Consumer Credit Bill

On Lords amendment No. 1, we believed that it was necessary to modify the wording of the proposed new subsection (2) in clause 7(3), to ensure no ambiguity in its meaning. It is a technical amendment that simply makes the wording clear and removes any potential for confusion by changing the word ““his”” to ““the debtor’s””. I hope that hon. Members will support it. On Lords amendment No. 2, the Government amended clause 20 in another place to remove subsection (4). Again, the amendment is technical. Clause 20(4), as it was, was intended to prevent the court from setting aside judgments previously made to give effect to the rule that a statutory jurisdiction to reopen a transaction does not enable the court to reopen one that has been subject to a previous judgment made by the court. It replicated a provision in the Consumer Credit Act 1974. The Government reconsidered the impact of that provision in the light of current court rules operating in England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland and concluded that subsection (4) would in practice serve as an impediment to the Government’s policy intention—to enable consumers to access effective redress from the court under those provisions—and that the court rules should be allowed to apply to those provisions in the normal way. If we left the provision as it stood, before the Lords amendment, it would serve to lessen the benefits of the Government’s policy on unfair relationships. Therefore, the provision is best left out of the Bill. Lords amendment No. 3 was tabled to clause 29, prior to Third Reading in the other place. Members of this House and noble Lords expressed their concerns about ““irresponsible lending practices”” during debates on this Bill. The Minister in the other place, the noble Lord Sainsbury of Turville, and I considered carefully the contributions of hon. Members and noble Lords on this issue. We thought hard about how the Government should respond. The Government believed that the wording of clause 29, as previously drafted, would allow the Office of Fair Trading to take account of ““irresponsible lending practices””. However, in response to the concerns expressed on both sides of both Houses, we concluded that there was merit in making explicit in the Bill the ability of the OFT to do that. Given the interest expressed by hon. Members in the issue of ““irresponsible lending practices””, I should explain the amendment further. The Government believe that the most appropriate means of addressing ““irresponsible lending practices”” is in the context of the OFT’s powers to monitor and enforce the fitness of licence holders. With this amendment, the OFT, which is best placed to monitor changing practices in a dynamic market, will be able to provide guidance to licence holders on lending practices which, on the basis of the OFT’s knowledge and experience of the market—