My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for spelling that out. I should explain to the noble Lord, Lord Spicer, that we are discussing a consumer redress scheme that is being proposed for
the first time by this Government. I suspect that they did not have in mind that they were setting off down the road to socialism, but there we are.
I was suggesting that we need to make it explicit that there is collective ability here, because there are a lot of these schemes where there is no such collective ability. Certainly, the complaint goes first to the company. If there is a failure to resolve that at company level, there are systems involving CCWater for taking it further. Ultimately it could appear either through the new ADR system that the Government intend to develop, which is not yet a full ombudsman, or it could still end up in the courts. In the courts, it would still have to be an individual system.
I may not need to specify it in relation to the redress system, but there remains an issue in relation to potential collective claims. However, it was very helpful that the noble Baroness put on the record that under the scheme that is envisaged and being consulted on now, collective claims, collective complaints and collective redress could all apply; I am very grateful for that.
My second amendment concerns the role of CCWater. I should point out that we are not actually asking CCWater to be an adjudicator. The amendment is supported by CCWater, as I understand it. It is just that in this particular area of charging schemes, it is not written in as a consultee, whereas in other areas it is. It is true that in practice most companies—the noble Baroness says all; I will take her word for it—consult CCWater. It would have been quite useful for that to have been in the Bill. However, for the moment, I will withdraw the amendment.