Clause 8 - Promoting good consumer practice
Enterprise Bill
6:15 pm
Mr John Pugh (Southport, Liberal Democrat)
I want to make a technical point that I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) would have made. We are in favour of having good codes and of having the Ministerial imprimatur on them. They are extremely sensible and decent suggestions. I listened carefully to what the Minister said about which codes would be approved. I wrote down that she said that only codes that regulate members of organisations will be approved. I am sure that she is right, because a code used for guidance only, or one that will not be adhered to or implemented, is not the sort of code that Ministers would wish to authorise.
However, subsection (4) states:
''A consumer code of practice is a code of practice . . . which is intended to–
(a) give guidance to persons engaged in production or supply of goods or the supply of services''–
then there is the word ''or''–
''(b) regulate the conduct of persons so engaged''.
I suggest to the Minister that that is a technical error. Following the thrust of her remarks, ''or'' should be replaced with ''and'', because there is clearly no ministerial intention to approve codes that do not regulate the people to whom they apply. That sort of technical change would make the measure more worthy of support.