Clause 15
Consumers, Estate Agents and Redress Bill
9:15 am
Jim Fitzpatrick (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department of Trade and Industry; Poplar and Canning Town, Labour)
The hon. Lady raises several fair points. To a certain extent, the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford raised the principle of working out the details of complaints handling procedures, responsibility, accountability and communications, and that is work in progress. I will be able to say a little more on that when we deal with clause 16 stand part.
I am grateful that the hon. Member for Richmond Park told me informally outside Committee that she was going to raise the question of complaints—business complaints in particular. I know that we are going to have another informal discussion in the interval today to ensure that we can give a more substantive answer when we get to the part of the Bill that deals with complaints handling and redress procedures. I hope that we can deal with that matter in due course.
The new council will provide consumer advocacy and support for vulnerable consumers and businesses as well as consumers generally. It will be a matter for the new redress schemes to resolve the complaints, which we will be coming to between clauses 47 and 52.