Brexit: Consumer Rights Policy
Debate between Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town and Baroness Neville-Rolfe(7 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what discussions they have held with representatives of consumer bodies about the continued protection of consumer rights following the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union.
The Minister of State, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Baroness Neville-Rolfe) (Con)
Ministers and officials frequently meet representatives from a range of consumer bodies to discuss issues of the day, including EU exit, and we will continue to do so. Details of ministerial meetings are published quarterly on the GOV.UK website. The Government see no reason why the UK’s departure from the EU should have significant adverse effects on consumer rights in this country.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
My Lords, we read at the weekend that consumers are already worried about what this will mean for their prices—but there are other rights at risk, such as consumer redress being possible in this country for goods made abroad, victims of accidents in another member state being able to use our courts to pursue insurance claims, air passengers getting compensation for delays and cancellations, and also the many others we have because we are part of a consumer alert system for faulty or dangerous goods. So may I ask the Minister to agree to undertake an audit of EU consumer protections that are at risk after Brexit, and also to meet relevant consumer organisations to see how to reduce the risk of losing those protections?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
My Lords, next week the Secretary of State for BEIS is chairing a round table with representatives from a range of consumer bodies and charities, and academics, to discuss, among other things, the impact of EU exit on consumers. These are exactly the sorts of issues that he will want to look at. Of course, the great repeal Bill, which has already been mentioned, will convert EU consumer law into UK law wherever practical, and we will want to ensure that cross-border enforcement is effective, and that our ADR landscape is preserved. These are important aspects of a consumer framework which is very strong: we should be proud of it in this country.
Waterson Review
Debate between Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town and Baroness Neville-Rolfe(7 years, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Neville-Rolfe
As always, my noble friend makes some powerful points. He will be glad to know that the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport has asked for a round table to be held with the industry on this matter next week, on 30 November, in order to bring together all the interested parties to look at the issue of bots following very useful discussions on the Digital Economy Bill.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
My Lord, the Minister told me in May this year that the response to Waterson would be coming in due course but we are still being given the same answer. Meanwhile, the law, passed in this House and elsewhere, is being flouted. Justin Bieber tickets on sale at £70 can be bought for £1,600, while a £127 rugby ticket is selling at £1,250. None of these people are keeping to the law because they are not giving the information. Given the Government’s very welcome ban on letting agents charging tenants fees, will the Minister take similar action to deal with ticket touts?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
I have already explained that we are looking at the problem of bots, which has delayed the formal response to the report, but of course, we published the report straightaway and action is beginning to be taken. I do not recommend that consumers pay such prices. The report makes it clear that there is also a duty on the part of primary ticket sellers to think about how they can distribute tickets in a sensible way, perhaps by holding ballots or selling to fans. I know the disappointment this can bring—I have seen my own nieces in tears because they could not get tickets—but sometimes tickets do become available later. However, this is an important issue and that is why we spoke to Professor Waterson. The bots issue is very much on our minds and we are looking at it to see if the existing law on computer misuse is adequate.
Consumer Protection: Online Ticketing
Debate between Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town and Baroness Neville-Rolfe
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will implement the recommendations of the Independent Review of Consumer Protection Measures concerning Online Secondary Ticketing Facilities.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Neville-Rolfe) (Con)
The Government’s response to Professor Waterson’s report will be published shortly and will give our position on each of his recommendations. I take this opportunity to thank Professor Waterson, who is professor of economics at Warwick University, one of Britain’s top universities, for all his work and for delivering a thorough report within the tight statutory timetable.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
It is a good thing Iceland got rid of us. Black Sabbath tickets were sold at hugely inflated prices before they had even been released, and this month’s cricket tickets were being offered in breach of the rules. The money goes to neither the sport promoters nor to the artists. Professor Waterson, to whom we also pay tribute, found that the law was not being enforced and called on the Government to act. Will the Government now accept their responsibility and do so?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
As I said, the Government will respond shortly to the report and Professor Waterson recognised the positive aspects of secondary ticketing. There are issues of transparency and enforcement, which he highlighted and which will obviously come out in our response.
Nuisance Callers
Debate between Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town and Baroness Neville-Rolfe
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
As I said, talks are going on between the TPS and Ofcom, but the new CLI rules that come in next week apply to all UK-registered marketing operations even if they operate from abroad. However, we are also working internationally with other regulators—the equivalent of our Information Commissioner—in the US, India, China and so on. Indeed, I am going to China myself in the summer, and this subject needs to be raised there.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
Sorry. Nuisance calls are still clearly a menace despite our amendment that led to mandatory caller line identification. The problem with fines is that they are either very small and do not hurt the company or so big that they put the company out of business and it reappears as a phoenix company. Would the Minister give some consideration to giving the Information Commissioner the powers to hold directors of these companies to account, rather than simply relying on fines?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
I will certainly be very polite during my trip to China. I thank the noble Baroness for her collaboration on this important issue during the passage of the Bill. We are bringing in a number of measures, including strengthening the direct marketing guidance, which includes the possibility of making consent time-bound, because one problem is that you tick the box and that may enable people to make nuisance calls. The point that she makes about directors, particularly where a company has gone bust as a result of a large fine, is one that we should look at.
Trade Union Bill
Debate between Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town and Baroness Neville-Rolfe
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
I thank the noble Lord for his comments. As part of my checking up on this, I will look at that point, but my recollection is that, as he says, we are trying to get housing associations out of being public bodies, so they should not be covered for the reasons that I have already stated.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
They could still be covered. New Clause 172A(9) talked about something that is not a public body by whatever definition but nevertheless is,
“funded wholly or partly from public funds”,
and,
“has functions of a public nature”.
If, as an ALMO, the housing association has taken over social housing and receives public funds, the housing association could escape. However, if that happens—of course we still do not know for sure that they will come out from the ONS, but let us assume that they do—it still fulfils the other criterion, so the housing association would still be covered.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
It is late and I do not want to dispute the noble Baroness’s very clear logic. As I have already said, I will go away and look at this point and write. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, for his suggestion about letters. The letter was certainly meant to be sent to people who would be interested, and I can only apologise that it did not get to him today. I shall ensure that he sees it and that the follow-up letter that I have promised reaches all the appropriate nooks and crannies of the Chamber.
Amendments 82A and 82B seek to exclude charities and cultural and artistic institutions. Unfortunately, these are not terms that have definitively clear boundaries. Some publicly funded schools may have charitable status. This does not mean that the facility time of their employees is not being funded by the taxpayer, in just the same way as a school that is not classified as a charity. Equally, the Government fund institutions such as those that the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, mentioned —arts institutions, the Tate, the British Library and the British Museum—and we are proud to do so. In such bigger examples, facility time is of course funded by the taxpayer as it is in the NHS or the Civil Service. It should therefore be held to the same level of accountability. However, I am quite happy to have a meeting to discuss it to see if we can find a way through that, although I need to establish the broad principles, as I sought to do in my letter.
Amendments 81, 82, 82A and 82B all reflect similar concerns as to the sort of employers who could be covered by the regulations. I hope that noble Lords will be reassured that we are trying to capture those employers who should be accountable and leave out those who should not. However, I am conscious that we will need to come back to this, I hope in a letter or in a meeting. In the mean time, I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
I know what the noble Lord has said. I think that I have probably said as much as I can on this issue this evening. I shall not seek to weary the House with further detail on the final amendments. The logic is that the cap should apply to all types of facility time, whatever legislation the rights are granted under and whatever category under which they fall. In the public sector, where the employer pays for their employee to take time off to undertake facility time, it is in no way less of a cost to the taxpayer however the facility time is categorised and however important it is.
We have had a good discussion today, but I am not persuaded by the tenor of the argument. I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment this evening.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
Let us just get one thing straight: this is not a taxpayer subsidy. The taxpayer pays for holiday pay as well. Are we going to have a government Minister talking about that with regard to all those organisations, not just local government —we have already agreed that it may be charities or all sorts of other functions? They decide their own holiday pay, and the taxpayer pays for that, but facility time is somehow really different.
I shall not go through all the contributions, but I want to say three things. First, on the affirmative procedure, Parliament knows best—I think it was the noble Lord, Lord King, who mentioned that. But the problem is, as the Minister says, that this legislation went through the Commons without any difficulty, which is how an affirmative resolution would go through the Commons. When the legislation comes here, the only place where we can say stop, we have the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, saying that we must not overturn a statutory instrument—“I’ll do another report, we’ll clip your wings or we’ll put in another 100 Tory Peers”. What was the other thing he was going to do? Oh yes, he might suspend us, give us a permanent holiday. The idea that our safeguard is that we can overturn a statutory instrument here is no safeguard.
The Minister has said that this is a provision of last resort, but she has still not explained the criteria on which that last resort could be taken. The example given by the noble Lord, Lord King, is really frightening —if one thing has gone bad in one place, which could be a care home, or something, we will have the Dangerous Dogs Act again. Because something is really bad in one place and the public have got to know about it, therefore we will have a Minister saying that we have to do something about it so let us have a statutory instrument quickly, and a whole category will be caught because of one example of something going wrong. The real issue is whether it is about, as the noble Lord, Lord King, says, one or two or three examples of where this is going wrong, or is it some other reason that we have not heard from the Minister? What criteria would bring in this power of last resort? This is a question for management and local authorities, or whoever the employer will be—Magnox, or all those other organisations that we have been through. It is really not for Ministers. We will return to this one, but in the mean time I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Trade Union Bill
Debate between Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town and Baroness Neville-Rolfe
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, as the Minister said, this has been an interesting debate, but I have to ask one question—where on earth this all came from. I am getting a bit jaded, I guess. A couple of weeks ago we finished debating the charities Bill in this House and a couple of days later—I think that it was a Saturday morning—I woke up to hear that the Government had announced changes to charitable law or, at least, to charitable practice. They suddenly announced that they were going to stop any charity getting government money from using any of it to influence either Europe or indeed Parliament in its work. The press release began with the words, “The Institute of Economic Affairs”, and went on to say what the Government were going to do. Today we have something where the evidence given in the impact assessment is from the Tax Payers’ Alliance. So I am beginning to wonder why this Government can seem to jump and follow when those outside bodies try to influence them, but somehow when trade unions or charities want to do the same it gets them very nervous.
This point was best put by the noble Lord, Lord King. I am not particularly responding to him, but he encompassed so well whether Clause 12 is simply about transparency, so I shall respond to how he put it. If it was just about transparency, I wonder why the Government’s own explanation says that it is,
“to encourage those employers to moderate the amount of money spent on facility time”.
So in the Explanatory Notes it is clear that it is not just about transparency; it is with a view to moderation—by way of instalments, as my noble friend Lord Beecham said.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
The whole point about transparency is to encourage efficiency of use. I explained by reference to what has been happening in the Civil Service that there have been some advantageous changes. That does not mean to say that this is not worth doing and that we do not value many of the facility time activities.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)
I am sorry to intervene in this debate, but I wonder whether I could make an additional point. Many of the bodies to which the Minister refers would already be covered by existing legislation. If those bodies are receiving grant in aid from government, by a simple stroke of the pen the Government could add a couple of paragraphs to the contract requiring them to publish the cost in the interests of transparency. So why is primary legislation required?
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
And the intention is clearly to moderate—it is not just about transparency. In fact, I thought that the Minister actually undermined her own case at the very end when she read out all those statistics from local government, because that has all existed but actually no one has gone looking. They do not look over each other’s shoulders, and it has not had the effect that she supposedly wants from this—that they will be competitive as to how little they each get away with.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
We believe that by setting it out in a clear way and doing the numbers on a consistent basis we will get a much better idea about what works and what works less well, making the sort of comparison that I should like to see across the public sector. That is against a background and experience of improvements having been made within the Civil Service, where some of these changes have already been introduced.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
As I hear from behind me, who says they are improvements? The point is that for local government, as the Minister says, the statistics are already there, and it has not led to a levelling up, levelling down or averaging out. So it is not just about transparency—it is clearly about moderating.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
That is not the current proposal.
Amendment 87 would require employers to publish an estimate of the cost savings and value of facility time taken under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. That would be significantly burdensome for public sector employers to calculate. It would be very much a subjective calculation, and we have already been round this circuit. Should public sector employers believe that they can estimate the information suggested by these amendments, then they may do so, but it would not seem reasonable to require every public sector employer to make this calculation.
Finally, I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, for her interesting comments. I agree with much of what she said about the importance of tackling illness at work, about the days that can be lost through illness, which is bad for productivity and growth, and about what can be achieved by focusing on health and well-being. However, I do not think that that affects what I have said on these amendments and I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
I thank the Minister and am grateful for the contributions to this debate. The problem is that what the noble Lord, Lord Deben, said flies in the face of what the Government have said. As I said in the debate on the previous group, they stated that the whole idea of this provision is to promote transparency so as to encourage employers to moderate the amount of money spent on facility time. That is the aim. It is not to increase the amount spent; it is to moderate and reduce it. It is impossible to see Clause 12 without looking at Clause 13. Clause 12 is the way into Clause 13. We will come to Clause 13 after the next debate and will have very serious questions to ask about how on earth the man in Whitehall who knows best can lay down a maximum amount of time that can be spent by a health and safety or learning rep in Newcastle working in a care home or whatever. It is beyond belief that that will happen.
Sadly, the point of this transparency is not to show how well these things are being done; it is an introduction to moderating the amount of time available to health and safety and learning reps, and it is a lead-in to the ability to cap that time under Clause 13. We will come back to make that point when we reach Clause 13 later this evening, because we are extremely worried about safety reps being caught by any cap on the amount of time that they can spend on that activity. For the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Enterprise Bill [HL]
Debate between Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town and Baroness Neville-Rolfe
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Neville-Rolfe) (Con)
My Lords, Clauses 22 and 23 bring in reforms to address late payment in the insurance sector, which we believe to be overdue. The overarching policy objective of these provisions is to provide a strong incentive for insurers to pay on time. It is hoped that the provisions will speed up settlement of insurance claims generally, with day-to-day benefits for policyholders.
Amendment 1 affects the limitation period in which a policyholder must bring any claim for late payment of an insurance claim. It addresses concerns expressed on Report that the late payment provisions would force insurers to keep open their books and hold reserves in respect of possible late payment claims for an uncertain length of time, potentially impacting on policyholders through premiums. We have now had the opportunity to consider the policy arguments put forward by the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, and my noble friend Lord Flight, and to prepare the amendments needed to make a targeted change to the limitation period for late payment claims. The Government consider that these produce a better balance of policyholder and insurer interests. Due to the volume of claims which insurers deal with, and the capital requirements to which they are subject, insurers have a rather unique need for certainty in knowing when they have satisfied all their liabilities in respect of a certain claim.
The amendment adds a new provision to the Limitation Act 1980, which applies in England and Wales. It means that a policyholder must bring any late payment claim within one year of the insurer having paid all sums due in respect of the initial insurance claim. This may include sums paid under a binding settlement contract between the insurer and the policyholder, or paid as a result of a court award against the insurer. Until the underlying insurance claim has been paid, the usual limitation period of six years from the breach of contract would continue to apply.
It is reasonable to expect a policyholder to bring a claim for late payment within a year of receiving payment of the insurance claim, so the amendment does not prejudice them unduly. It also has the potential to protect the vast majority of policyholders, who will never need to bring a late payment claim, from any premium increases that may result as a consequence of insurers’ increased costs. Amendment 2 provides for the commencement of this amendment. I beg to move Amendment 1.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
My Lords, I want to take a moment to say that we welcome this clause. We always thought it was important and I thank the Minister for facilitating the meeting that we had with her and officials, and with the Law Commission, which has given careful thought to this—as have we. In fact, we rather hope that the 12-month limit might even help get some of those payments made rapidly, so we are very happy with this amendment and give it our full support.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for her support. I trust that the amendment will receive the same support when the Bill proceeds to the other place in its amended form.
Enterprise Bill [HL]
Debate between Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town and Baroness Neville-Rolfe
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
I had anticipated some clarification on housing associations. I thought that had been arranged, but we will put it to one side.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
I am extremely sorry if that was the noble Baroness’s expectation. I will write to her, but I do not have the information that is needed.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
I thought that our relevant teams had coped with that. I think the answer the Minister is going to give will be very acceptable, but maybe we will get it in writing.
We have one voice between two tonight—we are sharing it. But on behalf of us both, I thank the Minister, particularly for the work she did on the examples I gave in Committee.
I hope I heard her wrongly when she said that, as a result of this, someone’s pension would be reduced “only” from £12,500 to £12,000 and from £19,000 to £17,000. If those are the figures, I think that that makes the case. For someone earning £12,500, to lose £500 a year is an enormous amount. Maybe not to thee and me, Minister, but for people on those sorts of earnings trying to hold together a family, changing their pension from £12,500 to £12,000 is serious. That, basically, is what we were trying to get at in our swathe of amendments, one way or another. If it is £19,000 to £17,000—although I may have got that wrong—that will have a very serious impact.
The other problem is that the Minister said that £95,000 is a lot of money, but they will perhaps never see £10,000 of that because it is a compensation paid to the pension scheme. So they cannot go off and use that money to live on while trying to retrain or move or find another job; it is an actuarial payment that never comes near their bank account. That is why Amendment 70B, which we will maybe have to come back to later, is so serious. This is not a sum of money they can use to buy themselves an annuity to help train or move or anything else—it is money they never see. I am really sorry that the Government have not responded to that.
If it is right that 5% would be caught, a lot of these waivers are going to go to the Minister. Well, I hope the Minister has more than seven days in her diary per week, because there are going to be a lot of applications for waiver. We are talking about schools and all sorts of small organisations.
The Government are making a mistake on this, not in their intention but in their approach. Luckily, the Bill has another House to go to yet, and I hope that further thought can be given to it because I really do not think that this measure is right or was the intention. It is not fair to take away some people’s anticipated income.
I will say only one other thing on the point that the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, made. If local authorities are not allowed a bit of wriggle room, they will find all the 58 year-olds still there and all the youngsters going. That may not be the best way to merge departments or to get the best restructuring. Again, it seems to me a rather short-term view.
I hope the Government will take further thought on this but, for the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, the case for the amendments has been made by both my noble friend Lord Wills and the noble Lord, Lord Low. I merely re-emphasise that undermining everyone’s desire to outlaw discrimination or to encourage whistleblowing in the public interest—which is good for patients, consumers and fellow workers—by including any compensatory payment in the cap would be yet another unintended consequence of this clause.
The point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham—and, in a way, by Amendment 70A, although not formally moved—is the general worry that a court-approved or ordered settlement would be exempted. We support what the Government are trying to do elsewhere to get early settlements, including by ACAS, but we are worried that unless those sorts of settlements are excluded there will be a perverse incentive to go to tribunal or court because, otherwise, the settlement could disappear under the cap. This could be for unfair dismissal, harassment or victimisation in addition to discrimination and whistleblowing.
If the Minister agrees to discussions on this issue and how we can support what the Government are trying to do elsewhere—which is to achieve settlements before going to court and not at the court gate—it would be very helpful.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Low and Lord Wills, for their careful scrutiny and for these amendments. I say from the outset that this clause is not intended to disincentivise employers from entering into appropriate settlement agreements, nor is it intended to limit the payments that are available to aggrieved individuals in whistleblowing or discrimination claims.
I agree with the points around the importance of these matters made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, and the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham. However, I repeat the point I made in my letter to the noble Lord, Lord Low, that there is an important difference between payments that have been directed by a tribunal and payments made under a settlement agreement. If a claim is successfully brought to tribunal, there is a clear finding of fault. I make clear today that payments directed by a court or any tribunal will not be within the scope of the cap. The draft regulations will be specific on that point, and we do not need to put it into the Bill.
However, in the case of a settlement agreement, this is of course only a potential claim and we will not know whether it in fact has merit. As the noble Lord, Lord Low, has said, guidance on relaxing the cap will clarify that these are the kinds of circumstances in which it may sometimes be appropriate to make settlement payments above the level of the cap. The Treasury guidance on relaxation of the cap will make it clear that such payments should be made only after appropriate scrutiny. Otherwise, if we were to exempt certain categories of claim from the cap as proposed in the amendment, we would actually create a loophole that could encourage some people to make unmeritorious claims in order to avoid the effect of the cap. This could lead to payments in excess of the cap being made in cases where that is clearly not appropriate. I stand by the point. I have said that the draft regulations will exclude all tribunal-directed payments from the scope of the cap.
We have no desire to encourage claims to proceed to tribunal where settlement is more appropriate. It seems to me that, if some types of settlement on the grounds of whistleblowing or under the Equality Act were excluded, that would complicate employment law proceedings in just the way that the noble Lord, Lord Low, described. I fear that, if we were to proceed as proposed, we might discredit genuine claims by whistleblowers and of unlawful discrimination by association with a legal loophole, so our clauses include such payments within the scope of the cap but allow for the restrictions to be relaxed in appropriate cases.
Amendment 70AA raises the important topic of whistleblowing. The Government take this issue extremely seriously.
Enterprise Bill [HL]
Debate between Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town and Baroness Neville-Rolfe(8 years, 6 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
My Lords, during Second Reading, noble Lords expressed concern at the Government’s intention to include the Equality and Human Rights Commission in the business impact target. They felt that it would put at risk EHRC’s international accreditation as an “A” status national human rights institution. In Committee, there was further debate regarding the EHRC’s international accreditation and the effect of its activities on business. Since then, I have had a very constructive meeting with the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, chair of the EHRC, and her officials. That meeting showed that the Government’s and EHRC’s objectives were closely aligned. The EHRC indicated a very welcome desire to assess, and be transparent about, the impact that changes to its regulatory activities had on business, and to have those assessments validated by the independent Regulatory Policy Committee.
The Government have no desire for the EHRC’s inclusion in the business impact target to pose a risk, whether real or perceived, to its “A” status as a national human rights institution. The business impact target does not fetter the independence of the EHRC, or indeed any regulator, to make its own decisions in relation to the changes it introduces, but the Government have listened to the EHRC’s concerns and recognise the value attached to its international standing.
The amendments to Clause 13 and Schedule 2 amend the reporting requirements of the target for all regulators that are in scope. They will require regulators to publish required documents relating to the regulatory activities that they have undertaken in an annual reporting period, rather than providing them to the Secretary of State. Cutting this direct reporting link to the Government will both mitigate any risk to the EHRC’s “A” status and offer some comfort to other regulators that their independence is not at risk either. Vitally, it will deliver the Government’s objectives of transparency around regulatory impacts to business.
In addition, Amendment 37 removes the EHRC in particular from the duty to provide a Minister with certain information relating to the effect of the regulators’ code on the performance of its functions. We accepted, as a result of our discussions with the EHRC, that there may also be a risk here to its international standing and this amendment will mitigate that risk. I beg to move.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
I thank the Minister for introducing these amendments so clearly and for the discussions she had. As she made clear, the key issue is obviously the protection of the EHRC and excluding it from the requirement to report on the impact of the Regulators’ Code. As she said, we debated this at Third Reading of the small business Bill when she accepted its special case. I just ask the Minister to confirm that these proposals meet the aspirations that she set out at that point to eliminate all risk of the EHRC losing its “A” status.
We know that the EHRC has welcomed the amendments tabled today. It considers that they will deliver the Government’s intention of improving transparency while safeguarding its ability to carry out its statutory functions free from government control or direction. Also, the EHRC welcomes the Minister’s assurance that the commission will not be subject to the growth duty.
On Amendment 37, the commission seeks assurances that the new business engagement requirements will be proportionate, allowing for the existing engagement mechanisms such as its routine contact with business organisations and its two-yearly stakeholder survey to be used to fulfil these requirements wherever possible. Subject to those reassurances, which I anticipate that the Minister will be able to give, from our side we are happy to support these amendments.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her comments. All risk in relation to the proposals in this Bill has obviously been dealt with; the accreditation or reaccreditation is a wider matter. We sought to take on board the will of the House and talked to the EHRC. We dealt with the provision we were worried about at Second Reading and tabled the first amendment, which, as I said, applies more broadly. As a result of the discussions, we also tabled Amendment 37 because we identified with the EHRC a further possible risk. Certainly, we plan to manage the arrangement in a proportionate fashion.
My understanding is that the EHRC has signalled that it is content, but if the noble Baroness has reason to think that that is not the case I am obviously very happy to try and sort things out with the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, again. My impression is that it is very pleased with the changes that we have made and the process that we have gone through.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, like the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, we cannot support Amendment 61 as it would enable an insurer to rely on the fact that it is had received legal advice to bolster the reasonableness of its position where a consumer had sued for an unfairly refused or delayed claim. However, it would not have to disclose the contents of the advice to the court, as the noble Baroness said. We consider that this would be an unbalanced tussle between the insurer and the insured.
Surely, if insurers refuse to make the content of their legal advice public, they must set out their other grounds for any delay without relying on their legal opinion. That should be sufficient for courts to assess, objectively, whether the grounds for delay were reasonable in the circumstances. It would be slightly absurd to allow an insurer simply to say that it had received legal advice saying that its grounds for dispute were reasonable, without requiring it to disclose the substance of that advice. Indeed, it would put insurers with deep pockets to obtain expensive legal advice in an unfairly strong position compared with the policyholder.
The House will be aware that the Law Commission takes a similar line to ours on whether an insurer’s defence to a late payment being that it had “reasonable grounds” for disputing the original insurance claim could be bolstered by the assertion that a lawyer told it that it had such grounds. In the Law Commission’s view, whether the insurer had reasonable grounds is an objective question based on the grounds themselves, not on a lawyer’s letter. Indeed, the mere fact that it had received legal advice would have no evidential value. Surely, an insurer should not need to rely on its legal advice to prove the reasonableness of its position. Furthermore, it seems only fair for any such legal advice to become disclosable where a party wants to rely on the fact that it has received it to bolster the reasonableness of its position.
On Amendment 62, as has already been made clear, the Law Commission has written extensively on limitation periods. I have to confess that two colleagues present tonight have read all that in more depth than I have. During the insurance law project, the Law Commission considered recommending a special limitation rule in respect of late payment of insurance claims when it accepted that insurers with many claims would need certainty about when they could close their books on a claim. At that point, the commission decided that that was not the right way forward and that it was more consistent to recommend the application of general limitation laws. It said at the time that special limitation periods in particular circumstances add unnecessary complexity which can lead to further confusion and can disadvantage claimants.
Despite this, the commission, perhaps along with the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, has some sympathy—the emphasis being on “some”—with Amendment 62, which sets out a measured change to the limitation period to give insurers more certainty about when they might close their books, knowing that their liability had been fully satisfied in relation to a particular claim. Although this could have the effect of shortening the limitation period for policyholders, possibly to their disadvantage, the commission also acknowledges that it is not an unreasonably short period and might even give insurers an incentive to make payments more quickly to start the one-year period rolling and we hopefully close that file.
We hear those arguments but remain to be convinced that this amendment is necessary, as we have seen no evidence of likely detriment, only assertion of it. We were particularly concerned that the Law Commission concluded that Amendment 62 would not “materially undermine” policyholder rights. That sounds a bit like some undermining of policyholder rights. Therefore, we look to the Minister to provide assurances on this point, should the Government be minded to consider this amendment further.
I am aware from what the noble Lord, Lord Flight, said that the insurers very much support this measure. Well, they would, wouldn’t they? I have not heard the same from policyholders. We agree that there is some sense attached to Amendment 62—although not to Amendment 61—although I think a little more evidence still needs to be produced before the Government take that fully on board.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Flight for his comments and for the work done by the absent noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull. I am very grateful to my noble friend Lady Noakes for injecting realism into our discussion this evening. I agree that Clauses 20 and 21 are very important and overdue, and should improve London’s reputation, as the noble Lord, Lord Lea of Crondall, said.
The Government and the Law Commissions that first developed the clauses have been keen to find a solution which would satisfy all stakeholders, allowing the London market to support the provisions. I am grateful to the market for its continued efforts. The latest amendments proposed by industry stakeholders relate to the complex legal areas of limitation periods and legal privilege.
I will deal first with Amendment 61, but I should say at this point that the Government have more sympathy for Amendment 62, which I will come to. The starting position in both areas is that the default rules should apply unless there is a very strong justification for making special exceptions for particular circumstances.
Amendment 61 seeks to answer some insurers’ concerns that they will be forced to disclose legal advice they received in relation to the underlying insurance claim if they seek to show they had reasonable grounds for disputing that claim. Whether an insurer has reasonable grounds to dispute an insurance claim is an objective question, based on the substance of the grounds themselves rather than whether the insurer has received legal advice in relation to them. The insurer can establish these grounds without waiving privilege by setting out the grounds for dispute in its pleadings or by relying on the content of its correspondence with the policyholder.
Legal privilege is an important protection for parties, particularly during ongoing litigation. But the existing rules concerning waiver of legal privilege already balance the competing interests in the question of when legal advice should become disclosable. This amendment threatens to put policyholders at a disadvantage, which is not justified by a corresponding need on the part of insurers.
We have read the further legal opinion, which my noble friend Lord Flight kindly sent to me today. However, legal privilege is a complex topic which has been developed over the years by the courts and should not be changed in a specific context without very good reason. While I note all the work that has been done, the Government, like my noble friend Lady Noakes and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, are not convinced that such good reasons exist here. I therefore ask my noble friend to withdraw Amendment 61.
The Government have “some sympathy”, to pick up the wording quoted by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, with Amendment 62, which relates to limitation. Some insurers have argued that the vast number of claims they deal with on a daily basis means that they need to know when they have satisfied all their liabilities in respect of a certain claim. I agree that it does not seem unreasonable to expect a policyholder to bring a late payment claim within a year of being paid the substantive insurance claim or the final payment under it.
It appears that Amendment 62 would increase certainty for insurers without materially prejudicing policyholders. It might even have the effect of encouraging insurers to make that final payment, to commence the one-year period for any subsequent late payment claim and bring the matter to a close. If that were the case, it would, of course, be a benefit to policyholders.
To that end, I believe that the amendment at least deserves further consideration. I agree that the policy intention behind it might represent an improvement to the late payment clause, which could be in the interests of both policyholder and insurer. In the light of this debate, I would like to explore the details of this possibility further and to discuss it with all interested parties. In the circumstances, I hope my noble friend will not move Amendment 62.
Enterprise Bill [HL]
Debate between Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town and Baroness Neville-Rolfe(8 years, 6 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Low, for raising that point. It is important that I check the situation and, if I may, I will write to him. I think that our objectives in this area are the same, but it is important that I understand precisely the interplay of this provision and other legislation. I will come back to him.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
The noble Lord, Lord Low, calls himself underpowered and then he understands every jot and tittle. The point that he has just raised is the key one. Where these sorts of things happen, it is much better if they can be dealt with by settlement rather than involving expense and coverage for the employer and everyone else. I, too, will want to look at this carefully and to take advice from my noble friend Lord Wills. However, for the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, the amendments in this group are pretty crucial. In part, they take forward what we said in the first group about exit payments and helping the good management of the service at local and national levels. There are clear examples of where existing rights and agreements should not be undermined, such as payments in lieu of notice where they are part of a contractual entitlement of employment, which, as has been said, is often a useful tool for employers in managing exits.
In the Civil Service the proposed cap cuts across the negotiating of an agreement. The then Minister for the Cabinet Office, now the noble Lord, Lord Maude of Horsham, described the agreement reached in 2010 as one that would be lasting. He said that it would provide,
“a fair balance between the interests of taxpayers and the interests of civil servants and protect those approaching retirement and the lowest paid”.—[Official Report, Commons, 14/12/10; col. 849.]
This Bill should not undermine that agreement, whatever one thinks about the desirability of the principle of the cap itself. Nor, as we have heard, should the cap hamper the reorganisation and modernisation of public services, as suggested earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, and as wanted and supported by other parts of the Government. As my noble friend has said, the Local Government Association is particularly worried that the cap would threaten its future staff restructuring because it is such a rigid cap and because of its particular impact on long-serving employees who may be exactly the ones whose tasks or skills are now less in demand. It would also exclude some staff from early retirement who might otherwise have been part of a headcount reduction exercise, with strategic restructuring now hampered as councils are perhaps forced to keep on their highest-paid staff instead of allowing them to retire and bringing in lower-cost replacements.
The cap, of course, once it is in, will also act as a disincentive to those considering voluntary redundancy. That is likely to mean there will end up being more compulsory redundancies as well as difficulties in modernising the service. This matter is of particular importance to local government, which is partly why we have tabled Amendment 54H to include in the Bill rather than in secondary legislation the ability to make exemptions where the full council of the local authority decides to grant a waiver of the cap. The Government have now published their draft statutory instrument allowing for a waiver where the full council so agrees. However, as my noble friend Lady Donaghy said, this ability could be swept away if it is only in secondary legislation, with local government having no guarantees in this regard. That makes future planning very difficult. We therefore hope that Amendment 54H will be considered a better way forward as the principle has already been signed up to by the Government, but the amendment would give everyone confidence in it.
The amendments containing specific figures that we have now brought into this group seek to push the Government to define the words that we all keep using—that is, what is meant by “the best paid”? Is it people on a salary of £30,000, £35,000 or £40,000 a year? It is important to be clear about that. It is hard to imagine the Government not accepting that anyone earning below the national average wage should be excluded from this provision. Therefore, we hope that Amendment 54BA will be accepted.
We also think it important to exclude from the provision people with long service. That is important not just for their sake, and what they have earnt during their career working for all of us, but because of the advantages that this offers to management. After all, those people have earnt those benefits. We do not consider that the Conservative manifesto wanted to catch people who have given long service to this country. Those are the people we would like to see excluded from this provision. I imagine that the Minister concurs with that objective and hope that she can find a way to accept that amendment.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
My Lords, this group seeks to delay the implementation of the cap, create exemptions or introduce an earnings threshold. I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, for grouping these together.
Amendment 54B seeks to ensure that the cap cannot stop payments of more than £95,000 if they are already allowed under current arrangements. The effect of this would be that employers would have to make amendments to compensation schemes, or to make changes to existing contractual entitlements before the Government could stop such payments. This would have the effect, I fear, of making the exit payments cap ineffective, or delaying it indefinitely.
Amendment 54G seeks to put in place a transitional period of two years after Royal Assent during which the cap would not apply in cases of what she describes as “institutional reorganisation”. The Government do not accept that it would be appropriate to frustrate the intention of the cap by delaying its full introduction for two years. However, the Government recognise that workforce restructuring can be a lengthy and complex process. There may be instances where exits that have long since been agreed will not take place until after the £95,000 cap comes into force. We recognise that there may be instances where it would be appropriate to give effect to such agreements after the cap comes in.
Amendment 54H concerns the power to relax the restrictions imposed by the cap. The clause provides that this is exercisable by Ministers of the Crown, and ensures that any exercise of that power is subject to scrutiny. The Government agree that it is appropriate that the power to relax restrictions be vested outside Ministers in relation to certain bodies outside central government. This includes local authorities. The draft regulations, which noble Lords will now have seen, provide that the power to relax restrictions on exit payments may be exercised by full councils of local authorities in respect of payments that they make. However, we need to ensure that the level of scrutiny and reassurance remains the same so whoever exercises the power must do so by reference to guidance issued by the Treasury, and must of course keep a record of the exercise of that power.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, this is the amendment that the Government really ought to grab hold of if they want to achieve their stated objective of stopping big payments to the highest paid rather than to the longest serving of their own employees. It is this amendment which would prevent the longer serving, albeit lower earning, workers from being caught. As my noble friend has said, it is so unfair because these strain payments do not even go to the individual, it is an actuarial change from what is at the moment available from their current employer to the pension scheme. However, it will reduce the amount that they are able to take as their pay.
We have already heard of examples from my noble friend and we are talking about this becoming a bigger problem. We could have someone with 35 years’ service earning perhaps £30,000, but because of the later retirement age now of 65, a person on that salary will undoubtedly hit the cap and not be able to take a well-earned and justified amount of money. It can also happen with much smaller sums in terms of long service. This is going to hit older workers, and to me it feels discriminatory towards them. I do not know whether any challenges will be made on this basis, but they are the people who will be caught—it is not by virtue of their pay, but by virtue of their age.
I will add one more point. As the Bill stands at the moment, it will affect those who, under the present arrangements, can take a non-reduced pension on compassionate grounds. I assume that that is also going to go out of the window. This is an absolutely crux amendment. Solve this on pensions and we will have gone a long way to solving what is between us on this matter.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
I thank the noble Baroness for her amendment. It is late but I will try to respond because the noble Baroness and her noble friend have both made important points about a key area. The amendment seeks to exclude any pension top-up element from the scope of a cap on exit payments. The Government do not believe that such an exclusion would be desirable for reasons that I will explain.
Let me be clear: the Government’s proposals, as I said at Second Reading, do not involve taking away people’s group pension rights, so the cap will not affect in any way an individual’s right to their earned pension, nor does it engage the 25-year guarantee on pension rights. It is focused on limiting the amount that a public sector worker can receive from an employer when leaving employment. The cap is intended to cover all the various types of payment that an employer may make, and the Government think it right that it should include payments made to a pension scheme to fund early access to that payment, otherwise you will have a different problem.
Noble Lords will be aware that where an individual takes early retirement, pension payments are normally reduced to reflect the expectation that they will be paid for longer, and the amount of the reduction is calculated by the scheme actuary to ensure that the consequences for the scheme and for the individual are cost-neutral. In cases where the individual is retiring early on the basis of ill-health or redundancy, certain pension and compensation schemes may allow an employer to make a payment into the pension scheme to buy out any reduction so that the individual can have immediate access to the unreduced pension. These additional costs to the scheme, those of providing a pension of greater value than the individual would otherwise be entitled to, are met by the employer and, ultimately of course, by the taxpayer.
I can make it clear that these provisions do not alter the position in relation to early retirement for ill-health and injury, but I am not sure about compassion, so I will have to look into that. As I alluded to earlier, it is only where such a payment forms part of a redundancy package in place of or additional to a lump sum redundancy payment that it will be within the scope of the cap. The Government do not accept that as a rationale for excluding this type of payment from the cap. Payments of this type are sometimes some of the most expensive and place the greatest burden on employers and taxpayers. I would also like to reassure noble Lords that the Government believe that redundancy packages should still retain flexibility to allow early access to a pension where employers have the ability to top up an employee’s pension. These proposals will simply ensure that any top-up is within the limits of the cap, and Schedule 4 to the Bill gives a power whereby the employer can still make a payment into the pension scheme to reduce the actuarial reduction that would otherwise have been made.
I note the points that have been made and I understand the emotion behind and importance of this issue. It is serious, but the Government have brought forward a scheme. It involves picking up these extra payments that are made to top up pensions, and I hope that, in the interests of time, the noble Baroness will be prepared to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, this group of amendments has been spoken to in part by my noble friend Lady Donaghy. I am taking up the incredibly good and thorough work of our Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, and in fact I will draw completely on its insights, experience and recommendations. Without these changes, it is possible—from something the Minister said earlier as a slight aside—that she may accept it. If so, I shall save myself from making a speech. If she is likely to do so, I will move the amendment formally. If not, I beg to move.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
My Lords, we have received the committee’s report, and I take this opportunity to thank the committee for its detailed scrutiny. This is a last-minute amendment, but of course we appreciate the spirit in which it has been made. We are giving close consideration to the committee’s recommendations, including the need to ensure that we reflect the devolution position correctly. Perhaps I may therefore revert to this on Report with a proposed amendment on the subject.
Enterprise Bill [HL]
Debate between Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town and Baroness Neville-Rolfe
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
My Lords, like the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, we were rather sorry to see these amendments tabled by the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, as we support Clauses 20 and 21, which help consumers and businesses facing delayed payment of insurance claims to get damages for resulting losses. We certainly do not want to see these provisions watered down. Indeed, as the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, recalled, it was the Law Commission and the Scottish Law Commission which recommended that insurers should be under a legal obligation to pay valid claims within a reasonable time. I thought it was the Law Commission which drafted these clauses and I am delighted to be in the Room with the true author.
The Bill puts the current FOS practice, which is to award compensation for unfairly refusing or delaying insurance claims, on to a statutory footing. Importantly, it will provide small businesses with recourse to the courts to claim such damages. As we have heard, Amendments 52A and 52C would remove the insurance of large risks from the provisions of Clause 20. That would effectively exclude many SMEs and their risks from the very protections that the Government—in our view, quite rightly—are seeking to introduce.
As we have heard, it is not just the Opposition who resist these and indeed the later amendments, which bring insurance contracts into line with any other normal contract. Some 80% of those responding to the Law Commission’s consultation agreed that insurers should be under a legal obligation to pay valid claims within a reasonable time. Our understanding is that not a single member of the ABI was against the clause. Indeed, some were strongly supportive, pointing out that for their SME customers, a claim being paid in a few months can be the difference between survival and failure.
It is almost a legal fiction which means that the normal contract law—that is, if one party breaks a contract, the other can claim damages—does not apply to insurance law in England. It is time to change this. The Law Commission is clear that this is appropriate for the London market and it opposes the attempt in these amendments to exclude it. Any carve-out for “large risks”, as defined in Solvency II, would exclude many consumer and SME risks. I leave the Minister to take the Committee through the finer details of the Law Commission’s argument, should she feel it necessary. I would just add that, in regard to excluding some forms of large risk, the Law Commission found that stakeholders were keen to see a single regime for all non-consumer contracts and did not support defining somewhat arbitrary boundaries, which add to transaction costs.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
My Lords, I thank the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, for his amendments and for taking the trouble to meet me and representatives from the London insurance market, and welcome my noble friend Lord Flight, who is an expert in this area. I am also very glad that my noble friend Lady Noakes is with us and thank her for her support for the late payment of insurance provisions; that nicely complements the discussions we have had on other days on late payment for small firms by big firms and retentions. The provisions are, as she says, intended to address a legal anomaly in the current law; that is, that insurers currently have no legal obligation to pay sums due within a reasonable time.
Where late payment does occur, however frequent or infrequent that may be in different parts of the market, it is appropriate that the policyholder should be able to recover any losses suffered as a result. That is why the Bill builds into every contract of insurance an obligation on insurers to pay sums due within a reasonable time. Breach of that obligation may give rise to damages for breach of contract on normal contractual principles.
With his Amendments 52A and 52C, the noble Earl seeks to restrict the types of contracts to which this obligation would apply, excluding reinsurance and certain “large risks”. The clauses in the Bill are the product of a long Law Commission project involving years of engagement with the insurance industry. Stakeholders argued strongly in favour of a single regime for all non-consumer insurance contracts, avoiding boundaries which, by their nature, are complex and arbitrary, and add to legal expense. If different rules applied to different types or sizes of business, insurers would have to identify which side of the boundary each prospective policyholder fell before entering into the policy. This would severely slow down and add expense to the placement process.
Cold Calls
Debate between Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town and Baroness Neville-Rolfe
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
My Lords, I am not sure who pays for them but by registering to the Telephone Preference Service it is possible to get oneself off the list, in relation to both mobile and home phones. Which? has done great work in this area and is about to do a marketing campaign to bring this to the consumer’s attention. Consumers have to be involved as well as regulators to draw attention to the fact that they are being targeted. I get calls as well.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
My Lords, I was rather surprised to learn from the Evening Standard last night that the Minister knows not a lot about nuisance calls. I do not believe it. The one in 10 people who gets up to 20 a month certainly knows about nuisance calls. Will the Minister explain why the amendment that we got through to the Consumer Rights Act about caller identification has not yet been brought forward? Does she agree that our other proposals, such as automated reporting of nuisance calls or call-blocking equipment, should have been added? Maybe we should add them now.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
My Lords, modern Ministers take the bus. As I have already said, we are about to consult on call identification. I think that the noble Baroness and I both felt that that was very important. We are on the case.
Redcar Steel
Debate between Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town and Baroness Neville-Rolfe
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
I thank the Minister for repeating the Answer, but it is really only about how to help redundant workers. While it is welcome, it is not all new money and it does not help other businesses, from shops and services to suppliers and transport, which will also be affected.
More than this, we should not be in this place. Redcar was to be a major player in the zero-carbon industrial zone based around carbon capture and storage in Teesside. Its loss is a major blow to the project, which had received BIS funding. The Government are overseeing the death of 170 years of steelmaking in Teesside despite the site being viable.
We welcome the steel summit, but why not mothball the site to save the asset? There are companies which are willing to supply the coke ovens or do the mothballing, but the Government have not given the time. Could three months not be found? How can we have a northern powerhouse without this fundamental manufacturing capability? How can the Prime Minister say that steel is vital and do nothing to save it?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for her comments. The local task force that we have set up, which of course did very good work in 2010, will be looking innovatively at options. It is able to come forward with proposals. As she says, we have 170 years of great steel heritage and we need to look forward and find good options for Redcar. Like her, I welcome the summit, because it will look more broadly, obviously well beyond Redcar, at the problems and opportunities for the steel industry.
The noble Baroness asked about mothballing. The company made a last-minute, and I am afraid unrealistic, request for the taxpayer to make an open-ended funding commitment to maintain the coke ovens in Redcar. We were not able to accept that request. On the basis of a limited case, the Government had no confidence that there was a realistic proposal for viability and therefore could not give taxpayer support, even if they wanted to breach state aid rules. The awful truth is that there is a world oversupply of this type of steel. The company had already lost £500 million in its operation over the past three or four years, so despite all the endeavour and optimism of 2012, things did not work out. We have to look forward.
On the northern powerhouse, Teesside is actually making an impressive contribution. The Tees Valley LEP is one that I have visited and is very impressive. The latest investment, while not actually on Teesside but in Darlington, was in the National Biologics Manufacturing Centre. We share common ground that that sort of northern investment is very important for the future of the country.
Consumer Rights Act 2015 (Consequential Amendments) Order 2015
Debate between Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town and Baroness Neville-Rolfe(8 years, 8 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
I thank my noble friends Lord Moynihan and Lord Taylor, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, and the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, for their intelligent contributions to today’s debate. On the subject of beards, two of my sons have grown beards this summer. Of course, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, on her birthday. We will not sing “Happy Birthday” to her because I think it would be against the rules of this distinguished place. I also thank her for her kind words about the product safety work that we are doing and about the chair. I will of course pass on her comments.
I shall start with transport. I reassure the noble Baroness and the noble Lord that there was no conspiracy in relation to the transport provisions. Our concern is about the interaction between the existing provisions, to which the noble Baroness referred, and the new provisions in the Act. The delay in the order until April next year will allow us to consult widely and we feel that it would be wrong to pre-empt that consultation. The scope of any exemption will be limited and will relate only to the ability to limit liability to less than the ticket price. All other protections under the Act will apply. The consultation will involve both business and consumer groups. Of course I undertake to pass on the points that the noble Baroness has made during this debate to ensure that my colleagues doing this work in the Department for Transport are well aware of noble Lords’ concerns.
As my noble friend Lord Moynihan helpfully said, the provisions are complementary and supplementary to what we did in the Act and to the investigation powers that are already in place. I think that his question was, “Do both orders affect secondary ticketing?”. My answer to that is yes, so, as he says, that is helpful. However, I emphasise that the main provisions have already come in, including those relating to the investigatory powers. We remain committed to these and to the review, whose object is to make sure that the market works properly. The terms of reference have still to be finalised once the chair can confirm that the ideas that have been put forward are in the right place. I hope that that gives some reassurance. On enforcement, in the mean time consumers who have problems should contact Citizens Advice, which will pass information to trading standards for enforcement. Individuals can also challenge in court terms that they believe to be unfair. Therefore, the provisions are fully in force and there is no reason for anyone in the market not to comply with them. Doing so could attract a financial penalty.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
It would be interesting to know who has been consulted on the terms of reference. Certainly we have not seen any draft terms of reference. Again, I trust that it is not just the secondary ticketing people who have been consulted.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
I am grateful to the noble Baroness for that intervention. I think that before the election we sent an outline to some of the noble Lords who have been involved in the debate. If those did not come their way, I will make sure that they do. As I am sure noble Lords agree, it will be important that the chair looks at the terms of reference, but a working document was prepared and I can certainly arrange for your Lordships to receive it. We have been making progress in establishing the terms of reference so that we are ready to roll.
I am sure that noble Lords will agree that it has been important to find an appropriately skilled chair and, obviously, the necessary support, on which I think there is more detail to follow. I can confirm that the review will report to both Secretaries of State. As I said, we expect an announcement soon. The review will take evidence from the Rugby World Cup, as it should do, and we remain confident—this is perhaps the most important point—that it will report on time. As my noble friend explained, there is a time-limited window. We have legislated already and we will be responding to the concerns that have been expressed particularly vociferously in this House and elsewhere.
On the CMA, the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, said that this was history. However, the CMA, which is an independent organisation, will be contributing to the expert group, will provide evidence for the review, and consider its conclusions alongside the Government and other enforcers when considering action in this sector.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
That is a fair point, which we ought to reflect on. We have been impressed by the way that the private sector has responded to the ADR directive. An increasing number of ADR providers are entering the market, which will be good for business and for consumers. That will increase choice and drive down the costs of ADR.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
It will increase choice only for the provider. The consumer will not be able to choose which ADR provider to go to.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
I thank the noble Baroness for making that point. I will reflect on it and come back to her, and to my noble friend Lord Taylor on the general point on ADR. He made a point about how we can align processes so that it is easier for the consumer, a point that I note.
We have had an interesting and helpful debate. I conclude by commending the two orders to the Committee.