Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the ability of trading standards organisations to address consumer protection problems, including fraud; and whether they intend to increase the powers of such organisations to address those problems.

The Government is considering carefully the findings of the National Audit Office’s recent report “Protecting Consumers from Scams, Unfair Trading and Unsafe Goods”, published in December 2016. National Trading Standards already work closely with the Home Office Joint Fraud Taskforce to promote closer cooperation between industry, law enforcement and Government in order to protect the public from fraud.

The consumer protection regime will be further examined in the Consumer Green Paper to be published in spring 2017.