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Consumers, Estate Agents and Redress Bill [HL]

I strongly support the amendment. I hope that the Government accept it or come up with something equally strong. The NCC and Energywatch have put a lot of effort into ensuring that sustainability is part of their policy. For example, there was a joint statement last week on the need to promote green tariffs and to avoid misleading or unclear advice to consumers on them. Consumers are often blamed for failing to adopt sustainable policies. It must be part of the remit of the new organisation to ensure that it is easier for consumers to make sustainable choices and to ensure other changes that make it more likely that consumers will make sustainable choices. The noble Baroness, Lady Miller, and I have sat through a lot of institutional change in government over the past few years. This is one of the weakest formulations on sustainability, including the provisions in the Water Act, which among other things established the Consumer Council for Water and gave it a sustainability objective. There are other forms of words in legislation that the Government could adopt if they do not like the noble Baroness’s words. I seriously hope that they will do so later in the passage of the Bill.