I, too, want to support my hon. Friends the Members for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) and for Harrow West (Gareth Thomas). I hope that the FCA will look speedily at the total cap on the rent-to-own sector, with its inflated prices for goods and roll-up charges.
I am pleased that the Bill aims to ensure that members of the public can access good-quality, free-to-client impartial financial guidance, pensions advice and debt advice. Clauses 10 and 11, which relate to my amendment 42, require the single financial guidance body to set and enforce standards across the debt advice partners it commissions. I think that everyone agrees that the body will have to have regard to standards of practice for the organisations it commissions, but the respective roles of the single financial guidance body and the FCA should not create uncertainty. There may have to be additional requirements for organisations that it commissions.
However, an independent report to the Debt Advice Steering Group run by the Money Advice Service says that the quality assurance process for the larger debt advice charities should be authorised by the FCA. The concern is that any such new and additional requirements from the single financial guidance body should not replicate the requirements faced by the debt advice organisations from their regulator, the FCA. Having had a contract from the Legal Aid Board where we had three auditors in at one time, I was tempted just to throw the files into the middle of the room and say “Fight over them.” The auditing ought to be in the same capacity, and it should be done under one audit that covers all if there are the same requirements.
The body’s standard-setting powers also need to be matched with principles of good regulation, and conditions ought to be proportionate to the benefits they will bring. Amendment 42 would make that plain. Ensuring that the new body’s standard-setting powers have regard to proportionality would smooth its functioning, guarantee assurance and stop the uncertainty as to whether the FCA or the single financial guidance body has primacy.