Consumer Credit Bill

I shall be brief. I simply want to make a couple of points. Obviously, we welcome the amendments, which are sensible. The Minister said that Lords amendment No. 2 was a technical amendment, but I am not sure that I agree. It is an important amendment. Prior to being elected to this House, I earned my crust as a solicitor and I often had people come to me who had got themselves into financial difficulties. One of the problems was that many people did not come forward to seek help until they were very well into those financial difficulties. In many cases, they had court judgments against them. It was well nigh impossible to do very much about the situation by that stage. The amendment will allow the courts to reopen some of the cases where there has been unfair lending. That is important and I congratulate the Minister on the amendment. My other point relates to Lords amendment No. 3. As I mentioned in an intervention, I was concerned about some of the things that were coming from Conservative Members on this matter. I recognise the basic point being made: that both lenders and borrowers want some certainty. I accept that, but my problem with being too prescriptive is that those who indulge in irresponsible lending can be very inventive in how they do so. The danger with being prescriptive is that we will not hit many of those practices. The Minister has approached things sensibly by laying down a definition and leaving the matter to the OFT, so that there can be some flexibility. I note that it is more than 30 years since the last such Act was passed. The Bill is a piece of major legislation and if we find that we have to amend it, it could be a long time before we can do so.