Consumers, Estate Agents and Redress Bill [HL]

I do not want to start again. Can everyone hear me now? I apologise for being inaudible in the first place. I move on to Amendment No. 13A, which is the substantive amendment in my name. The wording again tracks that of the Equality Act, and the aim of the amendment is to ensure that the functions of the new National Consumer Council are delegated to the territorial committees in respect of council activity in the areas that they cover. That seems to me to be a perfectly simple matter, but at the moment it is not in the Bill. If the Committee will allow me and because I do not wish to try its patience, I shall move on quickly to Amendment No. 13B on funding. The Bill is silent on the proportion of funding that will flow to the new territorial committees in Scotland and in Wales. It gives no safeguard for the future and, in theory, it could mean that the new territorial committees could be starved of funding and thus unable to deliver their remit. The amendment would ensure that Scottish and Welsh consumers received a secure, sustainable and sufficient flow of funding to enable them to work effectively in their own territorial areas. Amendment No. 36 addresses the question of who reports to whom. It would ensure that the Scottish territorial committee, whatever it is to be called, reports to the Scottish Parliament and that the Welsh territorial committee, whatever it may be called, responds to the National Assembly for Wales. That is really very simple, but Clause 4(7) requires the new National Consumer Council, rather than any new Scottish Consumer Council territorial committee, to send a copy of its forward work programme to Scottish and Welsh Ministers respectively. This provision represents a step back not just from devolution, but from what we have at the moment. The Scottish Consumer Council and Welsh Consumer Council produce their own forward work programmes and deal directly with Scottish and Welsh Ministers respectively. I understand that Clause 1(4)(c) allows the new NCC to delegate other functions to Scotland and Wales, but that is not a requirement and there is no safeguard. I shall speak to one more amendment, Amendment No. 37—I am sorry to try the patience of the Committee—which would ensure that the Scottish and Welsh committees were required to produce for each financial year their own annual reports on the progress of the project described in their respective forward work programmes for that year, to do so separately from the formal annual report produced by the National Consumer Council, and to send a copy of that report to Scottish and Welsh Ministers respectively. Clause 6(3) requires the new NCC, rather than the new Scottish or Welsh councils or territorial committees, to send a copy of its annual report to Scottish and Welsh Ministers. I would like the Committee to pause on that thought for a moment and, again, to think about the nature of devolution. If something is to do with devolution, people operating in Wales should respond to Welsh Ministers directly on it, and people operating in Scotland, as I am sure my noble friend Lord O’Neill will say, should operate and report directly to Scottish Ministers on it. That is devolution. I apologise for taking too much of the Committee’s time and for being inaudible at the outset, but these amendments are important. They go to the heart of devolution. I hope that the Minister will indicate that the Government are not resiling on devolution and that we can change the Bill accordingly. I beg to move.