Our Consumer Agenda for Government

Introduction

Every voter at the next election is a consumer. Their spending accounts for 60% of our economy, but too often their everyday problems are overlooked and left unaddressed. Dodgy traders, unscrupulous businesses and broken markets blight the lives of the consumers who use them. 36 million people experienced a problem with a product or service in a single year, with an economic cost of more than £54bn. They spent upwards of 1.5 billion hours trying to resolve these problems, creating stress and worry. It needn’t be this way. With smart and cost-effective interventions, the next government can improve the lives of millions of consumers throughout the United Kingdom.

Effective consumer policy that strengthens the demand side of our economy will have an even wider impact by encouraging economic growth. It will enhance productivity by improving competition and by encouraging people to try new firms, products and services. Consumer policies are also critical to ensure equitable growth where nobody, and no place, is left behind. 

Throughout this document we provide a set of specific policy recommendations under three overarching objectives. We have focused on sectors and areas where our deep expertise and understanding of the policy landscape allow us to propose robust and specific reforms. While not an exhaustive plan, we believe these recommendations are vital to empower all consumers to actively participate in a modern and sustainable economy. 

With smart and cost-effective interventions, the next government can improve the lives of millions of consumers throughout the United Kingdom

Raise Living Standards

While the ‘cost of living crisis’ may have subsided by 2025, a more profound ‘living standards challenge’ is emerging, fueled by sluggish economic growth. Addressing this requires the UK to adopt more effective protections against consumer rip-offs, initiatives to improve accessibility to essential services such as banking and telecommunications, and reforms to ensure a more secure retirement for our ageing population. 

In testing times, ensuring fair treatment for consumers who are spending their hard-earned cash is crucial. Introducing robust and effectively enforced consumer protections when things go wrong will build trust, empower consumers, and guarantee that they receive fair value. Creating a regulatory regime that enforces these principles is therefore also essential. 

In today’s digital age, affordable access to good-quality broadband and mobile connection is as essential as other utilities. It serves as a gateway to education, employment, and vital services, thereby narrowing the digital divide and promoting a level playing field. Connectivity is just the initial step; ethically sourced data can unlock affordable solutions that enhance consumers’ daily lives, such as personalised energy information or targeted financial services.

However, despite the benefits of transitioning to the digital economy, the next government needs to ensure those who cannot make the change to digital services, such as online banking, are protected. Cash access and physical banking remain a vital thread in the fabric of economic security and inclusion for those excluded from digital payments.

These areas, coupled with cost effective reforms to improve private pensions, will help individuals to effectively participate in the modern economy, fostering economic growth, as well as live with dignity and plan for their future. 

Protect Big Purchases

With many household budgets under strain, consumers want to know they have the right protections in place when buying a big-ticket item, such as a holiday or renovating their home. Yet in some sectors consumers are not adequately protected when things go wrong – leaving them out of pocket and frustrated. This creates distrust between consumers and businesses and can deter spending.

In travel, the regulator supposed to protect consumers has inadequate powers to enforce consumer law. In car sales and home improvements, there is still no single ombudsman to settle disputes when a rogue trader or cowboy builder fails to deliver on the product or service promised. Alongside this, a lack of collective redress rights means UK consumers, unlike in other parts of the world, cannot club together to seek fair and affordable compensation through the courts.

Underlying all of this is the absence of a regulatory environment that supports consumers who are left inadequately protected by under-resourced Trading Standards Services. 

Provide Better Retirement Outcomes for Consumers

Despite the success of auto-enrolment, many people will have a poor living standard in retirement because they are under-saving. While the staging of increases will take years to implement, higher minimum contribution rates cannot be avoided. The next government should set out a timetable for increased minimum pension contributions in order to give consumers a better chance of an adequate retirement. 

In the shorter term, there are three cost-effective actions the next government can take to help boost retirement incomes. These policies will increase consumer transparency and empower savers to take control of their pensions, whilst also safeguarding individuals against excessive fees and charges on their pension products. 

Protect Face-to-Face Banking Services 

Face-to-face banking and access to cash remains crucial for many consumers to retain a decent living standard. They offer financial inclusion for those who struggle with digital literacy, lack access to technology or are unable to pay for a satisfactory online connection. These individuals, often elderly or in low-income communities, rely on bank branches and cash to manage their finances, pay bills, and participate in the economy. Cash still offers control and flexibility, allowing for budgeting, and emergency savings. 

In a world increasingly dominated by digital finance, maintaining access to physical banking facilities and cash ensures everyone can participate in the financial system and enjoy a decent standard of living. 

Improve Connectivity 

In today’s world, a decent broadband and mobile connection isn’t a luxury, it is key for unlocking opportunity and participation in the economy. It fuels education, opens doors to remote work, connects us to loved ones, and gives access to better products and services. Without it, we risk leaving individuals and communities behind in an increasingly digital world. Ensuring access to strong and affordable connections is key to bridge the digital divide and ensure everyone in the UK has a chance to thrive in the digital age. 

Roll Out Smart Data

Smart data schemes give consumers the power to use their own data in ways that can deliver more personalised and efficient products and services. They bring opportunities for innovative businesses who can supply these. 

Currently, the UK’s only operational Smart Data scheme is Open Banking, enabling consumers to share their banking data with trusted third parties. 

There is an opportunity for the next government to build on this by creating new, interoperable Smart Data schemes. These might, for example, allow consumers to more easily compare insurance policies, mobile coverage, broadband prices, energy tariffs, connect to their smart appliances or speed up the home-buying process. 

The benefits of these schemes can only be realised if data-holding businesses are encouraged, or if necessary compelled, to participate and if consumer protections are embedded in schemes to engender consumer trust and promote take-up. 

Tackle Online Consumer Crime 

The digital economy has brought enormous benefits to consumers’ lives, transforming the way they interact with products, services, and information. However, digitalisation is also compounding old harms and has the potential to introduce new ones because the regulation and enforcement of digitally-enabled crimes has not kept pace with those perpetrating them.

All too often, crimes against consumers are not given the same attention as other crimes, and this creates among victims a sense of helplessness and a feeling that scams and the mis-selling of products online are not ‘serious’ crimes. A deterioration of consumer confidence online means that people will be unwilling to try new products and services, limiting their economic activity and creating a digital divide. 

The majority of consumer crimes online relate to fraud, which is now the most common crime in the UK. There is a growing consensus that targeted fraud attacks against consumers have far-reaching consequences and are often perpetrated by dangerous organised crime groups - whose enterprises facilitate terrorism, human trafficking and drugs. However, fraud is not typically discussed in the same breath as ‘serious crime’, tending to attract less attention in political debate. 

To make matters worse, the lack of any proper regulation and enforcement to prevent dodgy and unsafe products being sold through marketplaces means that consumers’ safety is regularly put at risk. The next government must take tackling online consumer crime seriously, and introduce wider reforms to our enforcement regime to make sure there are effective, consumer-focused regulators in place. 

Fight Fraud

Scams have exponentially increased in the digital age, as fraudsters leverage online channels and new technologies to launch mass attacks on unsuspecting consumers, causing financial loss and emotional harm. The rapid rise of generative AI will turbocharge online fraud. The next government must be prepared to take on fraudsters and criminal gangs from day one. 

In recent years, Which? has championed and welcomed the introduction of new laws to tackle consumer-related scams such as the Online Safety Act and the creation of a world-leading mandatory authorised push payment fraud reimbursement scheme in financial services.

The current government’s Fraud Strategy is a first step in setting out an overarching plan for protecting consumers. However, this needs to go further through greater cross-sector leadership and actions to plug existing legal gaps in fraud prevention. 

Strengthen Product Safety Rules 

Online marketplaces bring tremendous benefits, opening up access to markets for smaller businesses and giving ease and greater choice for consumers. However, they have also created a gateway for the sale of products which fail UK safety standards. Our safety testing, and those of organisations like Electrical Safety First, are regularly identifying products, often imported from countries with lower standards, which are dangerous to human health and undermine honest retailers who play by the rules. 

Without significant reform we are concerned that this problem will continue to get worse, exposing more people to serious harm. A forward-looking approach to revising product safety laws is overdue, alongside making online marketplaces responsible for the safety of all products sold through their platforms and placing the Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS) on an independent statutory footing, giving it a clear objective to enhance consumer safety. 

Empower Consumers to Make Sustainable Choices

 The UK’s ambitious net zero targets will require households to adopt a range of more sustainable technologies over the coming years. The Climate Change Committee has identified that consumers will have to improve the energy efficiency of their homes, move away from fossil fuels for home heating and switch to electric vehicles (EVs). 

Our research has found that people recognise their own important role in the transition to net zero, but feel they need support to be able to play their part. 

The next government must set out clear timelines to help consumers make this transition. It is essential that businesses are given the clarity to be confident to invest in low carbon products and services, so that the transition to sustainable economic growth is as affordable, equitable and easy as possible for consumers. Our priorities in this area for the next government focus on sustainable home heating and insulation and on improving EV charging networks. 

Improve Sustainable Home Heating 

The UK faces a major challenge to reduce its carbon emissions and improve energy security. Installing low-carbon heating systems, such as heat pumps, will dramatically reduce the carbon emissions that come from our homes, and improving insulation will benefit households through lower energy use, greater comfort and lower bills at a time of heightened energy costs.

Households will need support from government and businesses to overcome some of the significant barriers in making this transition to energy-efficient homes and low-carbon heating. This includes help in identifying the right measures for their home, support with high upfront costs and a straightforward process to find qualified and reliable installers. 

Boost Electric Vehicle Charging Networks 

To encourage consumers to switch to electric vehicles (EVs), it is critical that they are confident that they will be able to access the charging infrastructure they need, no matter where they live and travel in the UK. 

Among EV drivers who have tried using public charging, but no longer use it, the main reasons given were that charge points are too expensive, there are not enough charge points and the payment methods aren’t convenient.