The Consumer Rights Act 2015 seeks to consolidate in one place key consumer rights covering contracts for goods, services and digital content, and the law relating to unfair terms in consumer contracts. These are areas where there has been considerable activity at both a national and an EU level. In particular, the Consumer Sales Directive 99/44/EC, the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Directive 93/13/EEC and the Consumer Rights Directive 2011/83/EU have all made significant changes to Member State law, promoting the idea of the ‘informed consumer’, able to assert his or her rights in entering consumer contracts. This paper will examine the extent to which the Act promotes the objectives of these Directives and the implications of the result of the June 2016 referendum that the UK should leave the EU. Does the Consumer Rights Act 2015 represent a valuable consolidation of EU and UK consumer policy, or are EU rights being absorbed into a distinctive national framework of consumer rights?
Type Research Article Information Legal Studies , Volume 37 , Issue 1 , March 2017 , pp. 78 - 102 Copyright © Society of Legal Scholars 2017Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)
The author would like to thank Lucinda Miller, Albert Sanchez Graells, Keith Stanton, Keith Syrett and the two anonymous Legal Studies reviewers for their helpful suggestions in the preparation of this paper. Any errors remain those of the author alone.
1. Jo Swinson (then Consumer Minister) ‘Biggest overhaul of consumer rights in a generation’ Press Release 27 March 2015.
2. This date applies to the main provisions of the Act, although some provisions were introduced at an earlier date. The Act applies to the UK (consumer rights are a reserved matter and not devolved to Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland). See, generally, Samuels , A ‘ The Consumer Rights Act 2015 ’ [ 2015 ] J Bus L 159 Google Scholar .
3. See http://www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/regulation/consumer-rights-act (accessed 16 September 2016).
4. The Act further introduces easier routes for consumers and small and medium-sized enterprises (‘SMEs’) to challenge anti-competitive behaviour through the Competition Appeal Tribunal (‘CAT’). These measures will not be dealt with in this paper, although it should be noted that UK competition law is now heavily influenced by EU law: see Jones , A and Sufrin , B EU Competition Law: Text, Cases and Materials ( Oxford : Oxford University Press , 6th edn, 2016 ) ch 13CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Whish , R and Bailey , D Competition Law ( Oxford : Oxford University Press , 8th edn, 2015 ) pp 77 ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar . See, in particular, Council Regulation 1/2003.
5. As acknowledged by the government in its Explanatory Notes to the Act, at [5].