Consumer Rights Bill

Debate between Lord Borwick and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Wednesday 15th October 2014 Grand Committee

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

We think that the noble Lord has brought an interesting issue to the Committee; I do not know whether the Government find it such. However, we are unconvinced that this needs to be detailed in the Bill as suggested. The Bill simply states that repair means making the goods conform to the contract, which means making them deliver what was promised. I do not think that it says “at one go”. Obviously, we look forward to hearing what the Minister will say on that.

However, the Committee will not be surprised that our worry is that the danger of the new wording is to allow a trader to make more than one repair and then claim that it was simply different stages of the same job, whereas actually they may have tried this, that and then something else—and want another go if they did not do it at first. I recognise that that is not what the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, is aiming at, but the wording might allow for that. It is exactly to avoid such situations where consumers are fobbed off by a number of unsuccessful repairs before they can move to the next stage that we like the clarity of the Bill and would not want it jeopardised by these amendments, no matter how well-intentioned they might be.

As we are into personal stories, such as my clothes, let us take my new car. Of course, it got a great big problem and I took it back to Nick but rather than opening the bonnet all he did was to put a computer on top of the car, which seemed to tell him what was wrong. I do not know how that worked but 55 minutes later it was completely mended. Cars, which I no longer understand even if I once did, may be more complex but one does not want to have to keep going back to the trader. We worry that the amendment would lose the clarity that there is in the Bill.

[Lord Borwick (Con)]

My Lords, Clauses 23 and 24 as they stand seem to state that a consumer can have their money back if one repair does not fix the problem. That is reasonable for a product such as a television but it may cause problems where the fault is less obvious. Some products are incredibly complex; just as complex as consumers.

While we are telling personal histories, from my time in the London taxi industry I know that the clause would cause huge problems for car repairs. We had a customer bring in a taxi for repairs to his rear axle. My mechanics could not find anything wrong with it, and they therefore stupidly said that they had mended any problem that existed. However, the customer brought the car back, insisting that he was hearing dreadful noises from the back of the car. It turned out that the customer had spanners stored in the boot of his taxi that were slipping around. He removed them to bring the car to the garage, which is why no fault could be found. He then put the items back into the boot and so began hearing strange noises again as things slipped around, so he brought the taxi back in. Would the clause as drafted mean that we would have had to refund him because we did not fix the problem the first time around? You can have two problems—one masking the other—and you may need a process, as suggested in the amendment, to resolve some problems.