Financial Services (Banking Reform) Bill

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

Wednesday 27th November 2013 Lords Chamber

I turn now to the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, which, like the power to fine, is aimed at bringing about better outcomes for consumers who engage with the CMC sector. The noble Baroness has raised a very important issue of enabling the Office for Legal Complaints—OLC—to act as an important route of redress for consumers who feel that they have been treated unfairly by CMCs. The Government are in full agreement with the noble Baroness that consumers should be able to seek redress through the OLC. Although her intention is clear in tabling the amendment, in its current form it does not fully bring about the changes that she seeks to implement. However, as the Government support the spirit of the noble Baroness’s amendment we will give further consideration on how best to put it into effect. With that assurance, I hope that she will feel able to withdraw it.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, first, I welcome the government amendments within this group. As the Minister said, this is undoubtedly a useful addition to the regulator’s toolkit. However, although I am of course delighted that the spirit of my amendment is acknowledged, we cannot wait any longer for this. The Legal Services Act 2007 envisaged that complaints against claims management firms would be able to go to the legal services ombudsman. That was widely welcomed by Which? and everybody else. We know that in August last year the Government made the formal announcement that complaints by consumers against claims management firms would be able to go to the legal services ombudsman. That was agreed on both sides of the House and was warmly welcomed by us.

However, that was in August last year. Since then we keep hearing, “Don’t worry about it, don’t worry about it”. I have raised this issue in other Bills and there was an exchange of correspondence between me and the noble Lord, Lord McNally, about the importance of getting this done. Nothing happened—the last letter was in November. I should explain briefly to the House that the absolute desire is that these complaints should go to the legal services ombudsman. The Legal Services Act only enables that procedure to take money from barristers and not from claims management firms to pay for the ombudsman. Of course, because the regulator is the MoJ, that is a form of taxation so the only thing stopping this happening is the technicality of how we fund it.

That was accepted by the Government but they did not seem to come up with a vehicle to do this. I offered to do it for them via a Private Member’s Bill. That was prepared with the help of Which?, particularly Mark McLaren who did a lot of work on drafting that Private Member’s Bill, which we then offered as the vehicle to solve this. Nothing happened to that, although it was not declined until 12 November when the Government laid these amendments—which we were not expecting. The amendments are very welcome but do not solve the problem for two reasons: first, they do not allow consumers to get redress; and secondly, they therefore preclude the intelligence that would come from complaints. Frankly, people complain against something only if they have a chance of compensation.

Although the Government say that they will look at this, that is what they have said continuously since August last year. That being the case, we will want to put this to the House, either today or at Third Reading. I had hoped that the Government would say today that they would bring this matter back by Third Reading. Perhaps they could clarify whether that will be at some time in the future—which basically means another couple of years—or whether they are willing to do it by Third Reading.