Consumer Rights Bill

Andrew Percy Excerpts

Tuesday 13th May 2014 Commons Chamber

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) for all the amendments she has tabled, and for the work she is doing in the industry. She has been trying to clean up the consumer credit market and end the damage that it is doing to many of our constituents. Government Members may laugh at the idea that the cost-of-living crisis is affecting people in our communities, but we see at first hand the way in which consumer credit companies are making a mockery of the idea that we have adequate consumer protection in our country. We believe that the new clauses would go some way towards continuing the conversation.

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

I intervene on the hon. Lady because I want to put it on record that no Government Members are laughing about anyone who happens to be in debt. Many of us, along with Opposition Members, have worked very hard to deal with issues relating to personal debt, and we are not laughing at all.

[Stella Creasy]

I am delighted to hear that the hon. Gentleman takes the issue seriously. I assume that he will support the new clauses, which constitute a recognition of the need to act now. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman talks of 13 years, but the growth of the payday lending and logbook loan industries has exploded as people have found that there is too much month at the end of their money. That has been a fact for the last couple of years. The question for all of us now is this: do we sit and argue about these issues, or do we take action? The Bill gives us an opportunity to take action with some very concrete proposals to end fees for debt management companies, to make the payday lenders pay their way, and to deal with the problem of logbook loans.

Let me simply say this to Government Members. They can either put their money where their mouths are and recognise that these problems need to be dealt with, or they can carp and make political points. It is their call, but I know what my constituents would rather see: support for the new clauses.

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[Chris Williamson (Derby North) (Lab)]

I rise to support new clause 22 which is an important first step in addressing a private rented sector into which many hundreds of thousands of people who would previously perhaps have been allocated a social housing dwelling have been forced because council houses and housing association properties are currently in short supply. Many of them have to move over and over again: often these are people on very low incomes and they are hit with punitive charges by profiteering rogue letting agents. I say that this is an important first step because it is not just about the charges associated with establishing a tenancy in the first instance.

A letting agency in Derby, Professional Properties, hits people not only with the sorts of charges we are debating, which would be covered by the new clause, but with additional spurious charges when they end their tenancy. I am dealing with one case in particular where a young woman who looked after the property in which she had been living very well was hit with an enormous charge of more than £1,000 for spurious repairs. As a result of my intervention that charge was dropped, but there has been a refusal to allow her to have her deposit back. Those are shameful tactics by letting agents who are exploiting a very vulnerable group in society, and it is incumbent on us in this place to stand up for people who are being exploited in this way.

It is important to acknowledge that the private rented sector does have a role to play, but we want a responsible private rented sector and a responsible letting agents sector. Rents in the private sector have gone through the roof, so there is ample money in this system without these additional charges being heaped on people, who, as I have said, are often on very low incomes. I strongly support new clause 22 as a very important first step to regularising the private rented sector in our country.

[Andrew Percy]

I want to speak primarily to new clause 22, but first let me briefly speak in support of new clause 14. I thought I was the only person who had problems with switching, believing it to be another in the long list of failures in my life, but since I got elected I have realised that there is a massive issue to address so I fully support that provision. I have some sympathy with new clause 13, as I would like to see better labelling, but I am not sure I can support it as drafted.

On new clause 22, I should declare that I do not have any buy-to-let properties—I struggled enough to qualify for one mortgage, so the idea of qualifying for a further mortgage is probably a bit of a joke. Going through the list of other Members who have relevant interests, I noted that an awful lot of them were on the Opposition Benches. I assume that no Labour Members who rent out a property do so through a letting agent that charges fees, because to do so would be to fall foul of a word we are not allowed to say in here.

With this new clause we have a campaign going on. We have student union politics at the moment whereby the Opposition pick an issue and throw it out there in the hope it gets some traction. They do not think it through; there is nothing more to it than that. This time the issue is letting agent fees. It is my belief that they have not spoken to the letting agents or to many of the tenants who have to pay the fees—if they had, they would not be proposing this measure in such a way. I want a sensible debate on this, but we do not get it. As I have said, what we have had is an orchestrated campaign in which Labour opponents, many of whom live in massive houses in particular constituencies, have been told by the Labour party centrally here in London to parrot a particular line. They do not care about it to the extent that they have ever stood up and talked about it before. My Labour opponent, who wrote to me about this, certainly never had a word to say about it before she was told to do so by Labour headquarters in London. That is what is going on here. We are not having a sensible debate about this measure, which hits some of the big cities such as London, or about repeat fees. Labour has taken this scattergun approach in the hope of trying to drum up support for the measure, but what will happen is that rents will go up, because these charges will not disappear; the tenant will have to pay them in some way.

In many houses in my constituency, particularly in Goole which is relatively poor, the landlords do not charge bonds. They say is that if they cannot charge a relatively small fee—the biggest company in my constituency, Goole Property Centre, does not charge repeat fees or fees to people who do not then get a property—they will charge bonds instead. The cost of getting into a property to begin with could double or quadruple in my constituency.

I can tell Members what some of the letting agencies use their fees for. A large number of those who are renting are foreign tenants, and the agencies try to provide somebody who speaks their language and who gives them additional support, often getting them signed up to gas and electricity. They also help out with some of the simple things, which lead to a huge number of letters in my postbag. I am talking about things like bin collections—how to follow the rules—and community cohesion problems, which occur when large numbers of foreign migrants live in homes in multiple occupation. Landlords use their letting fees to subsidise such activity, and that is what will disappear. This is an ill-thought out policy from the Labour party. Let us have a sensible debate about it. The hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) said that it was too early to make a decision, because we need to see what happens with the trial in Scotland. Unfortunately, Labour has decided not to wait, but wants to continue with a student union type approach to try to build something around the cost of living issue. It is a bit pathetic in my view, which is why I will not support this measure until we have a proper and sensible debate.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

I am concerned about the way in which this debate on halal and kosher has been taking place in the country and about some of the things that have been said in the Chamber. At the heart of this debate is a suggestion that somehow the halal and kosher slaughtering processes are more painful for the animal than the stunning process. Some 90% of the meat in this country is stunned, so we are talking about just 10% of meat. I am sure that Members can see behind what the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) is saying. He claims that the whole country is concerned about the issue. As somebody who is virtually a vegetarian, but occasionally will eat meat, I am concerned not just about the rights of animals but about the issue of experimentation on animals, which I speak up about and campaign against. The newspaper that is going on about halal meat does not talk about experimentation on animals, which is real cruelty. We know that it just wants to have a go at one particular group of people. I want to deal with one central question, which seems to be the accepted wisdom of everyone here, and that is whether the kosher and halal method of slaughtering is more painful.

A scientific study was carried out by Professor Schultz and his colleague at Hanover university in Germany. They took one group of animals and followed the halal and kosher slaughtering process, and then took another group and followed the stunning process. They placed electrodes on the animals concerned and monitored the level of pain experienced by the animals. If anyone is squeamish here, they can place their hands over their ears. This is what they said about the halal method:

“The first three seconds from the time of Islamic slaughter as recorded on the EEG did not show any change from the graph before slaughter, thus indicating that the animal did not feel any pain during or immediately after the incision…For the following 3 seconds, the EEG recorded a condition of deep sleep—unconsciousness. This is due to the large quantity of blood gushing out from the body…After the above-mentioned 6 seconds, the EEG recorded zero level, showing no feeling of pain at all…As the brain message…dropped to zero level, the heart was still pounding and the body convulsing”—

at this point, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and other organisations might say that the animal is suffering, because it is convulsing, but the reason for that is not pain, but that the blood is leaving the body and the bones in the body structure are convulsing. That is not pain—[Interruption.] I wish hon. Members would listen.

With the stunning method, although the animal appeared to fall unconscious after the stunning, in fact the EEG graph

“showed severe pain immediately after stunning”.

Let us be realistic about stunning. It is not a nice little prick; it is done via an electric shock or sometimes, with some animals, a pistol. We are not talking about a painless death.