Consumers, Estate Agents and Redress Bill [HL]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Razzall, and I certainly could not improve on his ability to introduce the amendment. I should apologise to the House because I was delayed briefly in the Minute Room. Following our earlier discussion, I realise that the Government are intransigent on this matter. The purpose of this amendment is to highlight water issues. I do not want to repeat my previous comments because the Report stage should not be used for repetition. However, since we considered these issues in Committee some more material has become available about the link between the price review and the timing of river basin management plans for the water framework directive. The regulator operates on a five-year cycle for the water price review and is therefore out of sync with the six-year cycle governing river basin management plans. The consumer is caught between those two processes, which is an uncomfortable place to be. This issue, which is a complicated one if you are not part of the water process, is as imperative for customers as the Post Office. It is vulnerable to the fluctuations that will take place as the Consumer Council for Water, which was created only very recently, is subsumed into the NCC. The Government have recognised some of the issues here because they have built a delay into the Bill. I therefore suggest to the Minister that there would be advantages in putting back this merger at least until after the next price review and the river basin management plan are put into effect. By then we will have one river basin management plan under the belt, so to speak, making it a much more auspicious moment to bring this provision forward.