Oral Answers to Questions

Yvonne Fovargue Excerpts

Thursday 8th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

I worked actively and closely with my colleague in the Department of Health on this issue. There are two issues involved: minimum wage enforcement and ensuring that we have tougher legislation to deal with some of the practices that operate in that sector, such as zero-hours contracts. At the moment, we are looking more widely at employment rights for groups of people who are classified as workers but who do not currently enjoy those rights. The care sector is one such group.

[Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)]

2. What recent assessment he has made of the effect of copycat websites on consumers.

[The Minister for Culture and the Digital Economy (Mr Edward Vaizey)]

Copycat websites con people out of hard-earned cash. They undermine trust in online services and we are committed to stopping them. We need to work with search engines, to take enforcement action, to improve the consistency of Government websites and to educate consumers.

[Yvonne Fovargue]

The top advertised search result for the European health insurance card if someone searches for “health card” or “national health card” is a site that charges £49 for its so-called services. Will the Minister act to put a stop to that practice by giving similar powers to those of Transport for London and blocking transactions from that site, tackling the problem at source?

[Mr Vaizey]

We have taken a lot of action. We have worked closely with the search engines to ensure that they implement their terms and conditions on copycat website advertising, and the click-through to Government websites has increased by 30%. There is a problem with blocking transactions for websites that charge. A lot of Government services are free and we would not necessarily know whether other websites were charging. We know what Transport for London has done and we continue to keep the issue under review.