Oral Answers to Questions

Gill Furniss Excerpts

Tuesday 12th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Kelly Tolhurst]

My hon. Friend is right to highlight that the new Office for Product Safety and Standards has got its strategy plan together. We are working through that, working with data-led intelligence to ensure that we tackle product safety inequalities when they appear.

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

As the Government continue to threaten the public with a catastrophic no-deal Brexit, which they admit themselves would be detrimental to consumers, a report by Which? shows that a staggering 82% of people said that the Government had communicated either too little information or no information at all about the impact of such a Brexit. Will the Minister tell the House whether that is a result of sheer incompetence, or is it simply that the Government no longer care about consumers?

[Kelly Tolhurst]

This Government are committed to retaining the high levels of consumer protection that we have. We have been very clear about that; we set out our intentions in the consumers Green Paper. We have launched advertising campaigns and published guidance on the Government’s website regarding certain elements of consumer rights. We are working closely with the Consumer Protection Partnership, which brings together the enforcement and the information bodies that work with consumers. We are committed to delivering for consumers, and that will not change—in or out of the EU.