NORMAN BAKER BACKS PLANS POWER BACK TO THE COMNSUMER

Liberal Democrat MP for Lewes, Norman Baker has backed the Liberal Democrat proposals which were approved at the recent party conference; he says they will help to give power back to the consumers.

The plans include a 'universal service code' for organisations which provide a service to the public.

This will commit them to, among other things, making one of the first options in a telephone response system to speak to a human being.

It will also require firms to make their customer service phone number free to call from both mobiles and landlines, train staff to deal quickly and effectively with customer enquiries and make and keep appointments for visits, installations and phone calls within a one-hour timeframe.

Other proposals include the immediate clearing of bank payments and fees, a duty on energy companies to publish information on all available tariffs on their bills, measures to prevent supermarkets building up local monopolies and a beefed-up consumer watchdog to name and shame companies involved in bad practice.

Norman Baker said, "I am pleased to back these proposals, which stand to help many of my constituents.

"In the past, I have received many complaints from people who feel that their relationships with companies and public bodies are skewed against them.

"When they have a problem or an enquiry about a service they have paid for, people deserve to be treated fairly, and it is reasonable that they should be able to talk to a person and not a machine.

"Customers must have the power to make fair and informed choices without the fear of being taken for a ride and bewildered by mindless bureaucracy."

DVLA IS BETRAYING DRIVERS WHO HAD ENTRUSTED IT WITH THEIR INFORMATION - BAKER

According to Times online website the DVLA is selling drivers’ names and addresses to clamping companies that break industry rules by charging drivers more than £500 for minor parking breaches.

The agency made more than £4 million last year by selling the details of 1.6 million drivers. It sold 900 names and addresses to Newline Securities and Parking Control Management, both of which have repeatedly double-charged drivers for parking breaches and inflated bills by adding spurious charges.

Newline left a family stranded overnight after seizing a car and refusing to allow the owner to retrieve his house keys. PCM charged an elderly couple £375 after they parked for 30 minutes outside a boarded-up office.

The agency has continued to sell drivers’ details to the companies despite being aware of their behaviour. This contradicts the agency’s claim that it carefully vets companies seeking access to the vehicle register. The agency also claims that it denies access to companies that have breached the industry code on parking enforcement.

Parking companies seek drivers’ names and addresses when they have been unable to clamp a vehicle. They use closed-circuit television to read numberplates and, having obtained the owner’s details from the DVLA, send demands for payment in the post.

If the driver fails to pay, the companies multiply the charge and send debt collectors to people’s homes. There is no right of appeal to an independent body, as there is for parking fines incurred on the public highway.

Newline charged Panos Eliades £532 to retrieve his car after he parked on a private road in North London. Newline charged separate fees for clamping and removal, even though the BPA code states that only one fee can be imposed if the car is removed within three hours of being clamped.

Liberal Democrat Shadow Transport Secretary, Norman Baker said: “The DVLA is betraying drivers who had entrusted it with their information.”

On 22 May the RAC released a report into ‘cowboy’ car clampers, and Norman Baker said at the time: “The Government has allowed an unfair, two-tier system to develop where council car parks are regulated but cowboy clampers operate on private ones.”

“Unsuspecting drivers who find themselves ripped off by unscrupulous private clampers have nowhere to turn for help.

“Clamping on private land has been outlawed in Scotland and it is time that it was banned in England too.”