well funded to do all this. However, even if they do so, Citizens Advice cannot adjudicate; nor can it enforce any remedy. As has been said, the only alternative then is for the consumer to go to court for damages, and the reality is that that will not happen. At the moment, legal and financial clients, social housing tenants and patients can all go to an ombudsman; there are statutory ombudsmen for all those. The Government are in due course going to implement the directive, so they agree with us that consumers should have access to ombudsmen across the whole market.

The BIS Select Committee asked the Government why on earth the EU directive had not been included in the Bill. Which? regretted that it was omitted, and the OFT, as it was at the time, asked for the incorporation of the directive into the Bill. Two really quite good things are happening. I know that I am not allowed to say that the Government are doing good things—but they are with the Bill. Some people would not like me to say that the EU was doing good things, but I am happy to say that it is with its directive. So we have two good initiatives coming along, but would you know it? They are being handled in different ways with different legislative processes and on different timing.

It is not as if this is a difficult issue. The British Retail Consortium and the Federation of Small Businesses welcome the alternative dispute approach to dealing with problems, rather than going to court. As Martin Lewis commented when he was giving oral evidence to the Public Bill Committee, unless the Bill and the directive are joined up,

“you are going to have a wonderful Bill that gives people many new rights”—

he went further than I would about the Bill—

“that they are never going to be able to use”,—[Official Report, Commons, Consumer Rights Bill Committee, 11/2/14; col. 55.]

because they will be without redress. The Government have assured us that the new directive will be implemented by spring. However, we still await their response to the submissions that BIS got to its consultation, which I think finished five months ago. The clock may be slow in this Room today, but it is ticking. We may have no chance to debate BIS’s response to the consultation because it may not be dealt with in primary legislation, which also seems a shame.

Most importantly, the two items are two sides of the same coin, so we hope very much that the noble Baroness the Minister will accept the amendment today. Whether or not the exact words please her we understand, but if she could accept that there should be reference to and embedding of the ADR in the Bill, that would be to the credit of the Government. We will then try to seek credit for it, but we will give it to the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, instead. It would be a wise Government who did this and took the full credit for it.

[Baroness Oppenheim-Barnes (Con)]

Could I just highlight one of the main points? The noble Baroness mentioned the AER. One of the directives that she has mentioned as dealing with the way in which payday loan information is given by the providers is that it is still given in the old form, with the AER only, with no written amount. The noble Baroness might recall that we had an amendment to the Financial Services Act, during which we were told that the Government at that time—this is some time ago—were busily discussing that directive and would be wanting to implement it as soon as possible. It seems to me that the request from the EU about AER was a very small, perfectly justified and overdue one, and it is particularly disappointing if the Bill becomes law before that amendment has been made by the Government.

Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill

Debate between Baroness Oppenheim-Barnes and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Wednesday 12th December 2012 Grand Committee

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

I am certainly not. I am suggesting that you need a person on the board with experience—I will come to that—but, on its own, this is not a sufficient condition for making the board work.

Let me now comment on what the Minister has said. If he expects the partnership to carry out the kind of role that consumer panels have carried out, he does not understand what consumer panels have done. A partnership that comes together once a month, once a quarter—I do not know how often it is going to meet; I think it has met only twice so far—simply would not be able to bring the right level of detail to the work of the CMA. Some of the matters the Minister mentioned are exactly those outside functions which will not be carried out by the CMA but by others.

I think I have touched on the problem of consultation. When it goes outside the family to Which? or Citizens Advice, it is put out in a pristine and finished way rather than at an earlier stage. It does not solve the problem.

We will need to think about this matter and possibly come back to it because it is vital to make this new authority work well.

[Baroness Oppenheim-Barnes]

Before the noble Baroness withdraws her amendment perhaps I may ask her a question arising from the statement made in advance by the Citizens Advice service, which is going to be the home of information, advice, education and advocacy on general consumer matters under the Regulated Industries Unit. This is one of the best pieces of news in the Bill because it will bring together the technical expertise, Consumer Focus and information gathered by the CABs and a unit to represent consumer interests in the regulated sectors—gas services, electrical services, postal services and so on.

This is very important because the regulatory authorities do not always appear to be sympathetic in areas in which they should be. It is not very gratifying or appeasing for consumers when one of the regulated bodies receives a multimillion pound fine for being in breach of their responsibilities because the consumers who have suffered do not receive a single penny of that. All they hear about is this very big sum and they do not know whether it has made any difference to the practices. Also, it has been a very long-standing argument of mine—and I hope that it will be solved by this—that Citizens Advice and Consumer Focus should be able to take up individual matters. That is important because the big regulators will not take up matters such as how the bill is presented. Very often bills are presented in a most confusing and frightening way. EDF sends out bills that look, at first, very frightening to the ordinary eye and certainly to an aged person—particularly when they see £1,000 appearing in big letters on the front, although it is not what they will in fact have to pay. It is an assumption of what they might have to pay if they used a certain amount of electricity, or whatever. This is an important provision and I hope that the noble Baroness will take account of that before she withdraws the amendment.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

I thank the noble Baroness for those comments. The Regulated Industries Unit will be extraordinarily important but, of course, it will cover only post and energy, which is very restrictive. It will not be allowed a role in the sort of areas that the CMA will be dealing with. She raised an interesting question about where the individual goes to. One of the important things about a consumer panel is that it can gather the intelligence, be that from an ombudsman or any other form of individual complaints, and even go into the annual reports of companies to see how they have handled complaints. The panel can then use the intelligence to come to the CMA and perhaps say, “Look, we have done that homework. We know where this market is not working”. My fear is that Citizens Advice, with the best will in the world, will simply be unable to do that. We will have people coming through the door with a lot of debt problems, or who are homeless, or who have just been sacked by their employer, suffered water leaks or whatever. That ability to take intelligence, translate it into policy and feed that into the regulator will be beyond that organisation. That is why we will have to come back to this. However, for the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Baroness Oppenheim-Barnes and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Monday 6th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, I would like briefly to follow up the wise words of the noble Baroness, Lady Oppenheim-Barnes, when she asked the question: how important is this? It seems to me that the time taken for debate is a reflection of how important we think this issue is—although I dare say she and I would have perhaps agreed a generation or two ago on behalf of the suffragettes, had our predecessors moved more quickly to give them the vote. It seems to me that, on this issue, we need a thorough discussion about systems of voting and a consideration of how important this is with regard, for example, to elected police commissioners. I am unsure exactly what—

[Baroness Oppenheim-Barnes]

I was not making that point at all. The point I was making was not about how the case for or against the referendum was being rushed; it was simply about the date of the decision.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

I apologise if I have misunderstood, but it seemed to me that the word “important” was of great significance to this issue, which will have long-term consequences for the way the whole of our political system develops—probably much greater than, for example, elected police commissioners. As I was going to say, however, I would be interested to know what system they are to be elected under—maybe an additional system to add to the ones we have got.

The importance of this issue is greater than considerations of cost—not only because it is not a once-in-a-generation but a once-in-three-generations decision, but also because of the unintended consequences. The consequences might be desirable or they might be undesirable: how we as political parties—which is most of us in the House, although obviously not all— do our politics; how we organise; how we campaign; how we select candidates. All those sorts of issues have yet to be thought through. I was very against my own party’s decision—I am very sorry; I see that I have upset the Front Bench in front of me—to bring in a closed voting system for the European elections. I thought they were wrong, I told them they were wrong, I threatened that I would not vote Labour if they brought that system in. But the women who had called for the vote for women for so long would never forgive me if I did not vote, and I knew that my hand would drop off if I did not vote Labour, so eventually I did. But I thought that the system was wrong, and I maintain it was wrong. What is important, however, is how that has made a difference to how we do our politics. So even if I was wrong and the system chosen was the perfect one, it had consequences for the way that we campaign, for the way that we select and, indeed, for the power of the parties. I think that it gave far too much power to parties in the selection of candidates. We had not had time on that occasion to think through and talk about it. I believe that my party was wrong in doing it at that stage.

However, before we cast our votes in the referendum, I believe that we need a debate on how these different systems have worked. How have the Welsh and Scottish systems worked? How has it worked in Northern Ireland, where there has been a local government system for a long time? How is the European system working? We need that debate and therefore it seems to me important to give us time before we come to this decision. We need time to debate the matter in this House—although we are privileged and that is a luxury—but even more important is to make time for the electorate to consider this important question before we ask it to make such an important decision.