Hairdressing — House of Commons, 2015-01-07
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Richard Quentin Fuller (Conservative, Centre-right): There are a number of points in that. First, people who work for a qualification get that qualification and credit at the end of their training course, which is a sense of celebration and merit for them. Secondly, if they believe it is valuable to get that additional accreditation from the council, that is perfectly open to them. There is nothing barring someone from taking on that accreditation, but the hon. Lady proposes not to treat accreditation in that way but to make it a compulsory requirement, and that is where I differ from her approach. Qualifications provide people with that credit, and the sector currently works adequately at that level Another factor is word of mouth. If there is one part of our lives where word of mouth has a big influence on where we go, it must surely be in who cuts our hair. We listen to what people say, perhaps when we are younger, and then we stick with someone and they cut our hair for many years into the future. We get to know who we want from what other people say, and we tend to stick with what we know. In that type of structure, and given how demand in a market works, regulation seems to be more of an impediment and intrusion into people’s normal practice of finding the right barber or hairdresser than a help Supply and demand works. If someone is operating a salon and provides poor or risky service, they will go out of business because in most communities people know which barbers and hairdressers do not work effectively. As I said, there is already quite a lot of conversational management about the quality of service in that sector, and that has been supplemented by online sources. Nowadays people seeking a hairdresser can look at ratings and recommendations online, just as they can for other services. Finally, in the rare occurrences when a problem does occur, one can obviously seek redress directly from the salon for any impediment caused, and if a very severe issue has caused an injury, there is the opportunity for litigation. Plenty of measures are already in place that make regulation an unnecessary, perhaps even distracting, step The hon. Member for Llanelli said that regulation helps to stop the unscrupulous, but we had plenty of regulation in banking and that did not stop unscrupulous behaviour. She specifically mentioned taxi drivers. We have regulation in that sector, but in a number of activities there is still unscrupulous behaviour by taxi drivers. I do not see regulation, perhaps as the hon. Lady does, as providing a guarantee that something will be right. In fact, I believe that our understanding of how markets and people work, what we hear from our friends and others, and the service we directly receive, is a much better guide and form of consumer protection than blanket regulation I understand that the proposed measure is in the interests of the British Hair Council. I understand that it has about 6,000 registered members from the 250,000 people who could be registered, which is a relatively low proportion. Rather than compelling people to join, perhaps the council should ask itself some tough questions about why it has achieved such a low level of penetration. Why is its offer not attractive enough for people to join? It is not the job of government to give the council a leg up so that it can increase its membership—it should be doing that itself. I think the hon. Lady confirmed that the membership fee is £42, so the council, with its current 6,000 members, has an income of £250,000 a year. Were we to make membership compulsory, that income would go up to £10 million a year. I can therefore see a clear and direct financial interest for the council to be pushing this measure, through both the private Member’s Bill promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (David Morris) and today’s debate. I can see why the council is pushing very hard, but I am not hearing any compelling argument, related to either consumer satisfaction or industry improvement, about why we should take that step.