Consumer Rights Bill – Lords amendments

This paper is designed to provide background information for Consideration of Lords Amendments of the Consumer Rights Bill, as brought from the House of Lords on 9 December 2014. This note, like the Lords Amendments themselves, refers to HL Bill 29, the Bill as first printed for the House of Lords. This note also refers to Explanatory Notes on Lords Amendments produced by the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) in conjunction with the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).

There were a number of lengthy debates in Grand Committee which paved the way for Opposition amendments tabled during Report Stage, which took place over three days on 19, 24 and 26 November 2014. A number of Opposition amendments were pressed to a vote. In total, there were 9 divisions; of which only one cross bench amendment on the issue of the resale of tickets was agreed resulting in a defeat for the Government. The result was Lords Amendment 12.

There were many Government amendments to the Bill. Specifically, Lords Amendments 1 to 11 and 13 to 78 were tabled in the name of the Minister. They included amendments on:

• how a consumer’s right to reject defective goods under the Bill would work where a contract is severable;

• the reasonable costs of returning rejected goods to be borne by the trader;

• the application of a price ‘deduction for use’ if a defective good is rejected by the consumer;

• contraventions of the code in relation to the regulation of premium rate services;

• the appointment of Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) Chairs;

• additional requirements on letting agents who hold client monies;

• the procedure for enforcing the duty on letting agents to display or publish their fees; and

• the list of higher education providers required to join the higher education complaints handling scheme