Leaving the EU: Consumer Protection

Gill Furniss Excerpts

Tuesday 10th October 2017 Westminster Hall

[Gill Furniss (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship, Mr Streeter. I congratulate the hon. Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford) on securing this important debate and particularly her eloquence and passion in introducing it. I also thank hon. Members present for their thoughtful and constructive contributions, which have vividly highlighted the importance of consumers to the UK economy, but also raised serious questions about what Brexit means for consumers and consumer protections.

Each month, consumers in the UK spend £100 billion in the economy, supporting local businesses, our manufacturing services and employees. Many of the consumer rights that we enjoy are embedded in EU legislation and institutional arrangements. I am disappointed by the Government’s approach to consumer concerns and by their refusal to set out the foundations of consumer protections post-Brexit.

The Government failed to mention consumer protection in their Brexit White Paper in February. They did not dedicate one of their 12 negotiating principles to consumers and consumer rights, and that barely had a mention in the Prime Minister’s 5,357-word speech in Florence. In addition, the Government continue to threaten that “no deal is better than a bad deal”, which could mean the UK crashing out of the EU and being forced to accept World Trade Organisation rules, which dictate tariffs on food of up to 62%—that is for beef—and on other goods such as cars. It will come as no shock that one third of consumers think that they will not be represented in the Brexit negotiations.

The Minister will say that the UK has played an important role in consumer protections, and I agree. The UK has often been a beacon for consumer protections in the EU and also globally, with countries across the world looking to us for our consumer protection laws, and we should be proud of that. However, consumers have been left with little assurance about whether, beyond Brexit, they will continue to enjoy the same rights and protections, or what the Government’s Brexit agenda will mean in this regard. Constituents across the country are asking, “Will it result in the UK being forced to accept chlorinated chicken from the US? What will be the overall impact on food and safety standards? What enforcement structures will be in place to support consumer protections?” There is much more they are asking about, as they do not have any clarity on those critical issues.

To begin with, there is deep concern about the current drafting of the Government’s key legislation, the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill. That Bill—in particular, clause 7—goes beyond the ability of Ministers to make technical changes and enters the murky waters of giving Ministers carte blanche powers to “prevent, remedy or mitigate” any “deficiency” in EU law, with no clear criteria about what that means. In effect, they can make whatever changes they see fit behind closed doors without proper parliamentary scrutiny. If left unchanged, that could have a devastating impact on consumer protections, with Ministers effectively able to bring about wide-ranging change on consumer issues such as food, product safety standards, approval systems and oversight of financial services. The uncertainty about the direction of consumer protections after Brexit leaves consumers in limbo about their rights and protections. This is not a question of simply copying and pasting the legislation from the EU into UK law; it is far more complicated with regard to how we apply the law.

Once we leave the EU, the Government maintain, we will be leaving all the EU bodies, so from the point of our departure, the consumer protection legislation of the EU and that of the UK are likely to drift apart, as interpretations of such legislation will differ. As a result, there is little clarity about questions of jurisdiction, conflict of laws and enforceability after Brexit, with the Government making no effort to clarify those issues.

For example, it is crucial that we maintain cross-border consumer protection so that consumers have the confidence and security that the products they are purchasing are safe. Consumers no longer operate within geographical boundaries, so a key tenet of the Brexit negotiations should be to maintain current protections but also to maintain co-operation agreements to maintain the existing rights when people are dealing with companies based in other EU member states.

As the head of consumer policy at Citizens Advice said in evidence to the Justice Sub-Committee of the House of Lords Select Committee on the European Union,

“It is one thing to say that the rule of law applies, but if there is no right to compensation when travelling abroad, or purchasing from an EU trader, if the cross-border agreements are not there to back it up it is not worth as much as it would suggest.”

We have still not heard anything from the Government about what cross-border co-operation post-Brexit will look like. Will the Minister lay out the Government’s position? Furthermore, the current UK consumer protection regime is under severe strain after seven years of Tory budget cuts to local councils. For example, the current domestic products safety regime is not fit for purpose and needs urgent reform, yet at every opportunity the Government have dismissed calls for such changes. The Government’s working group report into product safety, published on 20 July, was disappointing and refused to acknowledge that real change was needed in the product safety regime. It offered no serious proposal to ensure that proper enforcement mechanisms were in place to remove faulty goods from the market. That raises serious questions about the robustness of current enforcement regimes and their ability to withstand the pressures from the weight of EU consumer rights laws, which would be transferred into UK law. We have had no clarity from the Government about what agencies they intend to establish, how much funding that will require, or what their roles and powers will be when breaches of consumer law are found.

Warm words will not cut it. We cannot trust this Government’s vague assurances that consumer protections will be safeguarded when they will not even properly engage with consumer groups. When I asked the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union how many times he had invited and met consumer groups to discuss negotiations on the UK leaving the EU and their implications for the consumer in the UK, his response was that Ministers and officials have met with consumer organisations such as Which?, MoneySavingExpert and Citizens Advice, and that they have plans to host a roundtable with consumer groups. All of those organisations have expressed frustration to me about the difference between engagement with businesses and with the consumer side, with the latter receiving very little attention from senior Government figures. Lip service has been paid to consumers, but there have not been any tangible outcomes in action from the Government, as no consumer and Secretary of State level roundtable or working group has been established. Finally, 16 months after the EU referendum we have yet to see a detailed plan about when this consumer roundtable, which the Secretary of State mentioned in his reply to my parliamentary question, will be held. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Mr Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

Order. I call the Minister to respond. If she could leave two to three minutes for the initiator of the debate to wind up, that would be great.