Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill (Second sitting) Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateNeil Coyle
Main Page: Neil Coyle (Labour - Bermondsey and Old Southwark)Department Debates - View all Neil Coyle's debates with the Department for Business and Trade
(1 year, 2 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesQ
Noyona Chundur: There is a heightened risk, Minister, if the new direct enforcement powers sit only with the CMA. Ultimately, the purpose of those powers is to be much more agile, flexible and responsive to consumer detriment in the market. Is there a heightened risk that enforcement will default to the CMA because perhaps it may deliver a solution that is much more agile and responsive and much more in keeping with the pace of detriment in the marketplace compared with a courts-based system? The sector regulators and trading standards could therefore have the same or similar powers. The question is about agility and responsiveness to detriment, which is exploding in the marketplace. We see it increasingly, particularly in digital markets, which evolve so quickly. That is our perspective.
Q
Peter Eisenegger: The Bill has clauses that allow us to address that in terms of, “Has the information put before the consumer been complete and accurate?” If something does not comply with safety standards, that has been omitted. It is a question of interpretation that we would have to nail down and make clear.
Q
Peter Eisenegger: This is an area where I have had a lot of conversation with Electrical Safety First, which is very concerned about it. We have started to outline, at a very preliminary stage, what constitutes an online market set of functionality for which people should be held responsible and—what do you know—Amazon fits that. We find that online retailers do not perform all the functions, but they perform enough to be reasonably interpreted as having a retailing responsibility in the traditional physical world. But they have to do the heavy lifting of getting stuck into the detail and mapping it out.
I am afraid I come back to the standards world, which tends to be set up to provide that level of detail for the regulation to lean on. There are standards for complaints handling, for alternative dispute resolution, for dealing with vulnerable consumers and for online reviews—all issues that touch on what we have said. They are there, and mainly my UK consumer colleagues in British Standards either instituted them or were very influential in getting them taken forward.
A personal expert view? Yes, I think it can be interpreted that people like Amazon have a retail responsibility. To provide the evidence and analysis to support that position, however, is work that we have started with Electrical Safety First, but we are a bit busy and neither of us has had the time to finish it off.
Q
Noyona Chundur: May I add something? Electrical standards are not my area of expertise, unlike consumer expectations around standards generally, so I will make a comment about that. Consumers expect minimum standards, particularly in new markets. It is worth saying that when we are talking about new digital markets, everyone is vulnerable, so there is no “vulnerable consumer” per se.
An interesting point to make is that we did a joint project with the Utility Regulator for Northern Ireland on what consumer expectations might be of future regulation and decarbonisation. Consumers were very clear that, in addition to trusted accessible information and concerns about costs or financial health, they wanted absolute protection from safety fraud, obsolescence or mis-selling, but they also wanted clear and robust standards on certification, registration and standards for installers, and protection against damage and disruption during installation. That is moving away from something that is perhaps more price-led and economic to where we need to have a minimum enforceable standard that works for everyone, so that we bolster the safety net and create confidence in markets. The more that we do that, the more consumer spending we have in the economy, which is good for everyone.
Peter Eisenegger: May I make a comment about enforcement? A backstop is in action at the moment: the class actions that our law now allows for the consumer world. My colleague Arnold Pindar, the chair of the NCF, is part of an advisory group that is taking on Mastercard at the moment. Another colleague, Julie Hunter, is fronting the case against Amazon about the way it presents its own products unfairly in its online marketplace. These names are in the public domain; I would not mention them otherwise. To a certain extent, the powers being provided to the CMA to be a bit more responsive and active make sense where we have class actions, which really is a major “after the horse has bolted” situation. We hope that the CMA will prevent more horses from escaping. Thank you for the opportunity to comment.
Q
Peter Eisenegger: Okay. The industry-led—
Q
Graham Wynn: The view is, as I said, that we do not want to see what I call knee-jerk reactions to Daily Mail items that are politically sensitive or are political problems. The obvious answer is to say, “Let’s add it to schedule 18 as a banned practice.” It really is important that the schedule and what is in it is clear, clearly understood and that we do not add or subtract from it just on the basis of needing to get over a political problem, for example.
You can make sure that you do proper consultation and all that sort of thing, but we can understand why the Government would want to be able to add to it more quickly—obviously, primary legislation takes a while. In Europe, we certainly argued against Governments or the Commission being able to add to it willy-nilly. We were keen to keep it as something that had to be put in the directive originally. On balance, we would rather it was debated fully and that it amended legislation. Alternatively, you could decide to make changes once a year, say, rather than as you go along. That might be an alternative answer to the danger of a knee-jerk reaction.
Q
Graham Wynn: I should say that Amazon is a member of the BRC, so I preface my comments with that. Amazon does tell me that it is using AI and other means of ensuring there are not fake reviews, and that it takes as much responsibility as it can for product safety on its sites and for illegal products. Clearly others have a different view and think that it would be possible to go further and Amazon should be legally obliged to take more responsibility.
Again, throughout the Bill, the issue will be resources for enforcement, as it is in general. Be it fake reviews, subscription traps or the responsibilities of marketplaces and platforms, unless there is real, effective enforcement, people get the impression that something has been done without really having the rights that the Government say they have—when I say people, I mean consumers.
Q
Graham Wynn: Yes. I think it needs to be done, but without committing us, we would expect it to be done in the context of a product safety review and how you are going to deal with product safety issues in the future. It needs a thorough examination, including the role of marketplaces, their general obligations and what is practical and proportionate. I would not add that to this Bill now, because it requires more of an assessment and consideration than would be possible.