Delivery Surcharges (Transparency for Consumers) Bill
Debate between Jo Swinson and Jonathan Lord(11 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Jo Swinson)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Sir Robert Smith) on introducing the Bill. I very much welcome his work to raise awareness of the issue. He and others from across the House have campaigned hard, because their constituents are particularly affected.
People living in very rural and remote areas may expect or be used to deliveries not being straightforward. If people live on an island, they know from experience that for something to reach the island it has to be flown in or come in on a ferry. That can impact on the costs of all sorts of things. Although we want such consumers to have good information, my hon. Friend rightly outlined that people living in the suburbs of Aberdeen, who are not in a remote area by any definition, might not have the same mindset of expecting suddenly to be hit by massive delivery charges.
I support the principles of clarity, transparency and fairness for consumers that lie behind my hon. Friend’s Bill. Those principles are fully supported by the Government and, as the hon. Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) mentioned, they also underlie the draft Consumer Rights Bill that is being scrutinised by the House.
It is right that consumers should be clear about delivery information when they shop online or, as my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) said, when they shop anywhere. We certainly aim to provide much greater clarity for consumers. There is no reason why consumers in some parts of the country should experience a postcode lottery on delivery charges or not receive clear and up-front information about any additional delivery restrictions or charges that might apply to their location, particularly if that occurs late in the booking process. My hon. Friend the Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine made it clear that the problem is not that such information is not provided before the purchase of a product. However, a significant investment of time might have gone into browsing and working out the right products to buy, either for oneself or as a gift. When somebody spends significant time doing that and is suddenly hit with an extra delivery charge, it can be very frustrating.
Jonathan Lord (Woking) (Con)
There is probably great sympathy in the House for the thrust of what my hon. Friend the Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Sir Robert Smith) is trying to achieve, but am I right that it could probably be sorted out through guidance, trading standards or regulation, rather than primary legislation?
Jo Swinson
I intend to come on to that point. Legislation already protects consumers in many ways, but there is clearly an issue about how well it is enforced and about what more we can do to ensure that it is enforced. I am certainly committed to working with my hon. Friend the Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine and others to ensure that we deal with the problem through existing channels, as well as to see whether we can do more. We want to make sure that consumers are not disadvantaged by suddenly being notified of delivery charges late in the buying process.
Citizens Advice Scotland reported on the issue last year. It found that consumers encounter a range of problems. One is obviously that of additional delivery charges, but delivery performance can also often be a difficulty: as well as extra charges for the location, there is sometimes an outright refusal to deliver to a particular address or an unfair categorisation of a location as more remote than it actually is. Hon. Members have raised the problem of postcode areas that are quite large and cover places that are remote as well as others that are not.
Delivery charges and arrangements need to be made available early in the ordering process, because they are particularly important for some consumers; if not, that can add to the problems faced by those consumers in researching and investing time in sourcing the products that they want to buy. Underpinning all that is a recognition that the more confident consumers are about what they are buying and about having those products delivered in a reasonable way and at a reasonable price, the more confident they will be to buy, which is helpful for our economy. Creating confident consumers is absolutely what we want.
Let us consider what the law already does in this area. It is clear in requiring traders to provide all consumers, wherever they live, with information on freight, delivery or postal charges when inviting consumers to purchase products. That wording is particularly relevant. The invitation to purchase is the key point. There may be a difference in how some people define that point in the process, or some retailers may just be thoughtless, as my hon. Friend outlined. But if some retailers think that invitation to purchase occurs only at the very end of the process when the consumer clicks “Pay”, they might think that that is an acceptable time to give the information about the delivery charges. Clearly, others might interpret invitation to purchase as occurring at a much earlier point, when the consumer is browsing the website or the shopping app and is implicitly invited to purchase.
Specific requirements are set down for contracts concluded via electronic means. The consumer rights directive that the Government intend to implement by next summer will require traders to ensure that their website indicates clearly, at the very latest at the beginning of the ordering process, whether any delivery restrictions apply. I emphasise that that is at the very latest. The best practice would be for that information to be made available much earlier in the process.
Jo Swinson
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I would be delighted to do that. With the consumer rights directive and the consumer bill of rights that will come before the House later in the year, we will be publishing not just regulations and legislation, but guidance to go alongside that. It would be an excellent idea to include in that guidance information about how retailers might best serve their consumers and comply with the spirit of the regulations about giving that information and making it clear for consumers.
It is therefore important, as the hon. Member for Edinburgh South said, that businesses are made aware of the extent of customer dissatisfaction with the current situation, and of the potential loss of business arising from delivery policies that may be fit for purpose for some parts of the country but not for others. When businesses are made aware of the situation, there can sometimes be success. Consumer Focus Scotland last year reported a case where a consumer queried the high surcharge for delivery and the retailer happily agreed to use another parcel delivery operator who charged much less to deliver the items.
My hon. Friend mentioned the rather excessive £235 courier charge that one of his constituents encountered, which was dropped to as low as £75 when it was challenged. That is still a significant cost but, as a proportion of the original price charged, it was significantly less. I was rather shocked by my hon. Friend’s example of someone who was charged £15 for the delivery of a simple gift certificate, which does not need to go by courier service. An item of that size could go in the normal post. Such examples need to be highlighted.
It is reasonable for consumers to ask for items to be sent via Royal Mail under the universal service obligation, which may not be as cheap as a courier company can offer for delivery to high population density areas, but in most cases will be substantially cheaper. Businesses should recognise that they can offer that, or alternative courier services or parcel delivery services. The first message is that consumers should be aware that it is certainly worth contacting the retailer and challenging a surcharge that they are unhappy about.
Good work has been undertaken by Citizens Advice Scotland, Consumer Futures and others to highlight the issue so that more consumers will feel that they can stand up and challenge a ridiculously high delivery charge. The Citizens Advice research was very specific. It acknowledged that many companies already provide a good service that customers appreciate, but it also identified that some do less well and that their customers feel rather let down. Trading Standards in Scotland has done a huge amount of work, particularly in the highlands, to highlight the issue to businesses and to help them understand and comply with consumer law.
Obviously, consumers with complaints about a retailer’s delivery policy should first ask the retailer for an explanation. If they are dissatisfied with the explanation and think that there is still a problem, I encourage them to contact Citizens Advice, which can then alert the relevant enforcement authority so that there can be an investigation. Encouragement and help to businesses—but ultimately with that enforcement as well—can ensure that consumers feel empowered and confident.
Jonathan Lord
The north-east of Scotland and the highlands and islands have been referred to a lot in this debate. Do we know to what extent there is a problem for residents on the Isle of Wight and in Northern Ireland?
Jo Swinson
I do not think that the problem has necessarily been quantified for all areas, but the hon. Gentleman is quite right. There has been a lot of campaigning on this issue in the north-east of Scotland and the highlands, not least because of work done by my hon. Friend the Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine and others, but I am sure that it is also likely to be an issue for island or rural communities elsewhere in the United Kingdom.
Post Office - Horizon System
Debate between Jo Swinson and Jonathan Lord
Jo Swinson
The hon. Gentleman is right that it is imperative that these cases be looked at speedily, although I think he would also agree that that needs to be done comprehensively, and clearly when forensic accountancy work is going on, things can take time. We need to be clear about what the report says about the Horizon system. It did not find evidence of systemic failures; that is not to say there has never been a bug in the system, but I defy anyone to find an IT system that has never had a bug. What is important is that when bugs are found, they are dealt with and the problems are rectified. What has not been found, however, is any systemic problem leading to the issues faced by sub-postmasters, although there have been issues with the support and training provided alongside Horizon.
Jonathan Lord (Woking) (Con)
Like many colleagues, I have a constituent, Mrs Seema Misra, whose life and family life is in ruins after suffering reputational damage and receiving a custodial sentence. I see from the Minister’s statement that an independent figure will chair a review to determine how best to adjudicate disputed cases, but will she assure me that the working party set up to complete the review of current cases will also by chaired by an independent figure? That is important.
Jo Swinson
Yes, I am happy to give my hon. Friend an assurance that the working party will be independent. As I have already confirmed to the House, the continuing involvement of Second Sight, which is independent of the process, is crucial as part of that working group.