Values and Purpose of Consumer Policy
1.1 Liberal Democrats have always been committed to the pursuit of open, liberal, competitive markets within the UK and beyond. Our task is to develop policy that ensures that those markets give the best service to consumers at all stages and all levels and across both private and public sectors of the economy. We recognise that there are goods and services which are consumed by entitlement and those consumed by choice.
1.2 The Liberal Democrats’ commitments to freedom and to fairness go hand in hand with our belief that the state exists to serve the citizen. Our approach to consumer law and policy starts from the position that consumers are not economic agents in a textbook, but individuals, families, workers, pensioners, benefit claimants. So our consumer policy must be about improving the ability of people to access and secure the goods and services they need and want affordably, efficiently and on fair terms.
1.3 In the following pages, we group our consultation questions into the themes listed below. However, we welcome feedback and responses on any area of consumer policy.
- Ensuring that markets operate freely, fairly and competitively – in such a way as to give people a wide range of goods and services to meet their needs and aspirations affordably and on fair terms (A Fair Marketplace)
- Ensuring that all people – and particularly the most vulnerable – can access the goods and services they need and want across all sectors with reasonable ease and in a way that is efficient and personal (Responsiveness)
- Ensuring that people are given the information they need – including the environmental and sustainability implications – to make informed choices between what is on offer (Informed Choices)
- Ensuring that consumers are protected from unfair and unscrupulous practices (Consumer Protection)
- Ensuring that everyone has easy access to effective forms of redress, when the provision of goods and services falls short of their legitimate expectations (Effective Redress)
Ensuring that particular sectors have specialist treatment when and where appropriate (Sector-specific Policy) - Ensuring that government maintains appropriate balance between regulation, codes of practice and advice to ensure that the above objectives are met with no more interference in the operation of the market than is necessary to achieve them (Appropriate Government)
Question
- Are our Values and Purposes (the objectives as set out above) appropriate?
