Consumer Credit Bill

My Lords, at Second Reading I commented on a deficiency in the Bill, which did not impose any degree of responsibility at all on creditors to ensure that the debtor had the ability to meet the obligation that he was taking on. In Committee I introduced an amendment which provided for the creditor to make inquiries which were not onerous in nature. We could not vote on it in Committee and, because of the circumstances of your Lordships’ House on Report, I was not able to test the opinion of the House then. I had brought my amendment back, intending to move it and expecting to vote on it today, but in the interval the Minister has offered a compromise in the form of his amendment. I am extremely grateful that he is offering something, although this compromise is slightly more onerous than my much more modest one would have been. However, on the basis that we are at Third Reading and want to get something, I intend to accept his amendment from our side. This whole matter deals with what the amendment calls irresponsible lending. I do not wish to be churlish, but I wrote to the Minister because, in my view, the amendment did not deal with irresponsible granting of credit—one of the problems where we had so many terrible horror stories of people getting all these credit cards and really getting themselves into trouble. Nevertheless, the Minister wrote to me and has said in the House today that he thinks it does. He quoted from all the different dictionaries about the meaning of the word and I accept what he says. We just hope that this is not a problem that will come back to haunt us when yet another tragic case appears. I hope that what the Minister has said the situation is, it will turn out to be. I also hope that the OFT will, by its power of regulation of the credit licences, be able to protect the vulnerable and—yes, indeed—the sometimes foolish and profligate people. I do not intend to oppose this amendment.