Consumer Rights Bill

Debate between Lord Blencathra and Lord Harris of Haringey

Monday 27th October 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Blencathra]

My Lords, I support my noble friend in this amendment, in particular subsection (4). I am glad that my noble friend used the word “obligations” because if I had looked at this earlier I would have wanted to move an amendment calling it “Display of information about rights and obligations”, because that can have a greater impact on the consumer. I support the amendment because I concluded, in the last few years that I was a Member of Parliament in another place, that some of the worst cases coming to my constituency surgeries were people who had been stitched up by the big utility companies and the mobile phone operators. In many cases there were only oral contracts. When they had a concern, they would get on to the helpline. As innocent constituents, they kept making the mistake of thinking that if they phoned and got through to the special helpline the problem would be solved. Of course, the people on the special helpline would say, “Yes, that’s fine, we’ll take your point into consideration and it will be amended”—but still the threatening letters and the bailiff’s letters came because, very often, the people running the helpline had no power to alter the computer accounts for the company.

A written statement is absolutely essential if there is an oral contract. As the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, pointed out that we seem to go by personal example. I shall cite one example of why I think the mobile telephone companies in particular are among the worst offenders. Some years ago, I took out a contract for a mobile phone. It was clear when I had the paperwork the first time that, if I cancelled the contract within two years, I would pay a heavy penalty. I was content with that and went blithely on my way. As it transpired, exactly 23 months later, I got a telephone call, “Hello Dave, it’s your mobile phone operator here—do you realise, Dave, that you can get a better tariff from us? We’ve looked at what you pay and you can reduce the Bill by about £2 a month, and you’ll get a free telephone upgrade”. I thought that was jolly good and asked what the catch was. “Oh, no catch, Dave, that’s it”. So I agreed to it. A few months later, when I fell out with that telephone company because I did not like the service and wanted to cancel, they said, “You can’t cancel, your contract’s only three months old”. I said, “No it’s not—it’s 27 months old”. “Oh,” they said, “that telephone call you had created a new contract”.

I appreciate that all of you here are commercially savvy and knew that, but in 2009 or 2010, I did not realise that. But then I found more and more constituents with the same problem. They were being sold things over the telephone, particularly electricity contracts from one particular supplier, and they never got the follow-up paperwork. It is absolutely essentially that when any contracts are made or revised orally, the consumer gets a written statement pointing out their rights and obligations. I hope that with changed or improved wording my noble friend the Minister will be able to accept the principle of this amendment.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, I should add that this is not simply about protecting the consumer—poor Dave, or whoever else it might be. It is also about protecting the legitimate businesses that are operating properly, because it makes it more difficult for those trying to pull a fast one on Dave or anybody else, because they will not get away with it. For that reason, to protect the consumer and legitimate businesses, I hope that we get some progress on this amendment.

Serious Crime Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Blencathra and Lord Harris of Haringey

Monday 16th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the excellent, detailed and knowledgeable speech of my noble friend Lady Brinton. When I was Home Office Minister, I dreaded speeches like that when I tried to put through a Bill relating to Home Office matters. We called them Christmas tree Bills because every department wanted to hang its own very important bauble on the tree—to deal with terrorism, children and various other aspects. Inevitably, as a Minister, one had to have a grasp of a huge range of subjects and when the Bill came to your Lordships’ House it brought out all the experts from every section. The other reason why I detested Bills like this is that one had to amend the original Act and one was required to have about five different Acts open on the table in front of one and six fingers on each hand to understand them. The final introductory comment I would make is to say to the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, that she handled nine Home Office Bills in four years. In the final couple of years that I was in the Home Office, in 1996-97, in that frenzy to pass legislation, I think I handled 15 Bills, including Private Members’ Bills. I am not sure whether it did me or the Government any good at the time.

I begin with the proceeds of crime part, which is very important. I am completely supportive of the intention here. I remember talking to policemen. Every single policeman of every rank that I spoke to said that the vital thing that mattered to criminals was cleaning out their money. They factored in going to prison for a few years or even up to 10 years if they had enough money stashed away to live on when they came out. They did not worry about prison. What they really worried about was losing their ill-gotten gains. I would say to colleagues that it is not about the Chancellor making more money, good though that may be, it is about cleaning out criminals and their profits from crime because that acts as a deterrent and a punishment.

Under Clause 10 there is a maximum of 14 years for defaulting on fines of more than £1 million, if the court imposes that maximum penalty, which is then automatically halved or reduced on early release. However, if the money is more than £10 million, the early release provisions do not apply. I admit that sums are not one of my strengths, but it seems that if one had salted away up to £9 million where the maximum 14 years applied and there was early release, and suppose that one was let out after seven or eight years, if the person had invested it reasonably at 7% interest, they would come out to an annual return of about £630,000. That is not bad. I also assume that if the police and enforcement authorities had not been able to track down that initial £9 million, they would not be able to track down the £630,000 per annum—or perhaps the taxman could do it instead. I should be grateful if my noble friend could look at that point and see whether I am almost right. I ask him to revisit the whole area of the figures and the length of prison terms because I do not think that it is adequate.

Clause 36 deals with confiscation orders by magistrates’ courts. Again I suggest that possibly the £10,000 figure may be too low in certain cases. Of course, if the magistrates’ court is attempting to sentence a criminal and feels that its powers are not great enough, it can refer them up to the Crown Court for sentencing. However, I can imagine cases where someone is convicted of burglaries, lower level drugs offences or dealing in stolen goods, where the magistrates may consider that it is not worth while sending it up to the Crown Court for greater sentencing—and the Crown Courts might not like it—but at the same time the only assets those people have may be their BMWs or their cars, which are worth considerably more than £10,000. One needs to look at this clause again to see whether, in certain circumstances, magistrates could have a power to impose penalties greater than £10,000. I understand that at the moment the Metropolitan Police is awash with Ferraris and Porsches that have been impounded because people have not paid their insurance. I am sure that the Metropolitan Police would be quite happy to impound vehicles from drug dealers and others whose vehicles could also add to its resources.

I am totally supportive of Clause 37 on computer misuse, but I am not clear who is capable of understanding it all and prosecuting. Is it the police who prosecute for computer misuse under the 1990 Act? The proposed new Section 3ZA carries a penalty of up to 14 years—or up to life if national security is involved—but the rest of the penalties in Section 3 of the Computer Misuse Act are for up to two or five years. Will my noble friend confirm that those other penalties in Section 3 of the Computer Misuse Act 1990 have also been upgraded to 14 years, or possibly life, in prison?

Parts 5 and 6 of the Bill deal with the protection of children and terrorism. I dislike the term FGM because I do not think it carries the right connotations or expresses the seriousness of this vile, barbaric practice. I recall that for years we talked about people trafficking. It was only when colleagues in this House and in the other place began to talk about modern slavery that we got traction on it—that the rest of us woke up to what it was about. The use of the term modern slavery as opposed to people trafficking really gave more life to that horrible practice. I do not mean to be derogatory here but FGM sounds like a food additive. It is too nice a term. It is vile, evil child torture. I would like those who have spent their lives trying to deal with this to consider whether we should think of using a more vicious terminology which properly describes what it is about.

I conclude my remarks on this business of terrorism, paedophiles and serious crime, because that is the mantra that the Home Office has been using for the past few years to demand better and greater RIPA powers. I have heard that mantra used again in the past few days by the Home Office. It says that unless it has greater powers there will be a data gap in tackling terrorism, paedophiles and serious crime. The noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, is not quite right in saying that nothing has been done on this. I had the privilege a couple of years ago of chairing the Joint Committee on the Draft Communications Data Bill. The committee was made up of noble Lords from this House and Members from the other place. Members of the committee had widely differing views. There were those who wanted the police to get every power under the sun and those who took a view that privacy of the individual was far more important. However, we ended up with a unanimous report and concluded that the draft Bill produced by the Home Office then—which was nicknamed the snoopers’ charter—was far too sweeping and we were rightly critical of most aspects of it. However, we did not simply crucify the Bill, say it was a load of rubbish and leave it at that; we made considered suggestions on how to draft a better Bill. Our overall conclusion was that there was,

“a case for legislation which will provide the law enforcement authorities with some further access to communications data, but that the current draft Bill is too sweeping, and goes further than it need or should. We believe that, with the benefit of fuller consultation with CSPs than has so far taken place, the Government will be able to devise a more proportionate measure than the present draft Bill, which would achieve most of what they really need, would encroach less upon privacy, would be more acceptable to the CSPs, and would cost the taxpayer less”.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, I stand corrected. It was wrong to say that nothing was done. A Bill was produced and a Joint Committee looked at it. Unfortunately, nothing very much has happened since then, which I think makes my point. It sounds as though the noble Lord did all the work for the Home Office and somehow it still has not happened. I suspect that this comes back to my earlier point about dysfunctionality.

[Lord Blencathra]

The noble Lord is getting closer to the possible political reality. To be fair to the Home Office, it studied our report carefully. I and one or two others had the privilege of seeing the revised draft Bill, which took into account everything we had said and delivered about 95% of what our report suggested. Unfortunately, that revised Bill did not find favour with all the members of the coalition and therefore it has not emerged in that form.

I say to my noble friend the Minister that if in the next Parliament the Government produce a Bill largely along the lines of the redraft, I am certain that it will have a chance of getting through both Houses of Parliament. But if they are encouraged from any quarter to go back to the original so-called snoopers’ charter, they will merely tack on more powers to a discredited RIPA. In my opinion, RIPA is no longer fit for purpose. It was designed at a time when we had push-button telephones that could hold two or three messages at most, not the modern communications machinery that we have today. If they go back to that old charter, they will face massive opposition in the country and in Parliament, and they do not need to because the blueprint for a better Bill exists.

Finally, I will make a couple of observations that may be slightly more contentious. As we were deliberating on the powers the police needed to look at e-mails and other data in order to capture paedophiles, stories began to emerge of police forces around the country—for example, in Bradford or Leicester—which had ignored complaints over the past 15 years from hundreds of young girls of systematic and habitual rape. The police turned a blind eye to those cases and have only now started prosecuting. I believe that they turned a blind eye because the perpetrators were mainly from the Pakistani community and they did not want to prosecute because of political correctness. Of course the police and security services must have the powers they need to deal with paedophiles on the internet but they must also prosecute hard cases of children being raped and brutalised in reality in this country.

My very final point, which again comes from my experiences on the Bill, is that we discovered that police training was often inadequate to deal with the amount of communications data available. The executive from Twitter told us that she would often get a request from the police saying, “Give me everything you have on Blencathra’s tweeting”, when the answer was, “Look on the net yourself”. We do not need a special order for that. It is out there in the public domain, and they were not fully aware of that. There is a range of things that our modern iPhones and other Samsung-type devices have and the police need to get up to speed on the information that is currently available on the world wide web before seeking some draconian powers to look at a few hundred million e-mails each year.

With those little caveats and pieces of advice to my noble friend on how to take forward serious crime measures and a new data communications Bill, I warmly welcome the Bill.