Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Lord Beecham Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd March 2011 Lords Chamber

These two amendments—the switch from the abolition of Consumer Focus to a transfer of its functions—are in line with what we have been told is the Government’s position and what we are told are the powers that the Government will need. It is counterproductive to the Government’s own objective to retain it where it is.

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, like many Members of your Lordships’ House, I am an unqualified admirer of the work of citizens advice bureaux. I have quite a long personal association with it. I helped to found a branch of the CAB in a neighbouring borough in Wallsend on Tyneside in the early 1970s. From time to time, as a practising solicitor, I used to attend advice sessions in the bureau and have worked closely with a bureau in Newcastle for many years.

The proposal that is embodied in the Bill, however, is effectively the transfer of a strategic function currently carried out at national level by the national consumer body——as we have heard—to the CAB. This does not seem to be a sensible procedure so far as the bureau is concerned, particularly in present circumstances. At the moment, people up and down the country are facing extreme difficulties as a result of the financial situation in which local authorities find themselves. In Newcastle’s case, for example, the grant to the CAB has been reduced by 20 per cent. At the same time, although there is apparently a temporary reprieve in government support for financial advice, there is a real problem about maintaining nine debt advisers, who are currently unemployed—indeed, they were placed on notice until a reprieve was given and the £25 million national funding was extended for another year. There is, however, still considerable doubt about this. Equally, we are in the middle of a recession at the moment. Unemployment is rising. Problems of all kinds flow from that and present themselves at the bureau.

My final consideration is that we are likely to see significant changes in the legal aid and advice system, which again will throw greater pressure on local bureaux. It is in dealing with people’s individual difficulties and complaints that the work of the bureau is at its best and where it will need, I suspect, to be concentrated very significantly over the next few years against the very difficult background. The bureau is almost a franchise, in the sense that there is a national body but each bureau is independent. I frankly do not see how bureaux such as those in the north-east and elsewhere, facing the difficulties that they are, will be able to contribute significantly to the much more strategic consumer representational role that is envisaged under the transfer of responsibilities that will flow from the measures in the Bill. I urge that the matter be reviewed again. There is a great danger of undue responsibility being passed to an organisation that will simply not be capable of delivering but which will continue to provide a service to the very many people who require it now and will continue to require it in the future.

It is frankly the wrong choice for the bureau to have accepted to undertake the Government’s offer to do the kind of work that they would like the bureau to do nationally. It is a diversion from its real responsibility. For that reason alone—quite apart from the very cogent arguments advanced by my noble friends and shared in different parts of the House—I am very reluctant to see the Bill go through in its proposed form.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My Lords, we support the amendment of my noble friend Lady Hayter. I thank all the other noble Lords—noble friends in particular—who have spoken on this topic. I declare an interest. I was, like many noble Lords in the Chamber today, involved at some point with the National Consumer Council. I was also a member of the advisory committee and served briefly under the noble Lord, Lord Whitty. I enjoyed the experience very much. I also declare an interest as the chair of the Foundation for Credit Counselling, which has a relationship with the citizens advice bureau in the area of debt management and advice, to which my noble friend Lord Beecham referred.

At the end of the excellent debate on 11 January, the Minister said that she would reflect on the debate. Anyone reading the debate would have realised that its quality and the extensive references that were made from all round the House to the work of the NCC and Consumer Focus and to the worries that people had about the transfer had borne in on the Minister. I have read her words and took from them that she would not only reflect very hard on what she had heard during that debate but that she would talk to the responsible Minister in the other place, who, she assured us, would also be following the debate very closely. We are owed the outcome of those discussions and debates and I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say when she responds.

In this debate, we have again been reminded that the points that seem to come from the discussion around the Bill as it affects consumer areas is that this is about a transfer of functions and not about an abolition of those functions, which must continue. A good society requires proper concern for all consumers—vulnerable as well as ordinary. There are a vast range of statutory and other functions that need to be carried out. The thinking that needs to go into that appears to be only partially developed. We talk about a loss of capacity across the piece because the current functions will not necessarily continue.

The loss of advocacy that has been referred to is not just for ordinary consumers but for the vulnerable, as has the loss of accountability both to Parliament and to the wider society that is in statute in the current provisions but might not continue to be as we move towards a solution that involves charities. We will lose the ability perhaps to gain access to information held in private companies and corporations. This will be a serious loss to Citizens Advice should it take up these responsibilities, as it will not have those powers. However, if it does have these powers, it will be a very strange body indeed, with its ability to interrogate and hold to account those who have customarily been outside its remit.

These and other points seem to suggest—in the words of others who spoke earlier in this debate—that there is quite a high hurdle for the Government to overcome to convince us and the public more generally that what they are doing is in the best interests of the consumers they seek to serve. Although we accept, as my noble friend Lord Whitty admitted, that rationalisation was necessary in what was becoming a very cluttered landscape, the Bill does not provide the solution. We wish to hear how the Government think it does. As was evidenced in the contributions to this debate and in Committee, the loss of the NCC or Consumer Focus will be felt right across the piece.

As my noble friend Lord Borrie reminded us, and my noble friend Lord Whitty echoed, we still do not really know what will happen. Where is the consultation document that was promised in the spring? Spring, as those of you who have been able to go outside today, has arrived. Indeed it almost feels like early summer, yet we still do not have that piece of paper. We need to have an engaged consultative process because we need to know where these functions are going. This is important. It is difficult to see what is happening. The document, when we see it, should give us some information, at the very least, about where the money will go that will support the functions that we have been talking about this evening. What will happen to the staff? How will we be assured that we will still have appropriate functions available to us? It is not really appropriate to act first and consult later but, as someone said, better late than never. It seems to me that an unanswerable case has been put forward this evening for a change in the way in which the consumer function will be dealt with. I look forward to hearing from the Minster.