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Financial Services Bill

My Lords, I completely understand the unhappiness of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, with the deletion. Perhaps I may take a minute to explain the position of my party. At Second Reading, my noble friend Lord Henley set out our concerns with Clauses 18 to 25. They do not enshrine the principle that court proceedings should be a last, not a first, resort. We felt that important safeguards were missing from the clause and we were concerned at the degree of secondary legislation necessary to implement that. Secondary legislation, as the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, knows, has a minimal involvement of either House of Parliament. We also thought that it was unclear how the various remedies available to consumers in different parts of the Bill, and other Bills, would fit together. When we discussed that with bodies which represented those who would be on the receiving end of collective actions, our concerns were increased rather than reduced. We had tabled nearly 40 amendments in order to debate some of the issues, but we recognised very early on that, despite the very enthusiastic support from consumer groups—I certainly saw that from the groups which the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, represents and others—that the time is not right for this rather piecemeal approach to the remedies available for consumers in this one area. However the election turns out, we do not regard that as the end of the story on collective proceedings. We fully support further work on collective actions for consumers, but we believe that that should be on a holistic basis across the whole range of consumer redress and not simply on financial services. We also believe that we need to entrench firmly the principle that the courts are the last, not the first, resort in any final result. I thought it was worth explaining our position.