Clause 52 - POWER OF OFT TO IMPOSE CIVIL PENALTIES
Consumer Credit Bill
10:30 am
Mr Malcolm Bruce (Shadow Secretary of State for Trade & Industry, Trade & Industry; Gordon, Liberal Democrat)
I raised the issue of what the penalty would be applied to, and that also cropped up on Second Reading. In other words, if a company has been pursuing practices that are determined to be in breach of the law, is the penalty a one-off fine for the collective breach or could it be a series of fines for each individual breach? If the latter were the case, a much larger fine could be imposed on a company.
Will the Minister say whether the advice to him is that the courts could apply a ruling in that way? That would substantially alter the effect of the Bill. It is unusual, although not unprecedented, to include a figure in a Bill. It is not often, I must say, that Opposition Members encourage Ministers to introduce secondary legislation, but here it might be appropriate.