Consumer Rights Bill

Debate between David Hamilton and Iain McKenzie

Tuesday 28th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr McKenzie]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention, and she is absolutely right to say that there is a pressure from the other end of that telephone line to make the recipient think that the caller is selling the best possible product imaginable. Time and again, it catches people out.

It is not only a question of the elderly being caught out by sales over the phone and so on. Increasingly, a number of young people are coming in to my surgery. They are not the only people who purchase online, but they are increasingly purchasing certain products online and are bitterly disappointed by their quality. I am speaking about those who might have downloaded things, especially music, from the internet in the months leading up to Christmas, only to find that the music is not quite what it said it was and is not quite of the quality they would have expected from the group or individual they downloaded. For them, it is a case of saying, “That is not what I wanted: the product does not do what I thought it would when it was sold to me.” In some instances, it is not entirely the person they expected when they downloaded their purchase. Other people are filling up tracks just to make up the album.

The problem does not often come to light, because when people purchase something for £2.99 or £3.99 they think that it is not really worth their while to go back and complain. However, when we multiply the problem by the number of young people who make downloads and share that experience, it adds up to quite a bit of money. The Bill should look at the download and software side as much the hard physical side of the problem.

We live in an era in which we share a lot of data—perhaps we do not realise how much data companies have on us, including about our buying habits and other trends. I dare say that if we went into certain supermarkets, they could tell us what we purchased every week, what we changed every week and, more to the point, what we were probably enticed to buy when there were “Buy one, get one free” or “Three for the price of two” offers. It is that sharing of data that leads to another consumer experience: nuisance or persistent calls in which people are told, “We know what you buy, we know what you like, and we know what you might buy.” We live in a different world in which we are told that we should not wait and that we have to buy something now—“Get it now; don’t wait”—which is in stark contrast to the experience of a previous generation, who thought that if they could not afford something, they should not buy it. There are pressures to impulse buy as a result of the sharing of that sort of information. For some people, that leads inevitably to debt. An increasing number of people are getting into debt as the result of such purchases.

[Mr David Hamilton (Midlothian) (Lab)]

Is it not the case that when certain groups of people take those calls they take a backward step? They think that they are talking to the agent or the company, but in fact they are talking to a sub-company. They are left with a belief that they have to do something. It is not a question of whether they should do it—they have to do it.

[Mr McKenzie]

We should never forget that those sub-companies have targets, and they will do anything to meet them. For example, a young constituent came to see me. He had purchased a mobile phone contract, and wished to give up the phone after the term of his contract had ended. He found that, yes, it was easy to give up the phone, but he noticed on his bank statement that every month a deduction of £5 continued to be made by the company. He wondered what on earth it was about. He had given up the phone, only to find in the small print that he had been sold phone insurance. Because of its targets, the company continued to take insurance money, even though he did not have the phone.

That leads me to the problem of debt and how we help people to get out of debt. I am delighted that in my area we have begun a campaign to highlight the problem called Debtbusters, which has been rolled out across Scotland both to help people who have got into debt as a result of those purchases and to tackle payday lending. One way out is to offer advice on credit unions. The focus on credit unions tends to be the credit side, but we need to change that and focus on savings. It is unbelievable that, after eight weeks, someone can take out three times what they have saved and that leads to increased debt.

In conclusion, Labour believes that this Bill does not do enough to clarify the way in which customers are empowered in both local and national structures to ensure that they know who to turn to for help when things go wrong.

Public Sector Pensions

Debate between David Hamilton and Iain McKenzie

Thursday 8th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr McKenzie]

I thank the hon. Gentleman and will now carry on.

We want to see not an equality of misery in pensions, but fairness. Public sector pensions are not gold-plated, but I accept that they require collaborative review. Instead, public sector workers are being told that they must work longer, pay more and expect less. Trade union leaders who called the strike action on 30 November were branded as militants by Government Ministers, and the Prime Minister described the day of action as a “damp squib”—hardly diplomacy, if they are indeed engaged in negotiations.

We again see the Government promote policies that are hurting but not working, and their plan to guide us out of these difficult times is clearly failing. For Scotland, this is a double whammy, with the SNP Government in Scotland in many ways excelling this Government in the failure league. We need to accept, as the Hutton report did, that public sector pensions are not gold-plated and that many public sector workers, especially women, will retire on an annual pension of around £5,600 a year.

[Mr David Hamilton (Midlothian) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that many Labour Members are aghast at the SNP’s duplicity? On one hand the SNP is attacking the Opposition, and on the other hand it is putting forward proposals that are draconian, compared with what the Government have done. Indeed, it could do otherwise if it wanted.

[Mr McKenzie]

I agree. Public sector pensions are not gold-plated, and many, especially women, who work in the public sector will retire on an annual pension of some £5,600—a paltry £100 per week. They ask for fairness in their pensions now if they are not to ask for benefits in their retirement.