Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008

My Lords, we did agree on that as well. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Smith, that it is incredible how people lose those years when they leave the Front Bench. I declare an interest as chief executive of the Advertising Association, and as such the chief executive of an association which represents all parts of the advertising industry: the advertising agencies; media owners, broadcast and non-broadcast; as well as the advertisers. In fact, it is our members who fund the self-regulatory system, the Advertising Standards Authority, albeit very much at arm’s length. The Advertising Association has engaged fully over the past couple of years in the process undertaken by the Government of transposing and implementing into UK law the unfair commercial practices directive and reimplementing the misleading and comparative advertising directive in the form of the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations and the Business Protection from Misleading Marketing Regulations respectively. They have broad implications for business to consumer and business to business advertising in the UK. Indeed, the Advertising Association, as an interested party, has engaged at various times in the past at the European level in the development of both the directives from which the regulations being debated this evening derive. I thank the Minister for reaffirming in his opening remarks the status of the ASA and PayPhone Plus as ““established means”” for the purposes of both the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations and the Business Protection from Misleading Marketing Regulations. The ASA has enjoyed ““established means”” status for many years, and so I am pleased that the noble Lord has stated for the record that the authority will retain this status with the coming into force of these new regulations. The Minister’s statement serves to provide certainty and continuity. I am also grateful for the Minister’s comments about the pursuit of best regulatory practice generally and in the context of these new regulations specifically. It is important that between now and 26 May, businesses both large and small continue to familiarise themselves with the implications for them of the new regulations in both business to consumer and business to business contexts. To assist the process of familiarisation, it is essential that the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform and bodies such as the Office of Fair Trading continue their own ongoing programmes of educating businesses, enforcers and others both in the run-up to and in the months following the coming into force of the two sets of regulations before us. Finally, I look to the Minister to provide comfort that one longstanding UK marketing practice that is extremely popular with consumers will continue to be acceptable under the new legislative regime that comes into being next month. I speak of the ““buy one get one free”” offers, or to use what sounds like rather unparliamentary language—forgive me, but I have been looking forward to this—BOGOFs. Such offers are extremely popular with consumers here in the UK; indeed we have all seen them. In my view, it would be a great pity for both marketers and consumers if any interpretation could be placed on the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations whereby such offers and similar marketing practices could be considered in breach of them. I hope that the noble Lord will feel able to provide comfort on this subject when he winds up the debate.