Government Services (Websites)

Debate between Damian Hinds and Mark Garnier

Tuesday 22nd October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mark Garnier]

There are warnings out there, and I shall develop that point as I make my speech, but the hon. Gentleman is right. It is difficult for people to tell the difference between one type of website and another.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to see you in the Chair this evening, Madam Deputy Speaker.

There is a way of telling that a website is a Government website—it uses the suffix .gov.uk, but most people cannot be expected to know that kind of techie detail. Does my hon. Friend agree that such problems exist for private companies as well, and the problem is not just about access to Government sites? We need a labelling system on the internet that gives some weight to intellectual property and brand owners—the biggest brand in this country is the Government—so that people can be confident that when they see a certain symbol or read a certain word they are on a genuine website.

[Mark Garnier]

My hon. Friend suggests action that the internet search engines can take, and I shall develop that point if I may make progress with my speech, although the interventions have shown that this is a widespread issue that affects not only Government websites, but private websites. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) raises the slightly alarming point that providers of services can be undermined by someone snaffling their place, as it were, and that is very bad for competition.

These websites, having squeezed themselves in between the consumer and the Government website trying to provide the service, offer to provide a notional service—form filling—and then charge a premium to submit the form on the person’s behalf. BBC Hereford and Worcester has many such examples. Harry from Droitwich paid £49 for a website to fill in his passport form, only to discover that he still had to pay £72.50 for the actual cost of the passport. David from Kidderminster tried to apply for a driving licence online, filling in a form that he believed was his application, but the website just checked the information and sent him the typed-out completed form to send off to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, and charged him £50 to do so. It did not even pay for the stamp! This website was a little more helpful, however, as it advertised a number that could be used to complain about how misleading the site was, but of course he discovered that it was a premium rate telephone number. Perhaps the worst example of abuse by intermediary websites is the case of a Worcestershire resident who texted me while I was being interviewed yesterday morning complaining that she had been charged £30 for a European health insurance card, which is available free from the NHS and which ensures that British citizens get access to health care throughout the EU.

These misleading websites fall into two broad categories. The first are those that are deliberately misleading: websites that set out cynically to dupe the consumer into thinking that they are official Government websites. They look and feel like the website they seek to ape and they charge a premium for a service that is otherwise provided by the Government at a set rate. They win their so-called customers by winning the search engine optimisation game and achieving the top slot on the search engine results page—consumers naturally click on the top site, especially if its name suggests official status.

[Damian Hinds]

My hon. Friend is kind when he talks about their winning the top slot, because of course they pay for it, getting to the top of the search engine list by making the biggest pay-per-click bid multiplied by the biggest click-through rate—a game the Government should never get into, being funded only by taxpayers.

[Mark Garnier]

That is absolutely right, and again I shall be developing that point a little later, although the search engines are trying to help.

From time to time, these deliberately misleading websites are scrutinised by the Advertising Standards Authority, and prosecutions have been pursued and won, which is a good thing. I understand that more will be done, and I am sure that the Minister will share with the House what measures are coming in due course.

The second type of website is just as cynical, supposedly offering a service to help people fill in their forms. We have heard that the Post Office provides just such a service. For a fee of £8.75, it will check that a passport application form has been properly filled in and send in the application, together with the expired passport, to the Passport Office. This seems a perfectly reasonable fee, especially considering that it includes the cost of postage. What is less reasonable is the £49.50 charged to Harry from Droitwich for the same service, which did not include postage, and the case of the constituent of my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Andrew Bingham). These websites offer what they would argue is a value service, but its true value is of huge debate.

Importantly, according to the House of Commons Library, there is nothing preventing a business from offering services that provide assistance with official processes, and if the services do little to speed up the process, the law does not make them illegal, even if they are utterly worthless. In my view, they are utterly pointless and simply seek to take advantage of consumers by putting themselves higher up the search page results than the official website. We are all caught out by this. We in the House of Commons, of all people, must be more aware of how Government websites work than anyone else, yet IPSA felt it necessary to warn us that the premiums being charged by the congestion charge intermediary sites were not reclaimable. In a bulletin to Members on 21 August, the No. 1 item read:

“If you’re paying for your London congestion charge payment online, please make sure you are using only the official TfL website… Unofficial websites often levy an unnecessary administrative fee.”

It should be obvious to all which site is a genuine Government site and which is a misleading attempt to take money from a consumer. As we have heard, a proper site will end with the gov.uk suffix, an ending reserved for genuine official Government websites. Similarly, the intermediary sites are required to carry a disclaimer saying that they are not official sites. They all seem to have them. Generally, they will be found right at the bottom of a fairly long page and in minute print. Despite that being obvious to the informed, and despite occasional awareness campaigns and rulings from judges on bogus sites, however, more and more people are being duped into using these unnecessary services.

It is wholly wrong that people are misled this way for a number of reasons, not least because people on tightened budgets find themselves conned out of some of their increasingly hard-pressed reserves. I have great sympathy with the consumer. Whilst it may be obvious that there are ways of differentiating the bogus from the genuine website, why should we expect the consumer miraculously to know and understand all the subtleties of web addresses, suffixes and disclaimer protocols?

The good news, as I alluded to earlier, is that the search engines broadly speaking agree with this. Google, in anticipation of this debate, sent me some advice on how it is already tackling the issue and it is worth sharing this with the House. Google has what it calls a “sale of free items policy”, which states that Google allows the promotion only of sites that charge for services associated with products or services that may be otherwise available for free as long as a number of disclosures are presented together prominently above the fold on the landing pages. I will share the four items it talked about.

The first is that the site clearly states whether the advertiser is affiliated or not affiliated with the Government official source or free source; secondly, that the site discloses that the product, services or forms are available from the Government official source or free source either for free, where applicable, or at a lower cost than the advertiser charges; thirdly, that the site must describe the additional services offered that are available from the Government official source or free source—this is the value proposition—and that advertisers should not misrepresent the value that they add by highlighting features or services available from the official source for free; finally, that the ads and landing pages cannot promote services that provide little or no additional value to the user beyond the original official online automated application process.

It is helpful that some of the search engines do have a clear policy but it is still the case that the consumer’s eye will inevitably be drawn to the top of the page where the paid-for ads appear and where the consumer may also be under the misapprehension that if it is in a paid-for ad slot, it must be an official website.

What makes this so offensive is that the Government websites are already ours as a society. We as citizens have a stake in our Government. We as taxpayers already own these sites amongst us all. When one of these bogus service providers gets between the consumer and the website, they are getting in the way of something that is already ours by right. They are charging us for something we already own, for a service we are entitled to at the basic cost.

I am a fan of free enterprise. If there is an opportunity for an entrepreneur to make a living and it is a legal activity, I wish him good luck and every encouragement. If there is a genuine need for help to fill in Government forms because they are so unfathomably complex and a website advertises itself as providing a service where one is needed—which could of course include payment by PayPal—with ample disclaimers and no attempt to look like the official website, I think it is reasonable that the need be met. If it fills a need, it will be used.

But these websites depend on two things—winning the search engine optimisation battle and paying for the paid-for clicks, and for the consumer to think that they have found the official website they are looking for. The solution could be very simple indeed. In the first instance, it seems perfectly reasonable for the Government to come to an agreement with the search engine providers to ensure that if there is a service being searched with responses that have .gov.uk suffix, that website is placed right at the top of the search results in the No. 1 slot and at the head of the paid-for ad slot. In that way, every search will present the genuine official website first and the consumer will not find themselves being led to a wrong or a bogus site. Indeed, the search engines have already made headway on this. I spent a bit of time this afternoon checking and the .gov.uk sites seem to be at the top of the unpaid-for ads, but they are still in the fourth slot.

Should this problem persist and these bogus or dubious websites continue, it seems reasonable that a value test be put against these sites. If the site can prove that it is doing a reasonable and useful job, it should be allowed to compete against the Government on a service basis. After all, if people feel they need to spend the extra money to unravel a complex form or to pay using PayPal, it is important that the Government receive the message that they need to up their game in the service they are providing. But it is desirable for the Government to strive to provide an exemplary service to taxpayers in closing the opportunity to alternative providers of Government services. But should this problem persist and we continue to see people being duped into using these sites, even after the Government have done everything they can to reduce any chance of a value proposition for these misleading websites, surely a well policed outright ban must be considered.

We are well into the internet age and, as we develop the service that has now become a basic necessity of life, it is right that we should question and push back against some of the more unsavoury and opportunistic parts of the internet. Search engines are doing their bit, but it is vital that the Government should protect consumers from cynical and unscrupulous attempts to turn a profit while they are attempting to use services that are ours anyway. I am grateful to the Minister for his attention this late in the evening, and I look forward to hearing his comments on how we can resolve the problem.

Social Mobility

Debate between Damian Hinds and Mark Garnier

Thursday 28th June 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mark Garnier (Wyre Forest) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) and the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears) on securing this important debate. The right hon. Lady will be delighted to hear that I have no background in politics, but may be disappointed that prior to coming to this place I was a hedge fund manager and investment banker. However, as a result, I tend to view my work here, and the world, through a financial prism. It is in that context that I want to speak this afternoon about social mobility and financial education.

Something that has struck me since I have been in this place is that when we consider education we still mean reading, writing and arithmetic, and how important it is to go to university. Yet we miss out the fundamental, basic core skill of financial literacy. We expect current and future generations to go out into the world, find a job, save for retirement, buy houses, take on debt, start and run businesses and bring in the next generation of their families with only the most rudimentary knowledge of how the financial and money systems work.

That is not to say that there is no financial education. Schools make efforts to provide it. I have been lucky enough in my capacity as a Member of Parliament to give such a lesson, at Baxter college in Kidderminster, where the kids I talked to engaged very well with the subject of money. I also witnessed a lesson given by RBS at King Charles school in Kidderminster. Bank staff teach years 7 and 8 how to use a bank and understand the basics of the banking system. I know that schools would like to do more in that area. I am in the process of setting up a group of volunteers to go into schools to provide financial education for local kids.

Even with that benevolent tailwind of good will from teachers, provision is patchy and sporadic. There are serious problems in this country because of financial illiteracy. I shall paint a slightly gloomy picture to take account of where we are now. For many years our constituents were bombarded with letters from banks and credit card companies, announcing pre-approval for a £10,000 loan, an opportunity to go on that life-changing Caribbean cruise or a chance to own that sports car that it is impossible to live without. All the while, even senior people in the country—I am not making any political point—were assuring us that the traditional economic cycles had somehow been changed.

The reality is that economic cycles will never change. There will always be an economic cycle that goes through the five stages of recovery, acceleration, boom, slowdown and recession. However, to maintain the illusion, we had irresponsible lending and, it now seems, as we have heard today, illegal activities around market abuse from the biggest banks, which is one of the most shocking things that we will hear while we are Members of Parliament.

To talk about irresponsible lending without addressing the other side of the coin is, however, only to half-address the problem. Taking out a 120% mortgage at the height of a property boom is irresponsible borrowing, and the banks could not lend irresponsibly were it not for irresponsible borrowing by successive consumers. However, here is the nub of the matter: is it fair to brand a consumer an irresponsible borrower, if he or she is not equipped with the knowledge to make a rational and informed decision about their borrowing? If someone does not have the knowledge to recognise the cynicism of the advertising campaigns and the short-termism of something like the fashion industry, how on earth can they make a sound judgment on the merits of a spending decision?

It is worth putting the country’s situation in perspective. Government debt, amassed over many years, stands at £1 trillion. Personal debt—the debt we collectively own among us—stands at just under £1.5 trillion. That is more than £56,000 for every household in the country. To put that into a wider context, I understand that half of all European personal debt lies within our shores, among a population representing about 10% of the population of Europe. Of that total debt, £55 billion is on credit cards.

The real worry to bear in mind is that I have outlined the situation at a time of super-low interest rates. The base rate has been at its present level for nearly five years, but that is totally abnormal. It is not even normal for a very low interest rate period, but over the five-year period, people have got used to ultra-low rates. The reality is that interest rates will undoubtedly rise, to a low interest rate environment. That means that the rise could happen before we get back to any semblance of a healthy economy. In a normal period of low interest rates, the base rate could rise from 3% to 4%. That, in simple terms, would increase the cost of borrowing by about one third; but if the base rate rises from its current level to a still low 2%, the cost of debt servicing rises fourfold. The implication is an astronomical rise in households’ debt costs.

We are talking about social mobility at a time when everything we are trying to achieve could be scuppered by the most basic movements in interest rates. It is vital that we try to head off such a disaster by providing advice, and we must also ensure that we never again face this potential catastrophe by training our next generation to engage in the economy in a far more educated way.

The immediate problem can be mitigated for some by website-based advice services. Some of the private ones, such as moneysavingexpert.com, provide good advice for those who can access and engage with them. That is an important point; not everyone can engage with the websites, because they do not understand even the basics. The Financial Services Authority’s efforts through the Money Advice Service are, at the moment, lamentable, but at least it is putting cash into debt advice services such as those provided by citizens advice bureaux.

If we are to avoid any further crises in household finances, we absolutely must introduce financial education into our curriculum. The demand for it is not being met. Some 97% of 11 to 17-year-olds think it is important, 80% of parents want their nine and 10-year-olds to learn about money and 66% of Britons think that financial lessons would have given them the resources to deal with their financial challenge. Given that 43% of parents do not know what an APR or a PPI is, it seems that those 66% of Britons are absolutely right that we need to teach people more.

As a former investment banker, even though I can dissect the Bayesian probability models that drive some black box hedge funds, my bank manager will testify, I am embarrassed to say, that I am completely incapable of balancing my cheque book every month. The all-party group on financial education for young people, of which I am vice-chairman, is calling for financial education to be put on the school curriculum.

I have painted a gloomy picture, but only because I want to reinforce the message that we cannot possibly expect people to achieve any form of social mobility without being able to engage with the oil that lubricates the engine of the economy in which we all live. If people are comfortable dealing with money and financial products, we have a confident population, equipped to do well in life, but if not, we trap people at best and, worse, in this complex financial world, we place them in danger of social failure.

I want to see financial literacy taught in two ways. First, I want to see the quantitative side being taught in maths, which not only will equip people to know whether they can afford something, but can bring maths to life. If the question, “Compounding 125 at 17% on 18 regular intervals while reducing the sum equally over those 18 intervals requires what discounting?” were asked as, “You want to buy a pair of football boots costing £125 on your credit card with an APR of 17%. What is your monthly repayment if you are to pay it off before they wear out in 18 months’ time?”, that would engage a lot more people in finding out how the maths works.

[Damian Hinds]

Without a calculator.

[Mark Garnier]

Absolutely. On the qualitative side, the question, “If I spend £125 on a pair of football boots, will I be able to play like David Beckham?” needs to be taught elsewhere, in personal, social, health and economic education, and in the wider curriculum. I discovered, to my cost, that the answer is no.

As time progresses, and we talk more about the subject, I am increasingly convinced that financial education needs to be not only included in the curriculum, but tested. Teachers who have huge pressures on their time naturally tend towards subjects in which there is testing, so if we do not test financial literacy there is a fear that it will not be put into the curriculum.

What we are trying to achieve is not just people being able to work out their bank and credit card balances. I want my constituents and all the people of this country to be able to work out problems such as that of a hypothetical individual who loses their job and lives in a rural community with £5,000 redundancy money to their name. I want people to be able to make the crucial decision about that individual’s future. Should they blow the money on a cheer-me-up holiday of a lifetime, or should they buy a car to seek work further afield? Should they use the money to retrain for something different, or should they invest it in a new business that they own and can drive forward, thus taking control of their own life?

The absolutely crucial engine to social mobility has to lie in financial literacy. That is why I will continue to urge the Government to put financial education on to the curriculum, and to test it.