Consumers, Estate Agents and Redress Bill [HL]

My Lords, I question the usefulness and desirability of the amendment. Indeed, I am rather surprised that the Opposition have brought it forward again on Report in more or less the same form as it was in Grand Committee. When the amendment was moved in Grand Committee bythe noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, she said, as did the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, today, that it was intended to ensure that sole traders and small businesses are considered consumers for the purposes of the National Consumer Council. However, even at glance, it can be seen that the amendment is not confined to sole traders and small businesses; it is wide enough to cover the largest of corporations, whether they are ICI or Tesco, buying things for their own business. I am surprised that noble Lords on the Opposition Front Bench, which today includes the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, who is a distinguished former chairman of the NCC, consider that the National Consumer Council should spend any of its time in looking after the interests of our major corporations, which are surely well capable of looking after themselves through their adequate legal staff and so on. I wonder whether their intention to assist small businesses and sole traders is helpfully improved by the broad wording of the amendment. Clause 2 defines ““consumer”” as, "““a person who purchases, uses or receives , in Great Britain, goods or services””." We all know that in law a ““person”” includes bodies corporate or corporate persons so, whether a small business is a partnership or incorporated as a company, it is a consumer when it purchases goods. The disadvantage of the amendment is that including especially words to demonstrate that businesses are consumers as well would encourage the National Consumer Council to consider their needs in buying goods and services as at least equal to those of the man or woman in the street purchasing goods in all the manifold ways available to us. That is not an appropriate function for the NCC. Many small businesses, although they are far less able to help themselves than a major corporation, belong to trade associations. One very often hears them talking on the radio and elsewhere on the interests of small businesses, whereas the ordinary man or woman in the street does not have, as an ordinary consumer, any such trade association except for any voluntary bodies that they may join, such as Which?, the Consumers’ Association or the National Consumer Council. This is an unnecessary and undesirable amendment, and I hope that it is not pursued to a Division.