UK Parliament / Open data

Consumer Rights Bill

Proceeding contribution from Jenny Willott (Liberal Democrat) in the House of Commons on Tuesday, 28 January 2014. It occurred during Debate on bills on Consumer Rights Bill.

If the hon. Lady would listen, I just said that the Department has written to public enforcers to ask them to enforce the law properly. The problem is clearly still happening, and we are all aware of instances of it. Recently, there were reports about the issue on the radio, particularly about the fake HMRC websites. There are lots of things that are illegal that still go on until there is a crackdown. This is one such thing, and we are doing what we can to encourage public enforcers to take action to close down websites that are clearly in breach of the law.

On a technical point, the issue of devolution was raised by a number of Members from Northern Ireland, and I should like to clarify the situation. The issues covered in the Bill are reserved to Westminster with

regard to Scotland and Wales, but they are devolved to the Northern Ireland Assembly. The devolved Administrations in all three nations were consulted throughout the drafting process, and both Cardiff and Edinburgh are perfectly satisfied with the measures and are happy for them to be implemented across England, Wales and Scotland. I completely agree with the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) that we are all part of one country and that it is important to be consistent across it. I am glad to be able to tell him that the Northern Ireland Assembly has agreed to a legislative competence order so that the Bill will apply across the board to the whole of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. There will be consistency in the application of all the measures to the whole of the UK.

Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
574 cc828-9 
Session
2013-14
Chamber / Committee
House of Commons chamber
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