Consumers, Estate Agents and Redress Bill [HL]

I start by considering the modesty of the Government’s ambitions regarding the aim of ““good”” rather than ““best”” practice. We could all debate whether the best is the enemy of the good and so on, but if the Government are trying to introduce a new scheme they should seek to be as ambitious as possible. Given that, using the words ““good practice”” when most people will be looking for ““best practice”” is either a bit of sloppy draftsmanship or it requires an explanation. I should have thought that in Committee in the other place an amendment could be introduced to clear up the issue. It is not very ambitious to say, ““We’ll try to do as well as we can. It might not be brilliant but at least it will be just about ‘good’””. To be frank, the ambition should be to aim for the best. In certain areas, this Bill demonstrates a degree of slapdash sloppiness, a lack of appreciation for the political pitfalls the Government could face when the Bill is considered in Committee down the Corridor. I would say only to my noble friend in as friendly a way as I can that things like this should be flashed up so that we do not have to trouble with them. On the other matter, I do not think the issue raised by the noble Baroness about potential staff cuts is necessarily the point here. What we are trying to do in this legislation is to impose on the companies responsible for our utilities higher standards of service than they have previously provided. In the past, inadequate policing of consumer protection schemes by the regulator of these companies has meant that people have been denied access to the service. We all know that billing and failure to pay issues are very severe and worrying. It is only about three years ago that there were very bad storms in East Anglia. The response of the energy companies to the power cuts there was, frankly, shocking. It emerged that one of the reasons for that—apart from the fact that maintenance had not been sharp or effective enough—was that the switchboard was swamped with complaints from consumers who knew nothing about what was happening. They had listened to the local radio station and then phoned the company; if they were lucky enough to get through, the company told them to listen to the local radio station. However, it became clear that across the country this was not a uniform picture. For example, Scottish and Southern and Scottish Power, two of the five big power companies operating across the UK, had call centres located across Britain. When they were confronted with large-scale cut-offs—as they were rather more often than the East Anglian utility—they simply combined the services of all their call centres and took-up every complaint. They had staff on call because the winters in Scotland tend to be a wee bit worse than in East Anglia and people were ready and prepared to do this. It was an exceptional circumstance but, when my colleagues and I on the old Trade and Industry Select Committee in the 2001-05 Parliament looked at this matter, it was glaringly obvious that a number of companies had no fall-back arrangements. While the boxes for the speed of response to complaints were ticked most of the time—93 per cent reacted within two minutes or whatever; I cannot remember the figures—the point I am making is clear enough: we need to ensure from the outset that the new National Consumer Council will be able to insist that the regulator with responsibility for particular areas of consumer service learns the lessons of recent experience. It is not the everyday problem that worries most people but the extraordinary problem. In some instances, of course, it is not that extraordinary because there are often severe winters, dramatic increases in snowfalls and winds that blow trees over power lines. That is somewhat inconvenient, as it was in East Anglia. It is our duty to highlight these matters at this stage in the legislative process. Some of it should be done by the regulator insisting that the companies deal with it. Part of the essence of the new approach to consumer protection and consumer advocacy is that far more responsibility will be assumed by the companies than hitherto has been the case. If we achieve that, it will be a burden on the companies. They will not like it; they will complain that it is unreasonable and excessive regulation. But if people are in very cold houses in difficult winter circumstances, if they are subject to flooding or whatever, they are entitled to the best possible service and entitled to expect that the companies would anticipate the worst possible scenario. One of the effects of climate change is not only that it is warm when we do not expect it to be but that, as we found over the Christmas and New Year period, changes in weather are now much more extreme. Sometimes you have winds in excess of 70-80 miles an hour, as happened in Edinburgh on two Hogmanays in a row, which meant that the celebrations had to be cancelled. So we are not just talking about the important issue of people being cut off because they cannot pay or because their bills have been badly handled by companies—as a constituency Member, I well remember the difficulties that we had getting through to the accounts department and getting it to accept that there was an issue. Equally, we need to have spelt out in greater detail than the Minister gave on Second Reading the Government’s intention to ensure that we will have in place schemes that will give the companies and the regulator no place to hide when people have immediate problems. When the cut-off is done, when the family is left without gas or electricity and they are freezing cold, assurances that something will be done quickly need to be chiselled into granite, they cannot be simple paper promises from either Ministers or the regulators because we know that, in the past, the regulators have been sloppy. We know also that although the companies have improved in a number of respects they are still not properly geared up to deal with extremities of weather. We hear a lot about climate change, but we do not get a proper appreciation of the nature of the changes in weather that we are experiencing and the impact that that has on supplies of gas and electricity. Therefore, I would like to think that the Minister will be even more robust. In his wind-up speech on Second Reading, I got the impression that he was getting the message, but it is not enough for just him to get the message; the message must get out to the appropriate players who will be affected by the legislation. The past performance of a number of energy companies in recent years has left a lot to be desired. Not only should we have carrots, we should have sticks. I want substantial punishments for those companies that do not deliver the goods when we have problems of that nature—whether for the individual family or the communities, which are often isolated communities, if they do not have their electricity or gas reconnected within a reasonable time. As I said, there are examples—although I am a Scot, I am not defending or praising those companies because they are Scottish—of parts of the country which will feel the brunt of the new climatic conditions in which we live. It is essential that we take proper steps at this stage to make it clear to the companies and the regulator that we need a higher level of performance and awareness. Simply to talk about ““good”” is not good enough; it must be the best.