Orders of the Day — Consumer Credit Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 1:00 pm on 9 June 2005.

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Photo of John Battle John Battle Labour, Leeds West 1:00, 9 June 2005

I, too, served on the Committee that considered the previous Bill and, as the hon. Gentleman probably knows, I have taken an interest in the matter for some time. I sincerely welcome the Conservative party's approach on the Bill, but I wonder whether he will go an extra yard in the direction that I would like to push the Minister. In addition to having an unfair lending test, I would be interested in building into the Bill a responsible lending test to put an onus on those lending money to act more responsibly. At the moment they can slide away from that responsibility, which is why we see stories such as that in the Daily Mail. I do not blame the borrowers for that, but the lenders.