Consumer protection at long last

Now, however, this long-standing gap in legislation is about to be filled as the States prepare to examine the draft Supply of Goods and Services Law.

Provided that it is approved, the new law will bring Jersey into line with the UK, where comprehensive consumer protection legislation has been in place for many years. It will also put an end to the present deeply unsatisfactory situation in which consumers have rights but no one is really sure what they are.

This is clearly an absurd state of affairs that has no doubt complicated the work of Trading Standards and handicapped their efforts to bring rogue traders to book.

Given that the UK Sale of Goods Act has operated successfully and was available as a model, it was unnecessary to reinvent the wheel as our legislation was framed.

In spite of this, States Members will want to look at what is being proposed very carefully to ensure that it matches the Island’s requirements. They will also want to be sure that it does not introduce costly layers of extra bureaucracy.

These are necessary precautions, but in general terms this major enhancement of Island’s consumer rights is to be warmly welcomed.

Present-day Jersey is acknowledged to be an expensive place to shop for many of the essentials of life. The possibility of consumers also running the risk of being cheated by unscrupulous traders has been tolerated for far too long.

But it is worth noting that the proposed law is nothing if not even-handed. As well as assigning rights to buyers, it is designed to make trading fair for sellers – who, for example, can expect new powers to recover goods which have not been paid for.

As with all law, the courts would be the final arbiters if cases were pressed to the limit under new legislation, but their workload would be most unlikely to increase substantially if it is approved. The deterrent effect of statutory rights and obligations should be more than enough to ensure that the Island enters a new era of equitable trading.