Clause 8 - Promoting good consumer practice
Enterprise Bill
6:15 pm
Mr Jonathan Djanogly (Huntingdon, Conservative)
I fully support the clause, as everybody else does, on the ground of identifying reliable suppliers. I also support the provisions on fee monitoring. It is all good news. I have not studied any of the 42 codes and 24 sectors, as mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne. I am sure that they are all highly reasonable and were worked out in close co-operation with the relevant trade bodies. If I were to have a concern, it would relate to the potential for the introduction of unreasonable codes.
An unreasonable code might be introduced if a large company, perhaps one with strong lobbying powers, persuaded the powers that be at the OFT that the code should be made more stringent–perhaps more than was necessary. Small businesses would lose out because of the additional costs of complying with new regulations or dealing with code-compliance issues arising from that. In what sense will there be an ongoing review of the codes from the point of view of small businesses and the consumer, who would pay the costs of any extra regulation?