Business of the House

Lord Watts Excerpts

Thursday 10th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend makes an important point about funding. If he has an opportunity to speak in today’s debate, I am sure that it will be relevant. I will say two things. First, while small local authorities have a valuable role in ensuring that democracy is accessible and relevant to their populations, many such public authorities have successfully explored ways of sharing costs and back-office services with other authorities, and that is very useful. Secondly, the BBC survey discovered that it is possible to secure more and better services with less money. That point will be important in this afternoon’s debate. It illustrates how public services have responded to the tough times that we inherited from the Labour Government and is a credit to those who are running local authorities.

[Mr Dave Watts (St Helens North) (Lab)]

Given that the general public think their regulators are ineffective, can time be found for a debate on whether we should replace the current regulators with organisations that can stop British consumers being ripped off?

[Mr Lansley]

It is particularly important that we ensure that regulators and the competition authorities are effective. Competition is what delivers for consumers, and regulators have access to concurrent competition powers with the competition authorities. We need to be sure that those powers are being used to deliver the benefits for consumers that competition should deliver.