Protection of Freedoms Bill

Lord Crickhowell Excerpts

Tuesday 24th April 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Crawley]

My Lords, perhaps I may make a brief and slightly croaky intervention—I go one up on my noble friend Lord Borrie—as president of the Trading Standards Institute. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, for engaging so closely with trading standards over the past number of months since first introducing his amendment in February. Indeed, trading standards officers would rather have been included in his amendment than not and therefore I do not decry them for their enthusiasm. However, after much discussion with partners in the intervening months, I should inform the noble Lord that, on behalf of trading standards, I shall not be able to follow him into the Lobby on his amendment.

My reasons are twofold. First, following on from the point made by my noble friend Lord Borrie, the provision made to include trading standards in the list of exceptions does not give enough scope to ensure consumer protection from rogue traders, money launderers and scammers of all types across all sectors. In difficult economic times—and we certainly live in difficult economic times—consumers are more and more vulnerable to these crooks and opportunists. Therefore, the legislation we bring forward to protect consumers must be very carefully enacted and leave no gaps in that protection.

Secondly, Motion A1 allows for an exemption only if provided for by the Secretary of State through regulation. Trading standards officers are extremely concerned that if the Motion is carried they would lose their existing powers of entry—they have been protecting us, as consumers, for over 100 years—until such time as they may be reinstated by statutory instrument. That uncertainty is not in the best interests of today’s vulnerable consumers.

[Lord Crickhowell]

My Lords, I had not intended to take part in this debate but one matter does strike me. In the eight years in which I was a Minister in the Administration of my noble friend Lady Thatcher, whenever a Minister said that something would take a particular period of time, she used to say, “Well, just think what was achieved in time of war during that kind of timescale”. We have been told that this review will take two years. I do not understand why the Minister does not simply say to the Home Office, “You have got to do it in a year”. Why will it take two years to carry out a review? If we were in a time of war, it would be dealt with much more quickly.

I put to the Minister exactly the retort of my noble friend Lady Thatcher. Set a timescale that is reasonable and achievable and, if the review is completed in the next year, there would be an opportunity for any necessary legislative change to take place within the present Parliament. As it is, I feel that we will get beyond 2015 and nothing will have been done.