Brexit: Consumer Protection (European Union Committee Report)

Lord Cashman Excerpts

Wednesday 16th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cashman (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome this report from the sub-committee on which I serve and take this opportunity to congratulate my noble friend Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, who eloquently introduced the report and who chairs our sub-committee so effectively. She has so extensively covered the report that I might best serve your Lordships’ House by sitting down and saying nothing. However—there is always a “however”—I want to take a slightly different point of view.

The report highlights widely shared concerns regarding the Government’s Brexit negotiations and their impact on our ability to maintain protections and standards in consumer policy both within the EU 27 and in the United Kingdom when we are outside. I am among those Members of your Lordships’ House who have deep concerns about the kind of country that we will become once we leave the European Union and the potentially negative effect on the rights that we currently enjoy and, worryingly, take for granted. In other debates, I have expressed my concern about the abolition of the Charter of Fundamental Rights. Despite verbal reassurances from the Government, my concern remains, and not only on consumer rights and protections. The response from the Government to this report has not reassured me.

Since we joined the European project in 1973, the institutions of the European Union have agreed a wide range of legislation dealing with consumer protection rights. That legislation is woven into member states’ national law. This EU-wide approach does two things: it sets minimum standards for consumer contracts and performs a similar task for specific areas of the economy, as outlined in our report. There is a wide range of regulations and directives—I know this from having served in the European Parliament for 15 years—on consumer rights, on unfair business-to-consumer commercial practices, on the sale of consumer goods and associated guarantees, and the directive on unfair contract terms in consumer contracts. There are other important measures: the travel regulation on common rules in the field of civil aviation security, the directive on package travel, package holidays and package tours, and the welcome and much-used regulation establishing rules on compensation and assistance to passengers in the event of denied boarding and cancellation or long delays.

I could then refer to financial services directives, energy directives, energy efficiency and product labelling. I could go on, but my point is that, through EU-wide co-operation and with our influence in the European Union, we have seen grow a raft of measures which ensure that consumer protection, product standardisation and health and safety, as well as other rights, are at the heart of the internal market.

Time and again in our hearings witnesses emphasised the role played, as my noble friend Lady Kennedy outlined, by the United Kingdom in shaping these rules, not least by those UK Members of the European Parliament who, unlike UKIP Members of the European Parliament, turned up and worked within the parliamentary process by amending, shaping and improving legislation rather than merely trying to obstruct it. It is undeniable that we have helped to shape, protect and promote consumer rights and responsibilities within the biggest single market in the world, a single market which the Government now want to walk away from, yet could remain within even with Brexit, enforcing the conditionality of freedom of movement. The only certainty we have at the moment is that there will be serious repercussions for consumers and businesses in the United Kingdom, and I have not been reassured by the Government otherwise.

In conclusion, I cannot overstate, as my noble friend Lady Kennedy also stated, the importance of the EU agencies: aviation, medicines and food safety, to name three. Many witnesses emphasised the importance of these agencies, networks and infrastructure, largely created by EU law and which work on a reciprocal basis. Development policy and information sharing are essential means of protecting and enforcing consumer rights. These rights must not be diminished nor diluted. They must be built upon and protected and we must work with others to ensure that these rights are respected if or when we leave the European Union.