Consumers, Estate Agents and Redress Bill [HL]

moved AmendmentNo. 64A: 64A: Clause 46 , leave out Clause 46 The noble Lord said: My Lords, although the amendment seeks to leave out Clause 46, I should say straightaway that—as I am sure the Minister’s officials will have spotted—it is designed not to wreck the entire Bill but to enable me to raise again a point that I raised in Committee. For those who wish to be keen students of my earlier speech, it was reported in Hansard on 9 January at cols. 73 to 75. My point received some support on that occasion from the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, and particularly from the noble Lord, Lord Borrie, both of whom I am pleased to see in their places. My aim in moving the amendment is also to give the Minister a greater opportunity to make a fuller response to my points than he was able to give on that occasion, when I bowled him what could be seen as a bit of a bouncer. I again declare what I called in Committee a ““potential prospective interest”” in that I am chairman of the Council on Tribunals which, under a Bill that the House will be considering on Report tomorrow, will become the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council and acquire a much greater interest than it has even at present in the world of ombudsmen, which is widely seen as part of the system of administrative justice. The point in question is that Clause 46, and indeed the estate agents provisions later in the Bill, clearly envisages what I regard as a curious provision for multiple competing ombudsmen in the same sector. It would be wrong for me to rehearse everything that I said in Committee and I shall not do so. I shall simply reiterate the main points. My first point concerns the irony, if you like, that while the first part of the Bill is designed to create greater coherence and reduce confusion for consumers by setting up a more wide-ranging single National Consumer Council, there is at the same time a possibility of creating greater complexity in the world of ombudsmen. If I brought forward proposals for rival parliamentary, health service or local government ombudsmen, it would be widely regarded as ridiculous. There is no proposal for rival legal services ombudsmen. And I make no apology for repeating almost word for word one point that I made in Committee: the Government have gone to great trouble in the financial services field to get rid of about six different ombudsmen and to create a single financial services ombudsman which has worked out very well. As I do not intend to take up the House’s time at length, I will simply observe that, so far as I can see, it is no more sensible to have competing ombudsmen than it would be to have competing courts or tribunals. It is even more curious—I might even say bizarre—that the choice is not for the customers complaining, but for the supplier against whom complaints are made—carrying, as again I said in Committee, the obvious risk that the choice of ombudsman will be influenced by the interests of the firm rather than the customer. I am aware, as the Minister reminded me in Committee, that there is a competing situation in telecoms. That, however, is another arrangementin which the DTI had a major hand, and it has produced a situation which is—again I use understated language—not universally regarded as a model. From conversations I had at the time of Committee, it was clear that there was a fairly widely held hope that the industry would achieve common sense by agreeing on a single scheme. I suspect, however, that the amendments we have just passed, widening the definition from providers to suppliers, may carry a risk of reducing that likelihood. There is another irony. In his speech in response to my amendments in Committee, the Minister referred to the fact that, "““In approving the redress schemes, the relevant regulator will be required to have regard to established good practice””—" now ““best practice””, I think— "““such as, for example, the guidance published by the British and Irish Ombudsman Association””.—[Official Report, 9/1/07;col. GC 78.]" As I said in Committee, if we are going to quote the British and Irish Ombudsman Association, as I myself did in Committee, its view of best practice is that it is right to have only one ombudsman in any given sector. I hope the Minister will reflect again on what I have said. We have here an approach that does not appear to be adopted by any other government department, with the possible exception of the DCMS, does not correspond with the advice of BIOA, and, in my view, does not correspond with the interests either of the consumer or of common sense. I hope we might hear a clear explanation from the Minister of just what is the department’s reasoning in coming up with this proposal, which could lead to competing ombudsmen in this field. I beg to move.