Consumer Rights Bill

Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts Excerpts

Monday 27th October 2014 Grand Committee

I have got better at using electronic devices and perhaps I will get better still. However, my main concern is with those elderly people who find it difficult to use electronic devices and are paying more as a consequence. Some of those elderly people are on very low incomes, as my mother was. I am sure that the Government will not accept this amendment but I hope that we can get the message across that we need to look seriously at how this affects the older generation, particularly as I think Dementia Awareness Week is this week. If you or the person you care for has dementia, these matters are difficult to cope with but you can see something that is on a piece of paper and track it. I hope that the Minister will take those points into account in her response.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support my noble friend’s amendment. We had a preliminary canter over this ground when the Committee sat last week. I said then that I thought Amendment 53 was far more felicitously phrased than my amendment, and, indeed, it has so proved. The case is powerfully made. However, I take slight issue with the noble Baroness, Lady Maddock: this is not about age discrimination but about a consumer’s right to choose the way they receive bills and the way they wish to pay them. They should not face additional charges or discrimination in that sense. It does not matter whether they are 21, 81 or 101, that is the way it should be because that is the right the consumer should have. I support my noble friend’s amendment. I would like her to have thought of a way of ensuring that the banks do not charge for providing statements, which they are doing now increasingly, as statements are often important as a means of identification. Her amendment is much better than mine and I hope that the Government will be more sympathetic towards it than they were towards mine last week.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I, too, support this amendment. As the noble Lord just said, it does not apply just to old people like me but to many people who do not have access to the internet, or they or their carers are unable to use it, as other noble Lords have said.

I should point out one thing one has to watch if one is doing things electronically—that is, how do you file things? It is fine getting a bill on your mobile phone, but what do you do with it subsequently? How do you keep a record of it? There are many ways of doing it but it is not just a question of paying it directly through bank transfer, you have to keep a record and feel comfortable that it is secure. Security is becoming more and more difficult so these regulated monopolies, as many of them are, need to be aware of the importance of people getting paper bills if that is what they want.

When you read a meter you can put the reading on a postcard, if you want, or you can fill it in online. One of these days, I think that meters will be read down the phone line or the electricity line with no human input. They might get it right. If they do not, heaven help us. A friend bought a house from me and six months later he got a bill for £10,000 for water because there had been a leak. That had probably been happening since the war, about 50 years before, and it had soaked away into London gravel. You can imagine how you end up with a bill like that electronically but it was all quite difficult.

The other issue is paying by cheque. I tried to pay my EDF bill by direct debit this weekend and failed completely. My bill did not say how you could do direct debit, although there was lots of detailed stuff on the back of the paper bill. So I thought I would phone them up. I hung on for half an hour for a nice, friendly voice but got nothing at all, so in the end I went on the website. I found that EDF has a new website and you could do it on the web. But how many other people will think, “What do you do?”. You get a second reminder every two months. You put a cheque in the post or whatever you do but you cannot even talk to them down the phone. A friend of mine in the Isles of Scilly has four BT lines because they have four houses that they let out in the summer. This weekend, she told me she spent a total of six hours on the phone to BT. They have not had two of the lines working for a month. They tried dealing with this electronically and down the phone. Today they spoke to five different people at BT and still do not know if it is working. Before the utilities start charging people, they should get the service right. This is a very important amendment for both the paper/electronic debate and paying things by cheque. I strongly support it.

--- Later in debate ---

It is not just old or middle-aged people. My noble friend Lady Oppenheim-Barnes said that there are about 7 million people unable to use direct debits or standing orders, whatever age they may be. There is a fundamental point of principle in this, whatever age one is. We are entitled to see our bills on paper before they take the money from our bank account. To give a personal example, when I came back to London on 7 January, I found a BT bill on the mat dated 22 December demanding payment by 5 January, I think. It arrived only on 6 January in any case. I paid attention to it for the first time. I always sent BT a cheque, but I had never bothered to check the bill. I found there was a late penalty charge on it and a processing charge. I assumed that after 10 days BT would charge me a late penalty. I went back and looked at my other bills. They all had a late penalty charge. Even if I had paid the bill within seven days, five days, three days or 24 hours, I got a late penalty because I was not paying by direct debit. There was an arrogant assumption that if you do not pay by direct debit you should be penalised with a late penalty charge. Then there was a processing charge of about £7.50.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts]

If my noble friend looks at his BT bill more closely, he will see on the right-hand side of the page in small print, “If you wish to avoid this charge you can do so by getting a direct debit or by calling this number”. It is a direct push to try to stop people getting paper bills and paying by cheque.

[Lord Blencathra]

I entirely agree with my noble friend. To be fair to my noble friend Lord Stoneham of Droxford, that is going further than providing an incentive. There is a threat involved there, and that is not right and not fair.

I am not careless with money, but I then checked other bills, which I had not bothered to do properly before to find other mistakes. When I get a paper bill, I see the level of my gas bill and I go around switching off the heating for a while. If it is being taken directly from your bank account and you have no bill, just some annual statement, you do not see what gas, electricity and utilities are costing. There is a saving to consumers if they can see their bill in paper format.

A further point: I believed when I was a boy and growing up that the decent thing to do was to pay one’s bills within 30 days. Now it seems to be down to about 21 days. However, the demands that one should pay everything by direct debit or only get 10 days to pay a telephone bill are obscene. It is wrong and we should have legislation that forces the utility companies not to charge extra for cheques and not to give an unfair disadvantage to cheque-payers. Finally, not that it concerns this House, there are votes for whichever party defends consumer interests on this issue. There are votes to be lost unless we let the dying minority of consumers pay by cheque.