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Chris Bryant: I congratulate the Government on an important Bill. From my constituency I know—and others in the House will feel the same—that all too many families and individuals have been caught in a vicious cycle of debt that has made ordinary family life impossible. Sometimes that may be their own fault, and sometimes there are feckless buyers and borrowers. However, in many instances the consumer credit industry has been reckless in the way in which it affords loans and hands out credit cards, making it all too tempting for people to run up debts that they cannot afford and that the credit card companies and loan providers did not know whether they could afford.
I am grateful to the Government for bringing forward the Bill and to the Minister for the way in which he has handled it. I also thank him for listening to much of our debate in Committee. Although we have not been able to tempt him down the road of being explicit about what he understands to be an unfair relationship, he has none the less made it fairly clear that he hopes that the law will be used robustly and that we will thus row back from the vicious cycle of more loans and debts that are doled out irresponsibly.
After listening to the speech made by the hon. Member for Eddisbury (Mr. O'Brien), I felt that he had not been kept well abreast of what was debated in Committee—perhaps he could have listened more carefully to his colleague, the hon. Member for Tewkesbury (Mr. Robertson). He inveighed against the Government, albeit in his usual charming way, by saying that unfair relationships are still too vague under the Bill, but he missed the point that the Minister tried to make. If we were to make the provisions too precise, there would be the danger that we would not row back from the culture of over-indebtedness that has grown up over the past 30 years.
The hon. Member for Eddisbury said that the Bill had been hurried through the House. The programme motion allowed for eight Committee sittings, but we needed only four to provide absolutely adequate scrutiny of the Bill. We had a full exploration of many important issues, so his comments were rather unfair. However, I think that it should be hurried through the next part of its passage so that it will arrive on the statute book.
Gregory Barker (Bexhill and Battle) (Con): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Chris Bryant: The hon. Gentleman has not been here for the rest of the day.
Gregory Barker
indicated dissent.
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Chris Bryant: I do not think that the hon. Gentleman has been here all day, but perhaps he has been hiding behind the Dispatch Box and I am being ungenerous to him, so I shall be generous and give way.
Gregory Barker: I might not have been in the Chamber all the time, but I have been present for a significant part of our proceedings. May I remind the hon. Gentleman that I sat through all the Committee? My biggest regret is that the Bill lacks any firm proposals to deal with the aggressive direct marketing of debt. It is all very well to talk about fairness and interest rates, but the Bill does not contain any firm measures to deal with the direct marketing of debt to vulnerable people who are at the end of their tether.
Chris Bryant: The hon. Gentleman was present for all of our Committee sittings, but he cannot have listened to our proceedings carefully, because we had a substantial discussion about that matter. We debated several amendments that I tabled.
Chris Bryant: Will the hon. Gentleman contain himself for a moment and let me finish my point?
There was considerable debate on the matter both in Committee and on Report—I am not sure whether he was in the Chamber for that part of our proceedings. The Committee and the House felt satisfied by the Minister's answer that the unfair relationship provisions would make it perfectly possible for the courts to strike down a credit agreement merely on the basis of irresponsible direct marketing that might have been entered into. We decided that it was better not to insert further measures in the Bill, but to leave the matter open. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman wants to intervene again; he looks satisfied by what I said.
Gregory Barker: The hon. Gentleman did table amendments and there was a great deal of debate. However, I would not say that all the points that were raised and debated will be dealt with by the measure to which the hon. Gentleman refers. The problem is addressed only partly. People are still worried about the aggressive direct marketing of debt, especially to the most vulnerable people in society.
Chris Bryant:
The hon. Gentleman is right about aggressive direct mail marketing and I think that everyone in the Chamber hopes that the industry will correct its behaviour on that. Of course, it has made some movements this year by changing the banking code. However, I hope that courts will feel free to strike down agreements on the basis of unfair relationships due to the feckless and irresponsible way in which a product was marketed. That would be possible if it could be established that the credit card company or loan company had not determined an individual's ability to pay, or had used irresponsible marketing of any kind. I would gently point out to the hon. Gentleman that he did not table any amendments to that effect, so it is slightly difficult for him to argue on Report that the Bill is not adequate because the point had not been met.
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I hope that the House of Lords will consider the Bill with adequate scrutiny, but swiftly. The two main periods of the year when credit card companies and loan companies are at their most aggressive in direct mail marketing are in the run up to the summer holiday period and at Christmas. I hope that we will not have to go through another summer holiday period and a Christmas without new legislation being on the statute book. That being so, I hope that it is possible for the Bill to pass through all its remaining stages in the other place in time for the general election, whenever that may be. Further, I hope that even the Lords Spiritual will consider that this is an important measure. I guess that what we are talking about, in their terms, is the sin of simony.
Several Members have mentioned the issue of extortionate rates of credit and the change introduced by the unfair relationship. I think that the entire House hopes that the Bill will roll back the vicious cycle of over-indebtedness. This is either a thin thread on which we are hanging a great deal of hope or, as it is to be hoped, the courts will take the Bill in earnest and ensure that it is a hefty rope that is able to bear the burden of our expectations.
The hon. Member for Eddisbury seems to be suggesting that the Bill will be yet another example of regulation in the context that the Government regulate too much. It is said that we have doubled the amount of regulations since being elected in 1997. However, so many of the measures that we introduce are necessary pieces of legislation. They are added to the list of regulatory measures by the Opposition, even though they support them. The deregulatory measures that we introduce are never taken into account. I believe that we are dealing with an area in which further regulation has been needed for more than a decade, and it is good that it has now been introduced. I hope that the Conservatives will not be wittering on about the over-regulatory nature of the Government.
Chris Bryant: The hon. Gentleman is in a generous mood this afternoon.
My final point is that the proof of the pudding will be whether individual members of the public feel that they are able to take advantage of the proposed legislation. I believe that there will be a necessary process of providing information to the public.
Mr. O'Brien: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Chris Bryant: I have already been told that I have been going on for too long by the hon. Member, who was whispering in the ear of the hon. Member for Tewkesbury, so I think that it is unnecessary for me to continue any further. Therefore, I will not give way.
4.52 pm
Malcolm Bruce
: We are completing the passage of the Bill and I think that we have had constructive debates on Second Reading, in Committee and throughout today.
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Many of us have tried to explore the practicalities of how the Bill will work while understanding the process at the heart of the Bill, which is to apply the test of unfair relationship and then set a framework within which that will be determined, rather than to define the Bill in detail. The first problem, if we defined the Bill in detail, is that it would probably be three or four times as long, it would be prescriptive and it would be regulation by Parliament as opposed to regulation by practice, which I think most of us feel might be a better approach.
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