Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100-119)
ENERGYWATCH AND
POSTWATCH
19 JANUARY 2005
Q100 Mr Williams: It sounds to me as
though you are just determined you are going to stay in London
whatever happens and you are just looking for excuses. What about
the postal side? At least you have had time to look at it. What
is the answer there?
Mr McGregor: We think the needs
to have a London presence are similar to those for Energywatch.
Q101 Mr Williams: Highly nebulous.
Mr McGregor: In addition to the
kind of contacts that Allan has been describing, we also of course
need to deal with Royal Mail, we need to deal with Royal Mail's
customers and, as I have already mentioned, the postal market
is perhaps distinct because there is a smaller number of very
large users of the postal service and most of those large customers
are based in London.
Q102 Mr Williams: Can the two of you
see any good reason why there should not be mergers of organisations
such as yours? Way, way back in history, when I was Consumer Minister,
I set up 60 consumer advice centres around the country. They were
all-purpose centres. Would it not be more logical? There are so
many different consumer contacts, that the public have no knowledge
of where they are, who they are, what is available. Would it not
be logical in fact to pull them together into a single cohesive
unit and be multi-purpose?
Mr Asher: Indeed in the middle
of last year the Department of Trade and Industry released a consultation
paper that had that as a recommendation.
Q103 Mr Williams: Have you written in
favour of it?
Mr Asher: We have indeed. We have
said that, not only are there very sensible ideas there, but we
have not seen any need to wait until that sort of formal legislative
merger and that a group of us, there are ten agencies in all—
Q104 Mr Williams: Who are the ten?
Mr Asher: There is Postwatch,
Watervoice, Rail Passengers' Council, Airline Passengers, National
Consumer Council, Energywatch and we have set up five joint projects
where we are sharing costs and research, we are sharing information
on our software and complaints handling systems, we are looking
to do joint consumer education.
Q105 Mr Williams: So what about organisational
integration?
Mr Asher: We cannot do that while
we have separate legal entities.
Q106 Mr Williams: I recognise that there
is a willingness to do it, but it seems to me, it might be a willingness
to do it now voluntarily on a fragmented basis in order to stop
the minister making you do it on a one-stop basis instead of an
integrated basis.
Mr Asher: Far from it. We have
shown the Government and stakeholders a willingness to achieve
all of these efficiencies, economies and better service to consumers
and the government is currently considering all of the responses
to that report. We are just now waiting for the DTI.
Q107 Mr Williams: Are you part of this
integration?
Mr McGregor: Yes, and we would
be very pleased to see a much higher degree of integration.
Q108 Mr Williams: Are you planning then
to integrate headquarters or something like that?
Mr McGregor: We are indeed thinking—
Q109 Mr Williams: You might collectively
actually manage to make one case for someone being in London between
you all.
Mr McGregor: We could do. We are
considering a wide number of options for jointly sharing a whole
range of functions and facilities, but there is one quite simple
step that is needed for that, certainly on our side and I think
on Energywatch's side: we need to have the financial freedom to
be able to charge for services and also to receive money for services,
some form of a trading account that would enable us to share common
functions much more efficiently than at the moment.
Q110 Mr Williams: I am sure that is not
beyond the wit of technology, as long as you avoid IT, or you
could get in a thorough mess.
Mr McGregor: The technology is
there and the willingness on our side is there. We have not yet
been able to persuade the Department of Trade and Industry, or
for that matter the Treasury, of the wisdom of this move.
Q111 Mr Williams: You would be very happy,
if we were to try to persuade them on your behalf?
Mr McGregor: We should be very
grateful if you were willing to do that.
Q112 Mr Williams: That is useful. What
about the OFT? I see that over two years ago the OFT were given
super complaints powers. I do not know what they are. Have either
of you ever needed to contact OFT on those. What are they precisely?
Mr Asher: I should mention that
I am a member of the board of the OFT and that the super complaints
status was part of the Enterprise Act two years ago. It allows
designated consumer bodies to bring complaints to the OFT or another
regulator about a market or a feature of the market that is not
working. We applied, at the beginning of last year, for super
complaint status and I can tell you that last week, we received
a note from DTI saying that our application had been accepted.
Q113 Mr Williams: It must have gone to
his post, did it, that it took a year to get it? We are told in
our briefing that it was set up to facilitate swift action. Here
we are, two years on, it has not done a thing. It took them a
year to reply to you, which does not exactly suggest they are
going to be terribly energetic.
Mr Asher: There have been six
super complaints filed so far.
Q114 Mr Williams: Have there? By you,
or generally?
Mr Asher: No, two by Which?,
one by Citizens' Advice and one by the Northern Ireland consumers'
organisation. I am not sure of the other two.
Q115 Mr Williams: Did any of them involve
your field of activity?
Mr Asher: Yes they have. One involved
doorstep selling and credit for energy.
Q116 Mr Williams: I ask genuinely for
information. Why did they need to take that to OFT instead of
you being able to deal with it?
Mr Asher: Because the OFT has
all of the enforcement powers under the Enterprise Act, which
might include looking for price-fixing or bid-rigging or to mandate
the need for a code of conduct.
Q117 Mr Williams: Their record on codes
of conduct is abysmal. OFT has been one of the great consumer
disappointments and I was in the Opposition when that was set
up. The Free Trading Act was a very good creation and the whole
idea behind it was good; OFT, on the other hand, has not been
so good. What about you, have you had any of these super cases?
Mr McGregor: Our designation as
a super complainant is still in the post, but we expect to get
it very shortly. In anticipation of that, we have had a trial
run and we put a super complaint on a voluntary basis to OFT around
postal services. Unfortunately, in our view anyway, the OFT decided
to put that super complaint to the sectoral regulator, Postcomm.
One of the reasons why we thought it appropriate to go to the
OFT was that Postcomm does not have the same kind of powers as
the OFT does under the Enterprise Act?
Q118 Mr Williams: It seems that we should
have had OFT and a representative of the Department here as well
today, because it is a bit unfair. You cannot carry out the integration,
the Department can, OFT is supposed to be providing the central
role and seems to be doing everything but actually deliver, as
yet, after two years. You can understand why the public are a
bit cynical about the consumer protection systems that have been
set up, can you not? You can see from a consumer's point of view
how difficult it is to have wide-ranging organisations. They do
not know who they are, they do not know where they are, they do
not know how to contact them. Could you, for example, supply each
MP with a small wall type sticker that we could, if we wanted
to, have in our surgery giving the numbers, how to contact each
of your organisations?
Mr Asher: We should be delighted
to.
Q119 Mr Williams: I would be quite helpful.
Members might not want to use it, but I certainly would and it
would be a helpful gesture.
Mr Asher: Each of our regional
officers each year has a programme where, I understand, they visit
as many MPs as they can and have activities and provide training
materials and things. It is far from complete, but it is our goal
to try to reach all of those who are able to have contact with
individual consumers so that this information can get out. I think
that is an excellent suggestion.
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