Package Travel and Linked Travel Arrangements (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2018 — House of Lords, 2018-11-28
Topic: Domestic Commerce
John Gummer (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I was fortunate in my education to do a long period of medieval history, in which I read a great deal of complicated theological arguments about angels on the end of a pin—and I am beginning to wonder whether the Government have gone to that position. All these people are working away, trying to create an entirely unnecessary thing because they wish to get rid of something which is both necessary and sensible. My noble friend said that this statutory instrument was both sensible and necessary. It is necessary but it is entirely unsensible. It is not sensible to get rid of a perfectly reasonable mechanism whereby we all recognise each other’s insolvency arrangements However, I will take my noble friend to the practical situation. A middle-aged gentleman—unhappily, I am not middle-aged now, but just imagine it—wants to buy a package holiday for his family. He goes into a travel agent, who presents him with a series of opportunities. Is he supposed to say to the travel agent, "Is this bus ride arranged for the island of Corfu covered by the insolvency arrangements here, or has there been an arrangement, or are you covering it?" No, of course—that is up to the travel agent. But what if they do not do it? What happens to the protection for the customer? Can my noble friend say what on earth we are doing here, asking the customer to have to know about this? The customer has to know about it. I apologise to the Minister but the customer does have to know about it, otherwise he is entirely in the hands of the travel agent obeying the rules and understanding them That leads me to the second issue. The travel agent has to understand not only what the rules are under this peculiar decision but who, among the people who have put together the package, is covered and who is not. He then has to understand how he gets the coverage for those who are not covered. The Minister may be an expert in insurance and in insolvency, but few travel agents are. We are asking them to discern what they have to do in circumstances when a mixed package is presented to them In the notes, the words "may" and "could" are used. The fact is that this is not a matter of "may" or "could". It will be more expensive—that must be true—and it is not that it "could" cause more difficulties: it will cause more difficulties. Therefore, as the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, said, the bit which suggests that there is no special arrangement for small businesses is true as far as that goes—but not the second half, which says that no new obligation is placed upon them. There is an obligation; they now have to understand the interior workings of very complicated issues On the CAA, if it is not going to be the point of contact, which instead will be the Government, will we perhaps have the undoubted quality of the service provided by the Home Office in these circumstances? The CAA has shown itself extremely well organised to deal with these issues, as the noble Baroness said. Or will the Home Office, or whoever, be the point of contact but the CAA will then carry out what needs to be done? If that is the case, we are again complicating something which ought to be simple I am sorry that the Minister has to produce a manifestly barmy proposal. It is barmy because, in a world in which we are so close together, and where it is obviously sensible for us to have mutual recognition of things such as this, we are suggesting that there is some fundamentally sensible reason to remove ourselves from that and to set up a system in which the two people who now have to understand it are the two sets of people least able to do so: the travel agent and the customer. The customer will have to make sure, for his own protection, that the mechanism laid down in this statutory instrument, which is so much more complicated, has in fact been complied with I would love to be the fly on the wall during the conversation between the slightly informed customer and the slightly informed travel agent who are trying to work this out together. But what saddens me is that we are complicating something that is simple, straightforward, reasonable and about the world we live in, and are putting in its place something which has a much better position in medieval manuscripts.