Debt Management Plans

Damian Hinds Excerpts

Tuesday 5th July 2011 Westminster Hall

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) on securing this important and timely debate. I thank him and the Minister for allowing time for several hon. Members to make short contributions. The issue is not party political, and it is encouraging that hon. Members from six political parties are here. We had an opportunity to debate related issues in the House yesterday, and almost everyone now coalesces around the fact that a proper approach to the issue must have three strands: education, regulation and provision of alternatives. The important issue that we are discussing, which relates to a growing problem, touches on all three strands, but has to do with regulation especially.

I am a Conservative Member of Parliament, and not a great fan of new regulation, but this is one area where it is needed. It is astounding that when some markets are grappling with sometimes unreasonable regulation, regulation of debt management has not hitherto been more effective. I daresay some hon. Members may take a purely libertarian, “caveat emptor” view of the matter, but I have not yet met them. If I have, I have not heard them expressing that view. As has been said, the market that we are considering deals with some of the most vulnerable consumers. “Vulnerable” is a word that is used an awful lot these days for all sorts of things, but it applies in the purest sense in this case. Much as it may challenge our view of economic theory and so on, the fact is that many people are not making rational choices, and the debt solutions that they seek are often about the first advert that they see, rather than what is most appropriate for them.

[Gordon Banks]

The hon. Gentleman’s point is appropriate; people get sucked in by the first or last advert that they see. However, there is another side. As I have said, one objective must be to give money back to creditors, and the more that is paid in management fees, the less goes back to creditors. We certainly want to help consumers, but we must also recognise that creditors are entitled to repayment of debts.

[Damian Hinds]

The hon. Gentleman makes a fine point. The “fair share” model works for various not-for-profit organisations and can be effective. We should foster and encourage that. A lot could be done with regulation in this area. I want to focus on a couple of measures that the hon. Member for Scunthorpe mentioned, which are relatively straightforward and would be effective.

The first is the banning of cold-calling canvassing for new business, and the second is the banning of up-front fees. The two together would make a big difference. On up-front fees, many people suspect that some operators in the market have a cash-flow model that recognises that they may not be around for ever. Those are not the sort of debt management companies that we want. There are responsible operators, and those are the ones that should be encouraged.

I want to make a final, brief point about the visibility of various debt management services. The Consumer Credit Counselling Service, citizens advice bureaux and others offer free advice services, and the internet is an important source of information for people these days. When people get round to looking into ways of solving their problems, they should be able to find those services easily. I hope that search engine providers, particularly Google, which to all intents and purposes is the search engine provider, will be encouraged to act.

[Mrs Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) on securing this debate. Will the hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) add to his list a ban on the sale or passing on of information about people to debt management companies? We have been concerned about that practice in the motor industry, with regard to insurance claims. Does he share my concern that the same practice takes place in debt management?

[Damian Hinds]

I do indeed. By definition, a ban on cold-calling would include the selling of lists and the sharing of data.

I conclude on the point about search engine marketing, and encourage search engine providers, as part of their corporate social responsibility agenda, to take a different view, so that rather than considering only the pay-per-click bid times the click-through rate, they consider what they can do to help people in some of the most difficult circumstances. I again congratulate the hon. Member for Scunthorpe on securing the debate.