Consumer Rights Bill

Debate between Lord Berkeley and Baroness Wilcox

Monday 27th October 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, very briefly, I support this amendment. Subsection (2) says:

“It shall be the duty of consumer regulators to promote the rights of consumers”.

I have been looking at the duties of Ofwat, the water regulator. It says that,

“our primary duties are to: … protect the interests of consumers, wherever appropriate by promoting competition … ensure that the companies properly carry out their functions … ensure that the companies can finance their functions”,

and,

“ensure long-term resilience”.

In the case of Thames Water, which is the biggest water utility, the regulator over the past 10 years has allowed the company to reduce its asset base to about a quarter of what it was, so it cannot now finance the tunnel that it wants to built under the Thames—the Thames tideway tunnel—without going into a kind of complex financial structure involving a separate infrastructure provider. The relationship between the infrastructure provider and Thames Water is extremely unclear. Who is liable if something goes wrong? That is also unclear, but the Government have been very nice and given them a guarantee if they run into financial trouble, because the provider is Macquarie Bank—and we would not want it to get into financial trouble, would we?

The extraordinary thing is that the regulator seems to think that this does not need any questioning or that any information should be given to the 12 million customers of Thames Water who are going to have to pay. There is a debate about how much they are going to have to pay a year, but it will be somewhere between £60 and £80 extra. This is a sewage charge, but all the people living in Oxford, Witney, Newbury or anywhere which is part of the group, even though they are not going to benefit from the Thames tideway tunnel, will have to pay. I think the regulator has been asleep on the job.

This amendment should make things better, but Ofwat already has a primary duty to protect the interests of customers, and it is clearly not doing so. Therefore, this amendment, if it is accepted by the Government, should put more pressure on it and some of the other utilities to do what they should do: to look at the needs of the customers, see whether there is an alternative and keep customers informed about what is going on. It is a good amendment and it will be interesting to hear what the Minister says in response.

[Baroness Wilcox]

My Lords, as we know the regulators were set up at very different times and in very different ways. There is not one thing that all the regulators sign up to. They have all been established individually. This comes up again and again, and here it is again: who guards the guards? Who regulates the regulators? Last time round, the great argument was that we must be totally independent because then and only then can we serve the people we are supposed to serve well. I understand that, and I understand regulators wanting to keep their independence, because it is very important. However, the differences between the ways in which the regulators work and live keeps coming up, so I ask the Government: who is guarding the guards?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I, too, support this amendment. As the noble Lord just said, it does not apply just to old people like me but to many people who do not have access to the internet, or they or their carers are unable to use it, as other noble Lords have said.

I should point out one thing one has to watch if one is doing things electronically—that is, how do you file things? It is fine getting a bill on your mobile phone, but what do you do with it subsequently? How do you keep a record of it? There are many ways of doing it but it is not just a question of paying it directly through bank transfer, you have to keep a record and feel comfortable that it is secure. Security is becoming more and more difficult so these regulated monopolies, as many of them are, need to be aware of the importance of people getting paper bills if that is what they want.

When you read a meter you can put the reading on a postcard, if you want, or you can fill it in online. One of these days, I think that meters will be read down the phone line or the electricity line with no human input. They might get it right. If they do not, heaven help us. A friend bought a house from me and six months later he got a bill for £10,000 for water because there had been a leak. That had probably been happening since the war, about 50 years before, and it had soaked away into London gravel. You can imagine how you end up with a bill like that electronically but it was all quite difficult.

The other issue is paying by cheque. I tried to pay my EDF bill by direct debit this weekend and failed completely. My bill did not say how you could do direct debit, although there was lots of detailed stuff on the back of the paper bill. So I thought I would phone them up. I hung on for half an hour for a nice, friendly voice but got nothing at all, so in the end I went on the website. I found that EDF has a new website and you could do it on the web. But how many other people will think, “What do you do?”. You get a second reminder every two months. You put a cheque in the post or whatever you do but you cannot even talk to them down the phone. A friend of mine in the Isles of Scilly has four BT lines because they have four houses that they let out in the summer. This weekend, she told me she spent a total of six hours on the phone to BT. They have not had two of the lines working for a month. They tried dealing with this electronically and down the phone. Today they spoke to five different people at BT and still do not know if it is working. Before the utilities start charging people, they should get the service right. This is a very important amendment for both the paper/electronic debate and paying things by cheque. I strongly support it.

[Baroness Wilcox]

My Lords, the one thing we must not do is sound naïve. For all we would agree with this, and all the reasons we have heard, we should not penalise the energy companies for doing something that cuts the price for a lot of people by using a mechanism that makes things work better. If we need to be able to help a group of people who cannot yet benefit from that mechanism, then we are asking the utilities to subsidise them. I just want to be sure that we realise we are saying that. We should not be saying that we need to penalise utilities for doing what they are doing. Really, we are looking for there to be access or some other way to do this. Many hard-pressed households welcome the opportunity to save money this way, et cetera. I just put that point in.

[Lord Berkeley]

Is the noble Baroness straying into the territory of Animal Farm: four legs good, two legs better—or whichever way it is? Is not everybody equal?

[Baroness Wilcox]

Does the noble Lord mean equal opportunity? No, we are not born equal, that is for sure. Some people are tall, some fat and some short. We are not born equal but we should have equality of opportunity. That is what the noble Lord is arguing for.

Marine Navigation (No. 2) Bill

Debate between Lord Berkeley and Baroness Wilcox

Friday 1st February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wilcox]

My Lords, I concur with the excellent points made by my noble friend. The clause will not reduce the standards required by the competent harbour authorities of applicants for a pilotage exemption certificate. It simply states that deck officers and members of the crew with navigation responsibilities can hold a certificate if—and only if—they meet those standards.

I met the chairman of the Maritime Pilots’ Association, in the company of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, and he assured me that he would work with the Port Marine Safety Code steering group to provide the best advice for competent harbour authorities on the qualifications that they should expect. I welcome that, as I hope that the House will, coming from such an authoritative group with such a fine history. I welcome that support from the UK Maritime Pilots’ Association and I support this clause standing part of the Bill.

[Lord Berkeley]

I am grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in this short debate and to the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, for the very full answers that he gave. Many of them were very helpful, but one thing that was conspicuously missing was that although there was a lot of talk about training, there was not so much about management responsibility. The key to a successful outcome is to ensure that PEC holders have experience of being in a senior management position on a ship.

As an example, many times in the course of this debate and others we have talked about a famous dredging company in the Thames Estuary. I will quote briefly from a letter that I, and perhaps others, have received from a pilot about this. He says that he knows the company and its working pattern well. He writes:

“The Master likes to do dredging at sea and the Chief Officer normally does discharge of aggregate”

—on the quay. He continues:

“They want the Junior Officer to pilot and navigate in between. I asked one of the Captains of this company why the Junior Officer couldn’t do the discharge or the dredging at sea. Both operations he would be qualified for. The answer was because he/she is not trusted in those roles”.

This is from the captain of one of the ships. If he is not trusted to do the discharge at a quay, or to dredge in the sea, it is a bit odd to think that he ought to be capable of having a pilotage exemption certificate to be able to pilot the ship up and around the Thames. We all remember what happened when the “Bowbelle” and the “Marchioness” had a collision.

Apprenticeships: Network Rail

Debate between Lord Berkeley and Baroness Wilcox

Thursday 3rd March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wilcox]

My Lords, I agree with pretty well everything my noble friend has just said. Apprenticeships should provide a pathway into the nursing profession as they always did. The Government are working with professional bodies and have made it clear that they expect apprenticeships to be a line into any professional standards and to be suitable recognised by the relevant professional body.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, the Minister will be aware of the excellent scheme that Network Rail operates in its training and apprenticeships but, bearing in mind that the Government are proposing much longer passenger franchises and that there is also a large number of contractors and suppliers in the industry, will she ensure that the apprenticeship schemes that the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, was talking about can be extended to other parts of the industry?

[Baroness Wilcox]

Yes, my Lords, I can. Already more than 200 forms of apprenticeships are being extended across the country. I am quite sure that the noble Lord, whose knowledge of his industry is so good, will know that we are working very hard to extend exactly what he has asked for.