Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Monday 12th January 2015 Grand Committee

[Lord Deben]

I did not intend to speak on this but the noble Baroness has referred to me so often. I had better explain to her that I think that this is nonsense. It is nonsense from beginning to end because it misunderstands how business works and what the Government should do. The last thing we want is the establishment of a collection of people who professionalise the representation of consumers. Any of us who have ever had to deal with the double standards which some of them put forward about their own businesses and the way that they are never quite sure whether they are representing the consumer or some business operation which they have, which is part of the way in which they support themselves, recognise that this is not sensible. What is sensible is to have a proper organisation whose job is to ensure proper competition.

The Government ought to be concerned about having proper competition. I would be strongly opposed to the idea that the only people concerned with proper competition are the consumers. Government and the competition authorities should both be committed to ensuring competition. Decent companies, of course, can be very much in favour of competition until they see that there is an advantage if they are monopolistic. I do not blame them for that: it seems to me perfectly simple that everybody would like to have a nice, comfortable life in which they do not have to compete with anyone else. You therefore need a balance in society where you constantly refresh the market; you constantly make the market work. However, the idea that you do that by way of consumer representatives misses the point; we have to make government do it. That is what the Government are there for; it is not what Which? is there for. Which? is there precisely to be outside the system and to shout. Government is supposed to run the system so that there is proper competition. I do not want government to be excused from that.

Therefore, I do not agree with these amendments. I hope that the Minister will recommit the Government to ensuring proper competition. They should ensure, too, that the Competition Commission has the powers, the resources and the intent to achieve the best level of competition possible. We should also begin to have a bit more of the philosophical background to this, which is essential if we are to win the battle. If we cannot have competition as we ought to have it, frankly, the argument for the free society is difficult to maintain. If that is important, let us make it the purpose of government and the Competition Commission, and not say that it has to be run on a sort of old-fashioned, tripartite basis, which is to allow the Government to get off the hook. They should be on that hook firmly for promoting competition.

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, I apologise to the Committee for having joined your Lordships so late that you seemed to have made good progress without my help and I shall try to focus on this amendment. I do so partly because I was going mildly to support my noble friend but also because the noble Lord, Lord Deben, has provoked me to say how much I disagree with what he has just said, including going into the wider philosophical and ideological areas right at the end, because a free society requires representation of people’s views as well as mechanisms, legislation and regulations and so on.

At various stages, the Government have recognised that consumer organisations of one sort or another are important in ensuring that competition is delivered. I am very happy to see that this clause gives the CMA the ability to comment on draft legislation, which is absolutely right, but, in doing so, it has to pay attention to its prime objective, which is not to create competition full stop but to create competition in the interests of consumers. Since in various contexts successive Governments have recognised that there needs to be some focus on that consumer input, it is important that we have some requirement on the CMA at least to consult such organisations when it is making an assessment of future legislation.

For example, many of us, including the noble Lord, Lord Deben, sat through lengthy proceedings on the previous Energy Bill, which sets up a whole new system of energy regulation and government interventions, with state and consumer subsidy of various bits of the energy system. It does not look entirely like a free market; I think that the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, at one point referred to it as Gosplan. It is not quite that, but it is a whole range of things to ensure delivery and availability of energy ultimately in the interests of the consumer, but it will change the nature of our whole energy system.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Deben]

There is a fundamental difference between saying that the CMA should consult with a range of bodies, which is what the noble Lord says, and the way in which the noble Baroness presented it, which suggested that it was a kind of duo or tripartite, or some sort of system where they do all this together as part of the same thing. There is a difference between saying that the CMA has a responsibility, which it carries out by, of course, taking into account the views of all these people, and saying, on the other hand, that it is a kind of function where they are part of the actual operation. Doing that second—and that is the point I was trying to make—removes the fundamental responsibility of both Government and the CMA to do this job properly.

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, we have limited time as we are in Committee so I will only take a moment. It is certainly true that, at the end of the day, this report will be the CMA’s report and all it says is “in consultation” with these bodies. My noble friend and I both argued that the internal proceedings of the CMA should reflect a different structure of relationship with consumer bodies. That is now past. However, we are now saying—as I understand my noble friend’s amendment—that the CMA has a responsibility for producing this report, but it should do so clearly and explicitly and in the Bill, in consultation with the bodies that represent consumers and which the Government have recognised as so doing.

[Baroness Wheatcroft]

My Lords, I apologise for not being here at the beginning of proceedings, but I have to intervene on this. Consumer groups are extremely effective in making their views known. They lobby us very effectively and they certainly lobby the CMA. While it is right that the CMA should listen to them, I do not think that there needs to be any formalisation of that relationship when it is looking at legislation. On the second issue, the idea of an annual report on the state of competition in the economy, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, that this would be a massive undertaking for the CMA to have to complete every year. In fact, it is very hard to see how it would be able to undertake its main role if it had to produce that report on an annual basis. It also seems to me that because consumer groups now have the right to bring a super-complaint, there is a degree of duplication anyhow in the amendment. If consumer groups feel very strongly, they can make their super-complaint. Therefore, I take issue with the amendment.