Policy paper

Consumer Rights Bill

Bill for a simple, modern framework of consumer rights.

This was published under the 2010 to 2015 Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government

Documents

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Details

Consumers struggle to enforce their rights because UK consumer law is unnecessarily complex, ambiguous in places and has not kept up with technological developments. The government therefore proposes a simple, modern framework of consumer rights, which is set out in the . This will:

  • streamline consumer rights covering contracts for goods, services, digital content and the law relating to unfair terms in consumer contracts into 1 place
  • clarify the law where it is confusing, or written in legal jargon
  • modernise the framework for the digital age
  • deregulate to reduce business burdens and costs
  • strengthen measures to protect consumers, where it is appropriate to do so

The bill aims to help consumers and their advocates understand their rights when things go wrong, to empower consumers and promote growth through competitive markets.

With the bill, we are publishing the government鈥檚 response to the , recent consultations on consumer rights and other documents that have informed our proposals. In addition to the impact assessments listed above, the impact assessment on private actions in competition law (PDF, 405KB) relates to the bill.

For more information on the Consumer Rights Bill, visit the

See also the July 2012 鈥楥onsultation on Enhancing Consumer Confidence by Clarifying Consumer Law鈥�.

Updates to this page

Published 23 January 2014

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