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Consumers, Estate Agents and Redress Bill [Lords]

The hon. Gentleman is on to something but, as I hope to explain, I do not believe that it is enough to introduce legislation to enable public bodies to do things. They must show that they are willing to show their teeth, and I shall go on to discuss Ofgem, because I am not persuaded that that has always been the case. As citizens advice bureaux have pointed out, there should be a duty with regard to vulnerable customers, just as there is in terms of disconnections. Voluntary organisations and Help the Aged have argued for the need not just for empowerment but for clarity in legislation so that people, especially consumers, know what they are entitled to expect. It is expected that the shortfall will be reduced or eliminated by suppliers providing better standards of complaint handling, but we are giving a great deal of weight to suppliers’ opinions and their commitment or otherwise. I am enormously worried that those standards have been left entirely to the regulator’s discretion, so we must monitor that and see how effectively the regulator uses—or does not use—its powers. Ofgem has made its views abundantly clear to me personally—that is not to mention all the debates that we have had, the correspondence and so on—in a meeting about energy prices, in which it said that it regarded its role as one in which it was fully committed to the free market, so it was reluctant to intervene. I do not regard that as acting in consumers’ defence—people expect more than that.