Consumers, Estate Agents and Redress Bill [Lords]

The amendment would remove a necessary provision and I will therefore resist it. It is necessary for technical reasons and I hope that I can at least outline them, as I understand the concerns that the hon. Member for Cotswold (Mr. Clifton-Brown) has about clause 29(4). Clause 29 deals with the disclosure of information by the new NCC. The new council has important functions, which are designed to serve the interests of consumers, including—under clauses 10 and 19—the provision of information. It is important that we achieve a balance between the new council being able to discharge its statutory functions and ensuring that it respects the confidentiality of the information that it has obtained. In creating the new council, we need to ensure that it can deal with not only the issues that span consumer interests generally, but the specific sectoral issues in the gas, electricity, and postal services markets. The current National Consumer Council does not exercise statutory functions and is therefore not subject to the general information disclosure provisions in the Enterprise Act 2002. Energywatch and Postwatch are subject to the specific information disclosure regimes in the Utilities Act 2000 and the Postal Services Act 2000 respectively, which apply to those bodies and to the regulators. In bringing together the statutory consumer bodies in the energy and postal services sectors—and in providing for the possible inclusion of the consumer body for water too, following consultation next year—we have set out a single information disclosure regime for the new council instead of subjecting it to separate information regimes, depending on the source of the information. That would have resulted in complex and perhaps even unworkable provisions. The existing gateways in the Enterprise Act 2002 provide for disclosure of information by public bodies in the exercise of their functions and to facilitate the exercise of functions by another public body. However, the new council has several functions of publishing reports or information, and they are listed in clause 29(4). We concluded that, when the function was to publish information, the disclosure involved could not be said to"““facilitate the exercise of the function””." The publication or disclosure was itself the function and so did not fit the structure of the existing part 9 of the 2002 Act. Consequently, the regime in part 9 did not deal effectively with protecting confidential information in such cases. Subsections (5) and (6) were therefore inserted in clause 29 to provide protection. They require the council to consult the individual or business to which the information relates and to have regard to the principles in section 244 of the 2002 Act, which apply to disclosure under part 9. Those are: the public interest, the necessity for disclosure, and the need to exclude from disclosure information which might significantly harm the individual or business to which it relates. Those provisions draw on the existing models in the gas, electricity and postal services sectors. For example, section 19 of the Utilities Act 2000 applies to publication of information by Energywatch In each case, the general disclosure regime in the legislation is disapplied and special provision is made for the function of publication. So, to give protection to business and personal information, we have included subsections (5) and (6) in clause 29, and made it clear in clause 29(4) that the prohibition on disclosure in part 9 of the Enterprise Act 2002 does not apply. The result is proper safeguards, including consultation with individuals or businesses to which the information relates, before disclosure can be made in exercising the council’s functions under which information may be published. I hope that that information will assist the hon. Member for Cotswold. I recognise that it was rather a technical explanation, and I apologise for that, but I can give him an assurance that the end result will be a set of provisions that broadly follow the existing arrangements while ensuring that there is a single disclosure regime for the new council instead of multiple regimes. I hope that, given that reassurance, he will feel able to withdraw his amendment, although I recognise the validity of the concerns that he has raised.