Consumers, Estate Agents and Redress Bill [HL]

I have considerable sympathy with the points that have just been made and I would like to hear the Government’s justification for their approach. However, I want to concentrate on the first of the amendments in the group, which is important. I support the amendment—or, at least, I would support a form of wording that achieved the same objective. I am grateful that the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, has raised the whole question of how we deal with complaints under this new structure. Part of the Government’s strategy, as I understand it, as my noble friend Lord O’Neill said, is to ensure that companies meet better standards of complaints handling than is currently the case. That requires the regulators to be heavy and requires the Government to be heavy with the regulators. Although I do not support every amendment to delete ““may”” and insert ““must”” or ““shall””, I support this one because unless the regulators concerned, Ofgem and the postal services regulator, accept as central to their tasks upgrading the standards of the companies within their field, this will not work. Large-scale general complaints and general issues that have been raised with Energywatch and Postwatch will not be able to be dealt with by Consumer Direct. That has been recognised in relation to emergency provision within the new NCC. But between those two types of complaint, the emergency complaint and a specific complaint that can be easily dealt with, Energywatch and Postwatch deal with a whole range of complaints. In most other industries, such complaints would be seen as the responsibility of the company. Part of the failure of regulation in the post-privatisation industries is that that has not been seen as a priority by the regulators. It is, therefore, important, that regulators do not have an option to specify higher standards of customer service, which they will regulate and for which there will be sanctions for failure, but have an obligation to do so. I recognise that there is an issue of propriety, that the regulators are independent and, therefore, that a ““must”” or a ““shall”” would raise certain issues, but this matter is so central to the achievement of the strategy that the Government are embarked on—and so central to what ought to have been the responsibility of the regulator in any case—that it is important that there is no discretion but for the regulators to set standards. That seems to be the objective of the first of the noble Baroness’s amendments. The regulators may have some discretion in relation to the subsequent clauses—I do not necessarily support her second amendment in the group—but being forced to set those regulations must be a central pillar of the way that we do this. There is another point: even if the regulators set stringent standards, are prepared to enforce them and are required to do so, it would take some time before the companies adjusted their process, practice and culture to achieve those standards. In the interim, there is an issue as to how those kinds of complaints and queries are dealt with. Ultimately, they should be dealt with internally within the companies, and the stronger the regulator is in forcing the companies to do that, the better. But there is also a transitional issue as to how those complaints are dealt with in the interim. Having Government clarification of this on the record would be helpful. Perhaps they could indicate at a later stage how the regulators will be obliged to do what the amendment is intended to make them do.