Consumer Rights
BIS has committed to clarifying and simplifying consumer rights as part of a comprehensive package of measures to improve consumer protection. This is a key response to the Government’s Red Tape Challenge.
Reform of Consumer Rights
The UK has one of the best consumer protection regimes in the world but the current law has developed piecemeal over many decades. As a result it is fragmented, overlapping and often expressed in complex language that is difficult for consumers and business to understand. We intend to put that right.
We will bring forward legislation written in clear, simple English to reduce the burden on businesses and enhance consumer confidence. Consumer rights will be clearer and easier to understand, so as to create the right conditions for sustainable economic growth. This comprehensive updating of consumer law will lead to the scrapping or major reform of some 12 pieces of existing legislation.
What will change?
We intend to clarify and strengthen rights in the following areas:
- Quality standards consumers can expect for goods, services or digital content and the redress they can get if these standards have not been met
- Information consumers should be given before making a purchase
- Redress for consumers who suffer from misleading or aggressive practices, including aggressive selling in the home
- Rights of consumers and small businesses to challenge anti-competitive behaviour and get compensation for losses.
We also intend to simplify consumer law enforcement powers, currently set out in 60 pieces of legislation, and make it easier for Trading Standards to tackle rogue traders across local authority boundaries.
The first elements of this package of measures have now been published. They are:
The consultation on the consolidation and modernisation of consumer law enforcement powers The closing date for responses is June 2012; and
The Law Commission consultation and report on Misleading and Aggressive Practices.
The consultation on private actions in competition law - the closing date for responses is 24 July 2012.
In the summer BIS will consult further on proposals to simplify other consumer rights with the aim of bringing forward a new Consumer Bill of Rights.
