Cancellation of Contracts made in a Consumer’s Home or Place of Work etc. Regulations 2008

Like the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, I welcome these regulations and congratulate Citizens Advice, which has been leading the campaign to deal with what is clearly a serious problem. The only point I want to make is that under the cancellation notice the period is to be seven days. I think that I am right that during the consultation period before these regulations were brought in, a strong view was expressed in the lobbying that that period was slightly too short and that a 14-day period would be better. Moreover, when the regulations were debated in the other place, the answer the Minister gave then—which seemed to have some degree of spurious common sense—was that the seven-day period would bring it in line with solicited visits and the existing provisions in consumer credit legislation. On reflection, I would have thought that that is not necessarily the case. When a solicited visit is made, the individual consumer has already determined in principle that they wish to enter into that particular form of contract, whereas unsolicited visits of the nature that this regulation is designed to deal with are often quite different. Have the Government had an opportunity to reflect yet again on whether a 14-day period would be better than seven days?