Financial Guidance and Claims Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2017-09-13
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Charles Hay (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, this is not really the final furlong but the final approach, I suppose, if we are to keep the metaphor going. I shall also speak to Amendment 76, which is connected. I begin by thanking the Minister, who has been very helpful to me on this. He was even sending me lucid emails at 7.21 am today. I also thank the Association of British Insurers, which has been extremely helpful in the preparation of my remarks These probing amendments address two issues that I perceive. First, Scotland has a separate legal system and major differences concerning no-win no-fee. There are major differences, too, in its regulation of CMCs. In Scotland, CMC activities are not regulated and referral fees are allowed—unlike in England, where CMCs are regulated and the paying of referral fees is an offence. How wrong it would then be if a substandard CMC could camp in Dumfries and aim at English consumers, free from regulatory control. I am certain that any form of cross-border arbitrage would be wholly against the admirable intentions of the Bill It appears, however, that this is exactly what is happening. DWF, the respected Manchester-head- quartered law practice, which has offices in Scotland and internationally, commented in February that, "in recent years increased levels of fraud have been detected in Scotland, along with a significant rise in injury claims. In part, this is thought to be due to the effect of LASPO in England pushing claims management companies into Scotland, where their activities are not regulated and referral fees are allowed" There must be a general principle that businesses must not be allowed to arbitrage the UK’s regulatory and legal environments to the detriment of consumers. The FCA is, rightly, a UK-wide regulator in, for instance, non-life insurance. I feel strongly that it should be so here. Can the Minister comment on the position of the territorial scope of the Bill and whether this legal and regulatory arbitrage is acceptable to the Government My second point concerns CMCs in Scotland generally. I have already referred to the November 2016 Which? report and some of the rather horrifying position that it laid out. However, I note that three of the top five cities for nuisance calls were Scottish, and that in Scotland PPI calls were the number one type of nuisance call. In Glasgow, as I said, over half of the one million calls sampled were nuisance calls, according to the report This very week, Citizens Advice Scotland is running a campaign called Calling Time on Nuisance Calls to highlight the problem. I wish it well. It aims to reduce this pernicious problem, causing as it does, according to Keith Brown MSP, the responsible Minister, "emotional and financial harm" to Scottish citizens. This month the Scottish Government have put out a paper, A Response to Scotland’s Nuisance Calls Commission: An Action Plan. Keith Brown is behind the paper. On page 5, when referring to the statistics from which I have been quoting, he writes: "Faced with these statistics, we must take action now that will make a difference, even as we press the UK Government to do more" What is that "more" where CMCs are concerned? Is the Bill not an ideal opportunity to deal with that and the regulatory and legal arbitrage problem to which I referred earlier? I strongly urge the UK and Scottish Governments to bring CMCs in Scotland under the experienced wing of the FCA. I beg to move.