Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill

Debate between Baroness Hayman and Earl of Lindsay

Report stage
Wednesday 13th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to move Amendment 104 and speak to Amendment 118, tabled in my name. I declare my interests as chair of Peers for the Planet. I express my gratitude to my supporters, the noble Baronesses, Lady Harding of Winscombe, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick and Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville. I also thank the external organisations that have supported us with evidence and briefings.

With these amendments, we return to the issue raised in Committee of the suite of consumer rights known as the right to repair. As I explained then, the current lack of such a consumer right to repair means that many of us have experienced intense frustration at non-existent or overpriced spare parts for broken electrical and electronic equipment, which we are repeatedly told will be more expensive to repair than simply to replace. The least well-off households, on tight budgets, therefore get forced into a cycle of regularly replacing cheap equipment rather than being able to repair it and keep it in use for longer. As well as the economic impact on families and consumers, this wastes scarce resources, such as rare metals, while producing large amounts of waste for landfill. The UK now produces the second-highest per capita amount of electrical and electronic waste in the world.

My amendment would task the Government with producing a strategy to enhance the consumer’s right of repair for electrical and electronic products, and would put a stop to restrictive practices that undermine consumer efforts to repair and continue to use the products they own. As I said in Committee, there is widespread public support for action. That support was echoed around the Committee when we debated it and is evidenced in the extreme popularity of television’s “The Repair Shop”. I am grateful for the support of its presenter, Jay Blades, when he said that too often our efforts to repair things

“are blocked by manufacturers’ badly designed products or unaffordable spare parts. Extending a right to repair would help us rediscover the joy and skill of restoration, repair and redesign”.

I am extremely grateful to the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Offord, and his team of officials, from both his department and others, for their extensive engagement on this topic since Committee, but I am afraid that I remain unconvinced that everything is well and that there is no need for an overarching strategy. I recognise that a number of limited initiatives are under way, but I am afraid the reality is that the work that is being undertaken falls short of the necessary scale, breadth and urgency if we are to improve the consumer’s experience.

In addition, there is no clear point of accountability for this work at the centre of government. Responsibilities are split between at least three departments. The Department for Business and Trade is engaged in relation to post-Brexit product safety standards. Defra ostensibly owns waste and resource management policies across the board, but all responsibility for the repair of electrical and electronic products now rests under the eco-design regulations, which sit at DESNZ. But DESNZ focuses on reducing domestic greenhouse gas emissions, rather than on the repairability of products such as computers, tablets and smartphones.

My decision to return to this issue, with some limited changes in response to criticisms made in Committee, has been influenced by two additional points. First, I discovered that under the Northern Ireland protocol, where the single market in fact includes eco-design, eco-labelling and battery legislation, consumers in Northern Ireland will be able to repair phones, smart- phones and tablets, and to see a repair index in the energy label from next year. They will also be able to replace all batteries in consumer products from 2027. These rules come from the EU, which, like many other jurisdictions, is pressing ahead with its own reforms. This leads me to believe that the complexities that the Minister has previously outlined are not insuperable and that the Government, if they can do it in Northern Ireland, could extend similar protections to consumers in England, Scotland and Wales.

The second point that makes me return to the subject is the letter published yesterday by Philip Dunne MP, the chair of the Environmental Audit Committee in the House of Commons. That letter criticised and bemoaned—that is probably fair—the progress that has been made in the three and a half years since the committee’s report on electric waste. The letter says that adequate progress is simply not being made. In November 2020, the EAC said that the Government should enshrine the right to repair in law. In February 2021, the Government responded that they

“would explore whether requirements to improve repairability … could be considered for a wider range of products”.

More than three years later, they are still exploring but are yet to discover a single additional product for which they might legislate for increased repairability. I fear that the necessary action will simply not happen unless someone in government takes a grip—I can think of no one better than the Minister we have with us today—and we can see a coherent strategy and plan and the accountability for its implementation.

I believe I have responded to most of the points the Minister made in Committee. He also suggested that adding the right to repair to consumer law would oblige retailers to pre-emptively seek information from manufacturers, adding to costs and reducing choice. My amendment would not do that. It would put the obligation on manufacturers to proactively provide the data—it would not put the duty on retailers; nor do I think the amendment could possibly fall foul of WTO rules when so many other WTO members are doing similar things.

I simply do not believe that the progress made already is sufficient or that there are insuperable barriers to doing what needs to be done. The argument that we can rely on progress that is glacial at best simply does not hold water. Everyone seems to think that this is a good idea. No one argues against having better-designed and easier-to-repair products. It is just that no one seems to be willing to grasp the nettle to do anything about it. This amendment would make sure that they did. I beg to move.

[The Earl of Lindsay (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 109 and 115. Once again, I do so with the co-sponsorship of the noble Baronesses, Lady Crawley and Lady Bakewell.

I will address Amendment 109 first. Fake reviews can cause loss, detriment and harm to consumers and law-abiding businesses. The government amendment that adds fake reviews to the practices in the schedule is therefore welcome. However, that amendment makes the practice an “excluded description”, meaning that enforcement action can be taken only through the civil route.

All the other banned practices, except two relating to matters under the remit of the Advertising Standards Authority, allow enforcement officers to take action through either the civil or the criminal courts. That depends on what is most appropriate and proportionate in the circumstances. If it is deemed that 29 out of the current 31 practices should have the option of a criminal penalty, we strongly believe that fake reviews should also be in this category, as the practice is arguably more serious and causes greater detriment to consumers and reputable businesses than a number of the other practices in that list. Making fake reviews either a civil or a criminal breach would send a strong message to those looking to deceive consumers and would give enforcers the opportunity to take stronger action if and when necessary.

I turn to Amendment 115. Invitation to purchase is a complex area of the legislation, and the Bill differentiates between this and “misleading omissions”. A commercial practice is a misleading omission if it omits “material information”; in other words, information the average consumer needs to make an informed decision. It can be challenging to decide what is information that consumers want and what is information that consumers need. If a practice is an invitation to purchase, a number of matters are identified as being material information. Therefore, an omission of any of these breaches the legislation and allows enforcement action to be taken.

One of those matters is the trader’s name and address. Rogue traders often approach vulnerable consumers offering unnecessary and substandard work, but without giving a price before starting the work. As price is part of the definition of invitation to purchase, in such circumstances the practice is not an invitation to purchase and so the trader’s name and address are not specifically material information. This is to the detriment of the consumer. This information is unlikely to be considered material information under misleading omissions, and the Companies Act 2006 does not require the provision of a name and address if a trader has no trading name or is trading under his own name.