---

Consumers, Estate Agents and Redress Bill [HL]

My Lords, I feared this would happen. The mighty energy companies will be left to kick this into touch. They have in place a hopeless complaints systems; it is almost impossible for an ordinary consumer to complain about and to fight a wrong meter reading. Now the little energy group that knew what it was doing will be subsumed into the mighty NCC. The NCC will be a huge organisation and will not have the expertise to deal with complaints. My amendment would have been one more way to ensure that these mighty energy companies, which can well afford to do it, established a complaints procedure through which it would be possible for an ordinary consumer to take complaints through himself. Instead, we have a Bill that is at the other end of the scale. Redress happens when everything has gone wrong, when one has gone as far as one can go and is right at the end of the line. This would have been such an opportunity for us to ensure that, at last, these energy companies would put in place a good complaints system that people could use. We have missed the opportunity and I am very sorry about that. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. Clause 46 [Supply of information to consumers]: [Amendments Nos. 3 and 4 not moved.]