Financial Services Bill

Baroness Coussins Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 24th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Coussins (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I support Amendment 11 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, and I remind the House of my interest as an ambassador and former president of the Money Advice Trust.

Although Clause 34 may be seen as a relatively small part of the Bill, we have had a great deal of discussion on it during the passage of the Bill—a sign of how important SDRPs are. Throughout the process, I and other noble Lords have been keen to secure clarity over the timetable for introducing SDRPs.

I thank the Minister for his positive and constructive engagement on this issue and for meeting me and the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, to discuss the timings for the introduction of SDRPs. Like the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, I am also grateful to the Minister for his letter yesterday, which provided further clarity on this timetable.

In Committee, the Government did not accept my amendment to include a specific date by which SDRPs should be implemented. I was pleased nevertheless to hear the Minister confirm that the complex and detailed process to prepare for implementation seemed to be entirely compatible with the end date I was proposing—albeit pretty tightly.

So I hope the Minister will be able to confirm that on the record this evening, by specifying the various stages of the Treasury’s intended timetable for laying the regulations and reassuring the House that SDRPs are genuinely intended to have a commencement date before May 2024. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

My Lords, I join in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, on his amendments in Committee and again here on Report. He has clearly found a mechanism for engaging very fruitfully with the Government, and therefore we all have the benefit of a letter that lays out some of the important and significant elements of statutory debt repayment plans; for that, I am grateful.

I join with the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, in being rather perturbed—I think the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, was as well—that the implementation date is 2024. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, said that it was towards the end of 2024. I advise the Government not then to use terms such as “at pace”, which they use extensively in the Financial Services Bill—usually to argue that there is no time for a statutory instrument to be approved by Parliament, which takes a matter of weeks.

I am rather troubled and it suggests that the Government might want to think of some kind of stopgap to deal with the very significant number of people who will find themselves with debt problems as we come to the end of furlough. People will find that they have been moved into permanent redundancy and that other jobs are hard to obtain, and a lot of young people coming out of university courses will not find the usual opportunities.

We are going to go through a very rough period where quite a number of people will find themselves loaded down with private debt, not because they have behaved inappropriately in any way but because the way events have hit them. They will need some additional support and rescue, rather than just the schemes that are in place. The SDRPs would almost certainly have been ideal for many of them. So I hope the Government will look at the events that are going to force a lot of people into a very difficult position.

Amendment 12, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, would do what I think Amendment 55 in Committee was intended to do. This time I think it would do it. It is designed to enhance opportunities for people who have signed up to SDRPs to pay off their debts early at a discount. It will need some structure and engagement from social enterprise groups and perhaps even the Government providing some measure of support, because seed funding will be needed to get a scheme such as this off the ground. I hope that the Government will think some of that through. It seems the kind of scheme that would enable people to get back into the financial mainstream more quickly, which is surely something we want to achieve. Again, the need for that will be more acute because of the extraordinary number of people who will find themselves in debt as a consequence of Covid. I do not think it actually requires legislation, so I am glad that the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, will choose not to move it.

These two amendments highlight the need for some serious thinking on how the Government can best support people who will come out of Covid and find themselves in fairly difficult circumstances. When we work with people who have debt problems, a fundamental issue usually has to be dealt with that has led them into that corner. Sometimes it is to do with lifestyle choices, but very often it might be mental health issues or family breakdown. The group who will find themselves in problems because of the impact of Covid do not fall into that category. Therefore, with a proper helping hand at the right time, they could quickly and easily be returned to a position where they are no longer financially excluded or in financial difficulties. That is absolutely necessary if we are to see the recovery that we all hope for. I hope the Government will look at these amendments and continue to build on them, rather than consider them concluded because Report has passed.