Financial Services Bill

Debate between Lord Bishop of Guildford and Lord Peston

Wednesday 5th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Guildford]

My Lords, those of you who were present for prayers earlier this afternoon will have perhaps noted the irony with which this Prelate quoted from Psalm 15, which speaks about taking money upon usury. In rabbinic and Jewish interpretation that is interpreted as “not unreasonable” usury.

I have to express my gratitude to the Government and the Minister for this excellent amendment. I do so on behalf of the Bench that I sit upon and especially on behalf of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham, who has had unfortunately to go home for urgent diocesan business, otherwise he would have been making some of the comments that I have been making. I will not go into the detail but I will make one final comment—on the way that your Lordships’ House conducts its business when we are at our best. This seems to me to be a very good example of that. We had an amendment and then rational discussion in debate at various levels—Cross-Bench, opposition, government—and then we had an excellent amendment. For that I thank the Government and all who have taken part in this important debate.

[Lord Peston]

My Lords, I start by congratulating my noble friend Lord Mitchell and the noble Lord, Lord Sassoon, on a very great achievement. However, as everybody seems to understand the amendment in every way except for me, I have three questions in case I have misunderstood what the noble Lord said.

I read the amendment as saying that it gives the FCA the power to do all the things that we want it to do. However, I was not very clear whether he was then saying that, under its consumer protection mandate, it follows immediately that it must exercise that power. This is our favourite “may” and “must” question. You can give someone power but they may not use it. However, am I right in understanding that this amendment, coupled with the whole of the rest of the remit for the FCA, essentially means that it will now have to go into this field and deal with it in the way suggested, or is it still up to it whether it bothers with it? I would like the answer to that question.

The second question we had—if we recall our little debate on this last week—was on the concept of transparency. The great reason why this is a racket is of course that the average consumer/borrower who is not an expert in this field does not know until he has signed up what he is signing up for. Am I right in assuming that this amendment will make sure that the one thing that would happen as a result of this—do not let us worry for the moment about bankruptcy and all that for these firms—is that consumers will definitely know what they are letting themselves in for? Certainly my attempt to look up at least one site on this showed that you do not get to what you are letting yourself in for until you are virtually locked in. Am I right that this amendment is both transparent in general and also transparent with regard to what you have let yourself in for?

I do not say this in a negative way in terms of saying we do not want this; this is a tremendous achievement. I am looking for a bit of enlightenment to make sure that I understand what it means.