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Consumer Policy
The Government wants Britain’s consumer regime to be fit for purpose for the 21st century. A regime that will empower and protect consumers, support open, competitive and innovative markets, that is as fair to business as it is to consumers and that has the minimum regulation necessary to achieve these goals.
The Government is committed to ensuring consumers get a fair deal, value for money, safe and high quality products, and greater choice. This is not only good for consumers, it is also good for British business.
Business needs demanding, confident consumers who encourage higher standards and innovation. It needs effective enforcement of consumer standards, to drive out the rogues who compete unfairly.
Consumer White Paper
On 2nd July 2009 the Government published a consumer White Paper “A Better Deal for Consumers: Delivering Real Help Now and Change for the Future”.
A Better Deal for Consumers sets out the real help the Government is providing now to people in financial difficulties, and the longer term measures that are planned to bolster confidence.
The help the Government is providing for consumers now aims to help keep people in their homes, offer advice to those in debt, deal with sharp business practice and help vulnerable people cope with essential bills. Looking further ahead the White Paper sets out a new approach to consumer credit that learns the lessons from recent events and aims to help consumers make better borrowing decisions.
It also sets out a bold simplification and modernisation strategy for consumer legislation, with the goal of making it simpler and easier for all to explain and understand.
Overall the White Paper focuses on four key themes:
• Real help now for vulnerable consumers
• A new approach to consumer credit
• Empowering consumers through better enforcement and information
• Modernising consumer law
The proposals and actions in this White Paper will form the basis of a consumer policy that is able to adapt to change and help all consumers make informed and responsible choices.
Comparative Study
The Centre for Competition Policy at the University of East Anglia completed a report in August 2008, in which they assess whether we have met the consumer aspect of our PSA 3 target, which is ‘to promote fair competitive markets by ensuring that the UK framework for competition and for consumer empowerment and support is at the level of the best by 2008’. A link to this report can be found on the right-side of this page.
A comparative study of consumer policy regimes identifying how the UK’s consumer policy regime compared with those of our OECD partner countries was carried out in 2003. It is available for download on the right. The two Report documents contain a summary and individual country comparisons respectively, while the Study document focuses on the legal and institution frameworks.
Consumer Policy monthly e-bulletin
Catch-up on all the latest consumer news from the Department by subscribing to our monthly e-bulletin newsletter.
Related Documents
- A fair deal for all. Extending competitive markets: empowered consumers, successful business.
(98KB) - Comparative report on international (OECD) consumer policy regimes (155KB)
- Comparative report on consumer policy regimes - Country reports (1541KB)
- Benchmarking the performance of the UK framework supporting consumer empowerment through comparison against relevant international comparator countries (2957KB)
- Report for BERR on the 2008 consumer conditions survey (500KB)
- A better deal for consumers: delivering real help now and change for the future [Consumer white paper Cm 7669] (1189KB)