Schedule 1

Part of Financial Services Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 2:30 pm on 7 January 2010.

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Photo of Rob Marris Rob Marris Labour, Wolverhampton South West 2:30, 7 January 2010

I very much doubt that the body will be offering loans. However, it is curious that while it seems clear to the Minister and the Government what the body will do—what it says on the tin—we have on the face of the Bill specifically an exemption from the requirement for a consumer credit licence.

Paragraph 5 seems quite extraordinary, and I would like the Minister to explain it a bit more. It is almost an “Alice in Wonderland” provision. For anything that would be against the law, the consumer financial education body can say, “It is not against the law.” The body is one that, as I adverted to earlier, under my reading of paragraph 3, is pretty much divorced from the Crown—it is a kind of super quango. As I read it—I may be misreading it—pursuant to clause 5, the body can make up its own laws, in the sense that it can say whether a person is exempt from the laws under the Consumer Credit Act 1974. Paragraph 5 seems a strange provision, and I hope that the Minister can say a little more about the rules of law that could be waived by that fairly independent body, the CFEB.