Consumers, Estate Agents and Redress Bill [HL]

My Lords, I have some sympathy with the concerns expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Razzall, and the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, but I draw exactly the opposite conclusion on what should appear in the Bill. It seems to me that the problems of the Post Office have not been resolved by dealing with them in isolation from everything else that happens to rural areas. The whole rationale of the Bill is to create a trans-sectoral organisation which is able to bring expertise from other markets into markets such as the post office and the energy market, and to use the expertise in those markets to create more generic solutions to consumer problems. The longer you delay the establishment of those arrangements—and we are already putting water back until after the initial establishment of the arrangements—the longer it will take for that new organisation, the new consumer council, to achieve that level of strength and influence in general decision-making. On rural post offices, the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, and I have been very much concerned with the issue of services for rural areas. So has the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, who is just about to contribute to the debate. Post offices have been dealt with in a silo, entirely separately from the concerns of Defra and of the rural community more widely. Post offices are but one of the losses of services, both public and private, in rural areas. The losses have taken place partly as a result of market changes and demography and partly as a result of government decisions over recent years. It is much better that the issue is placed in that wider context, with an influential body that can influence government policy in a wide range of areas, rather than in the narrow area of departmental Post Office sponsorship by the DTI. That is what I see the new National Consumer Council doing. In response to the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, I think that the new National Consumer Council is primarily about strategy and issues of broad concern to consumers and not so much about individual complaints. In this wider context, the strategy on the Post Office network can best be dealt with by a larger, more all-embracing body. If we put back the Post Office consideration until 2010, as is suggested by the amendment, we will fall short of achieving the Bill’s objectives in a relatively short timetable. On the immediate issue of the current review of rural post offices, Postwatch is already setting up the way in which that will be conducted. It needs to get expertise from the National Consumer Council and the Commission for Rural Communities to broaden the base of that review. It can go on; it will have started by the time the new organisation reaches its vesting date, and it will continue thereafter. It is a ring-fenced process that is dealt with somewhat separately from the rest of Postwatch’s activities. Therefore, it will not be jeopardised by creating the new organisation. Clause 15 specifically puts a requirement on the new council to conduct an assessment of the network of rural post offices, in the same way as Postwatch currently has this obligation. That responsibility is preserved. The influence on future post offices will be stronger, and the context in which such rural services are delivered will be broadened in a way that, as a whole, ought to benefit the rural consumer and not simply be seen in one dimension depending on the Government’s attitude to the Post Office in general. Rural consumers, and indeed urban consumers who have lost their post offices in recent years, will be better protected under this system. The sooner we introduce it, the better it will be.