Voter Registration

Debate between Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Watts

Wednesday 25th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I understand that, technically, it is not an offence if you do not register. It is an offence if you do not reply to some correspondence from the electoral registration officer. I am sorry to disappoint my noble friend, but I will give him exactly the same answer that he received from my noble friend at the Dispatch Box a few weeks ago. We have no plans to introduce compulsory registration.

[Lord Watts (Lab)]

My Lords, could we do away with all this nonsense by introducing ID cards? Would that not resolve this problem and many others?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

Again, I reply in a similar vein. The Government have no plans to introduce ID cards.

High-Cost Credit and Debt Management

Debate between Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Watts

Monday 10th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The answer to the last part of the noble Lord’s question is in relation to what happened with the introduction of the right to buy, back in the 1980s. There was some mis-selling by mortgage brokers, targeting council house tenants who had the benefit of a huge discount. They were not really interested in the creditworthiness of those people as mortgage borrowers and that is why that measure was introduced. On cold calling, the Government will introduce legislation through the Digital Economy Bill which will place, via the Information Commissioner, a statutory obligation on a code for cold calling. In this year’s Budget, additional provision was made to protect particularly vulnerable people from cold calling.

[Lord Watts (Lab)]

My Lords, should not the Government take action now to put a finite figure on what credit organisations can charge? Normally, the poorest people in the community pay the highest rates of interest.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The noble Lord is quite right. That is why we introduced a cap of 0.8% on payday loans. That means if you borrow £100 for a day, the maximum amount that can be paid in interest is 80p.

Pension Protection Fund

Debate between Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Watts

Tuesday 13th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

Like the noble Lord, I saw the comment in today’s business news. It is worth remembering that at the beginning of the previous Parliament we asked the noble Lord, Lord Hutton, to conduct an independent review of public sector pensions. He recommended that defined benefit should remain the core principle of public sector pension schemes. That is the case with the Bank of England, as with the rest of the Civil Service. He also recommended that it should be based on a career average, rather than final salary, and made other recommendations about the appropriate contribution. It is important to distinguish this question from QE. QE has a number of impacts on all defined benefits but, in addition to increasing the deficit, one could argue that it has increased asset values, which has helped the pension funds, and has had a benign effect on the UK economy, from which the pension funds also benefit.

[Lord Watts (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that it is a national scandal that the Pension Protection Fund may have to bail out the BHS scheme, given the way that this company has been run?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I think anybody who has read the Select Committee report on BHS, particularly an employee of BHS, will feel anger at the history of mismanagement of that company. As the noble Lord will know, there are a number of inquiries going on into that collapse: the Pensions Regulator is conducting an inquiry, the Serious Fraud Office is conducting an inquiry, and so is the Insolvency Service. So I think it makes sense to await the outcomes of those inquiries to see whether any fresh legislation is necessary to deal with any gaps there may be at the moment.