Clause 16 - Time orders
Consumer Credit Bill
2:30 pm
Gerry Sutcliffe (Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Employment Relations and Consumer Affairs), Department of Trade and Industry; Bradford South, Labour)
I am trying not to hide away from the issue. The hon. Gentleman is forgetting what I said about the way that the Bill has been consulted on and the way that we worked closely, not just in the past few months but over a number of years, with the industry and others to consider most of the issues. He is right; the notification has to go by first-class post or by hand. That is the same way that any similar type of notice across the sector is handled. Nobody from the industry has said that they think it would have to be sent by recorded delivery. He is being unduly cautious. I do not know whether he has had discussions with the industry on this point. The approach of sending the notification by post or by hand is appropriate.
We have said that the relationship in these areas is quite a strong one.
The Interpretation Act 1978 states:
''Where an Act authorises or requires any document to be served by post (whether the expression ''serve'' or the expression ''give'' or ''send'' or any other expression is used) then, unless the contrary intention appears, the service is deemed to be effected by properly addressing, pre-paying and posting a letter containing the document and, unless the contrary is proved, to have been effected at the time at which the letter would be delivered in the ordinary course of post.''
We talked about electronic mail and sending things.
The safeguards are in place. Clause 16 deals with time orders, which we were asked for by Members on Second Reading and indeed during the previous discussion that we had.