Consumer Rights Bill

Debate between Anne Main and Stella Creasy

Tuesday 13th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Stella Creasy]

We have had an interesting debate. I acknowledge that there is interest in this issue, as well as experience and expertise, on both sides of the House, which has been reflected in most of the speeches. I pay particular tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) who, for all of us, is a touchstone on issues involving the consumer credit market.

I put on the record my support for the work of the hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) on the credit union movement. However, I must say that I brook no argument from him when Government Members have had three chances—not one, not two, but three chances, or an almost biblical opportunity—to deal with payday lending and the cost of credit, but voted against it.

In 140 characters, the hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main), like Shelley’s grandmother, shed much heat but not a lot of light on what Government Members will do about the issues that are to come. Our new clauses are about the new forms of legal loan sharking and the new nightmares experienced by many of our constituents. The hon. Lady is making a tapping noise. Is that her calculating the amount of money people have to pay out to the debt management and logbook loan companies?

[Mrs Main]

The hon. Lady is doing herself a disservice. We are not point scoring. Many Government Members have concerns about debt. The tapping noise I was making refers to the fact that she seems unable to listen to comments from Government Members, and just tweets her own self-promotion endlessly.

[Stella Creasy]

The hon. Lady may be horrified about letting the public know what she and Government Members have been saying, but we are not. Government Members may be confident in their commitment to the idea that they are somehow tackling the cost of living, but when it comes to opportunities to make progress on such things as logbook loans or debt management fees, they have nothing to say and they should rightly be held to account not just in the House, but online. She would do well to reflect on such matters.

I want to move on to what hon. Members have mentioned in the debate, but may I tell my hon. Friend the Member for East Lothian (Fiona O’Donnell) that I consider us to be master and apprentice in our dress today? She pointed out that the Government seem to have a problem with the doors when it comes to voting the right way on consumer credit matters.

Let me pay tribute to the Minister and the members of the Sharkstoppers campaign. To hear a Minister in this Government talking about the action that they will take on payday lending is a tribute to the work of all those campaigners across the country. I want to give her the benefit of the doubt when she says that this Government want to make payday lenders pay their fair share. She was extremely honest about the fact that she has no idea how much money payday lenders will contribute to the cost of providing debt advice. We want to return to the issue in the Lords once we get that information, but we are happy to wait for the Minister to come back with the sums, to show that payday lenders are paying their fair share. We are pleased that the Financial Conduct Authority is looking at the outrageous practice of charging people in debt with debt management fees, and we will wait to see what the Government bring forward, and consider these issues again in the Lords in terms of whether fees should be abolished outright.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stella Creasy]

The new clauses and amendments are designed to make progress on issues of precisely that kind. One of the problems of ticket touting is trying to identify who is responsible for the crime that is taking place. Making the seller of the ticket give the details of that ticket will enable us to identify its provenance and who is selling it. We shall then be able to crack down on the people involved, whether it involves the rugby world cup or another event, so that organisations will not have their tickets sold on when they do not wish that to happen. It will give that kind of flexibility, and it reflects the all-party group work done on some of these issues. I hope there will be support from across the House.

[Mrs Main]

rose—

[Stella Creasy]

If the hon. Lady wants to suggest some tweets, I will happily take them, but I am sure everyone will appreciate it if we can move on to the question of letting fees.

[Mrs Main]

I am sorry that the hon. Lady is being so waspish; I am just seeking a bit of clarification. She mentioned the crime of ticket touting. Is she proposing to make it a crime, or does she believe it is a crime?

[Stella Creasy]

There are already criminal elements to what we are talking about. What we are talking about in this legislation is the information provided to a consumer—this is, after all, a consumer rights Bill—that could help address the problems caused by ticket touting, and it reflects the work being done by the all-party group. [Interruption.] Well, this is a separate issue about what we can do for consumers, and with that in mind I want to move on to new clause 22 because, as I have said, there is a lucky dip element to the amendments before us and it is about letting fees.

I pay tribute to the work done in this area by my colleague my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East. I see first hand in my constituency the problems caused by increasingly difficult access to housing and affordable housing, particularly within the private rented sector. We know that 9 million people in England are living in rented homes and they are paying on average over £1,000 more a year in rent than they did in 2010. That is why we have to reform the private rented sector. The costs that people are facing are unsustainable. I have families in my constituency spending between 60% and 70% of their monthly income on rent alone. They cannot make ends meet.

There is a wider debate to be had about the length of tenancies and the levels of rent, but this amendment, like the previous amendments I was speaking to, relates to consumer legislation, and in particular the specific issue of fees and whether they should be charged.

Consumer Rights Bill

Debate between Anne Main and Stella Creasy

Tuesday 28th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Stella Creasy]

I am conscious of time and I would like to make a little progress, but I will let the hon. Lady intervene if she is quick.

[Mrs Main]

It slightly confuses the matter if the hon. Lady tries to bring secondary ticketing within the scope of the Bill. That is more about how touts get hold of tickets, rather than what people choose to pay should they buy a ticket from a secondary ticketing market. It would confuse the Bill’s good intentions if she tried to drag all that in.

[Stella Creasy]

The hon. Lady does not quite recognise that a contract involves both a vendor and a purchaser, and the terms of a contract can apply to both. That is the point of the amendments we will table. On secondary ticketing, for example—the Secretary of State should be interested in this as the Member for Twickenham—legislating to make the rugby world cup an event of national significance would require tickets to be resold through recognised ticket vendors at face value, as happened in 2012. It would then be illegal to sell tickets through any other means. Indeed, viagogo already has tickets on sale for that event at huge mark-ups, and tickets do not even go on sale until the autumn. Some 2.3 million tickets will be sold at between £7 and £15 for children, with a top price of £700 for adults. That means that touts will be able to cash in on those prices on top of that, and damage the affordable ticketing policy of the organisers. Surely it cannot be right for us not to include in the Bill a way of ensuring that if someone wants to sell a ticket at a certain price, they can.