Online Gaming (Consumer Protection)

Richard Arkless Excerpts

Tuesday 13th September 2016 Westminster Hall

[Richard Arkless (Dumfries and Galloway) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Turner. I rise to sum up on behalf of the SNP, but given the attendance in the Chamber, it may be a brief experience. I am disappointed that there are not more Members here so I can draw on their speeches in summing up.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Midlothian (Owen Thompson) on securing this very pertinent debate. I have got five and six-year-old children at home, and if there were something within consumer legislation that would let me do something about Stampy Cat’s voice ringing out from my iPad at 9 o’clock at night, I would be very grateful. That is something intrinsically linked to “Minecraft” and “Grand Theft Auto”, both of which, I am proud to say, were made in Scotland.

I was struck by my hon. Friend’s historical tour of how digital games have improved over the ages. I am of a certain vintage and can remember my VIC-20 as a Christmas present and my Spectrum 48, which graduated to a 48-plus. It had a tape that took 45 minutes to load the most basic games, but I thought it was the most incredibly modern and chic thing I had ever had in my life. I was surprised at the comment that only—I say only—45% of households in the UK have a smartphone. People clearly have challenges affording smartphones, but it seems to me that, if not everyone, most people in society have them. I am sure that figure will increase exponentially.

I am a lawyer and the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on consumer protection, and I was very taken by some of the problems with the terms and conditions. There is tension between making the terms in consumer contracts fair and putting them in the terms and conditions. Companies perhaps do not have the opportunity to make people explicitly aware of them as they go through the transaction process, but that still does not mean it is right. As a lawyer, I found the idea that in the terms and conditions one can be prevented from taking legal action based on the contract, and the fact that there is no money-back option if the games are not downloaded, to be baffling in the extreme. To my relatively trained legal eye, there was legislation in place before the Consumer Rights Act 2015. The unfair terms in consumer contracts legislation clearly states that if terms in a consumer contract create imbalances between the parties in favour of the bigger party, they can be deemed unfair contract terms.

Although the 2015 Act consolidated some of those principles, there was legislation already in place, which signals to me that enforcement is the problem. If consumers’ rights are clearly codified, and for whatever reason they cannot bring their grievances to a place where they can be fixed, enforcement is the problem. I am interested to hear what the Minister has to say about that. In basic contract law there has to be consensus ad idem— a meeting of the minds. That is the most fundamental, basic principle of a contract. If kids in particular are buying online games without that meeting of the minds, I suggest that there is not even a contractual position to fall back on. Enforcement needs to be looked at carefully, and the protection of kids should be uppermost in everyone’s minds.

I will not take up much more of your time, Mr Turner. I echo the comments of my hon. Friends the Members for Midlothian and for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson). My hon. Friend the Member for Midlothian made a detailed case, and I would be grateful if the Minister can respond in similar detail. I do not expect him to respond to this, but we are all concerned in Scotland that, having voted to remain in the European Union, we are now going to be leaving the European Union, and that the protections that we want as a society are dropping off the edge of a cliff.