Chingford and Woodford Green Liberal Democrats

Are You Being Served?

As a customer, have you ever experienced the frustration of telephoning to explain a problem with your purchase to a service department and been directed around an automated system that sends you back to where your call began? Have you ever sat in all day waiting for a service engineer or a delivery to arrive, not knowing when, or sometimes whether, the appointment will be kept? Have you ever been confused by labelling on packages, or the tariffs on your gas or electricity bill, wondered why so-called electronic transfers of funds take banks several days to clear, been pressurised into buying something you didn't really need or simply wanted to make sure that the tip that you leave at a restaurant actually goes to the staff and not the restaurant company?

Geoff Seeff was a member of the LibDem working party on consumer affairs

These and many other unsatisfactory aspects of relationships between suppliers of goods and services and their customers could be a thing of the past if the policy paper on Consumer Affairs, approved by the Liberal Democrats at their conference in Bournemouth reaches the statute book. Central to the proposals is the establishment of a Universal Service Code which will be applicable to both public bodies such as local authorities as well as private sector businesses. Its implementation is intended to improve responsiveness eg making speaking to a human being the first option in a telephone answering service, to ensure the provision of full and truthful information on products, to offer better consumer protection against unfair commercial practices by creating a duty to trade fairly and to put in place more effective means of redress than currently available.

To avoid conflicts of interest, the Liberal Democrats would also want Consumer Affairs to be separated from other work of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, with the creation of a cabinet level Minister for Goods and Services who will have overall management of consumer policy and regulation, competition and "client care" across public services.

One of the architects of the policy was Dr Geoff Seeff, Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Chingford and Woodford Green, who was a member of the working party that took evidence and drafted the paper. Although involved with all aspects of this very extensive measure, Geoff was particularly responsible for promoting a requirement for larger businesses to publish annually an audited Social Responsibility report, which would explain to customers and other stakeholders the impact of their activities on the environment and communities. His doctoral research, completed over 35 years ago, concluded that such reports were an essential ingredient of economic sustainability but, at the time, the idea was not well received by commerce or the professions.

Geoff said "Fair trade is not simply a matter of both the supplier and customer being satisfied with a deal. If, in order to bring down prices, workers are being exploited or the technologies being used to produce the goods are damaging to the environment, the goods can themselves be harmful (eg low priced alcohol) or do not carry the cost of their eventual disposal, then consumers get what they want but at the expense of other members of society or future generations. Interests need to be balanced and explained and only then will consumers be able to make informed choices".

Labour proposed to bring into the Companies Act 2006 a requirement for companies to publish an "Operating and Financial Review" ("OFR") which would report on social and environmental impacts of their activities. After many years of preparation and discussion with business and the professions leading up to the Act, this proposal was severely watered down so that directors could choose the matters which they thought material enough to report on, thereby allowing them to ignore negative factors, and there was no requirement for independent audit. In November 2005 at a CBI Conference, Gordon Brown as Chancellor, announced without consultation with cabinet colleagues or civil servants who had been drafting the legislation, that the proposal was to be dropped. In the end the Act provided for a "Business Review report" to be produced by quoted companies and represents an even weaker measure than the OFR.

All other initiatives promised by Labour on Corporate Social Responsibility, such as a Minister for CSR and the creation of a CSR Academy have been quietly shelved. The Tories regard CSR as PR (Public Relations) and have never indicated any interest in the substance of the matter.

The policy paper "Are We Being Served" is available on the Liberal Democrats website www.libdems.org.uk under Policy