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Melanie Johnson MPLACOTS 'Year Ahead' Conference |
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| This Government is committed to providing high quality public services. Trading Standards plays an important role in that, helping to ensure that consumers get a fair deal. We are committed to working in partnership with you, with other enforcement agencies, with consumer organisations and with business, to deliver real benefits for consumers: better information and advice; a better regulatory environment which promotes competition and choice; and fair and consistent enforcement.
Today I would like to set out how we are going to do this in the year ahead. DTI Review As most of you will know, we have just completed a Review of the DTI. The new ways of working we are introducing will ensure that we are better able to build consumer issues into our strategic agenda. Some of you will have seen that we will be focusing on raising productivity. I want to assure you that for me, and for Patricia Hewitt, productivity does not mean lower quality products for the same price or poorer service for weaker consumers. Instead it should mean more choice, better value, higher quality products and better service for consumers. Our aim is 'to work with businesses, employees and consumers to drive up sustainable UK productivity and competitiveness'. We will continue to empower consumers and to drive competition through markets, so that consumers enjoy more choice, better service and competitive prices. We are putting consumers at the heart of competition and enterprise. Enterprise Bill The Enterprise Bill is central to this. The Bill will be introduced this session. It will contain a package of measures to empower consumers, stimulate competition and encourage enterprise. We have already published white papers on the competition and insolvency elements of the Bill. Today I am pleased to announce the publication of [this/a] booklet setting out the consumer measures it will include. The OFT will be strengthened. It will have a full Board on which consumer interests will be represented. A new duty to promote the importance of competition to consumers and business. A new power to educate consumers. And stronger, expanded powers to approve self-regulatory codes of practice so that consumers can be confident that they are dealing with a reliable supplier. Consumer organisations will be empowered. Some of them will be able to make new "super-complaints" - complaints about the operation of a particular market that will be fast-tracked by the OFT. Consumers themselves will have new rights to bring claims for damages to the Competition Commission Appeals Tribunal, when a business has been found guilty of anti-competitive behaviour. And consumer organisations will have the right to take action on behalf of groups of consumers. To underpin all this, we will bring the 1973 Fair Trading Act up-to-date. As part of this, the Stop Now regime will cover all consumer protection legislation. The Bill will therefore give you another tool for enforcing consumer protection legislation. But tools are only useful when they are used, and used effectively. Trading standards, like every other public service, faces the need to improve effectiveness and efficiency. To deliver better outcomes. Not once, but on a constant, year on year basis. DTI intends to help you to do this. National Standards One of the main ways is though the new National Performance Framework for trading standards. I am delighted to be launching the Framework today. It is the foundation on which we will build, with you, improved performance in trading standards. The Framework has been developed in partnership with the trading standards service. LACOTS, TSI and local trading standards services have been involved at every stage of its development, through the steering group and through pilots. I am very grateful to you all for the help and support you have provided during this process. In particular, I must thank the members of the steering and reference groups, and those authorities who piloted the Framework for us last Summer and Autumn. Your input was very valuable, and has ensured that the end result is a package which is sensible and fits in with the wider world in which you operate. The Framework is important. LACOTS, TSI and many of you have long recognised the need for such a framework, to establish your priorities. It also starts to lay down the disciplines needed by a twenty first century organisation to achieve service excellence. A high performing organisation needs to be able to plan and prioritise effectively. It must be able to assess the need for its services as part of this process. It needs to be able to monitor its activity, and evaluate its effectiveness. To determine what it does well, and where it could do better. This includes listening to its stakeholders views on how it performs. It needs to do these things on an ongoing basis. And to incorporate all of this learning into revised plans, and procedures to deliver service improvements. These principles are enshrined in the concept of Best Value, and the work of Audit Scotland. Many of you will have been involved in a Best Value or Audit Scotland review. But Best Value is a general concept, and many of you have told us there is a need for something more specific for trading standards. Something which helps a trading standards service put that concept into practice. Something which reflects the profession's own view as to what good performance entails. That is where the Framework comes in. It takes account of the Best Value regime in England and Wales, the different arrangements for implementing a Best Value Framework in Scotland, and the work of Audit Scotland. It has been developed with people who work in trading standards and reflects your views. The Framework introduces performance standards for Trading Standards. This will help to ensure that Trading Standards services throughout the UK develop a modern service, working towards national and local priorities in a consistent way. The Framework sets out three key national priorities for all Trading Standards services – shared goals which will be delivered locally:
These are the national priorities for trading standards. You will all have local priorities too. They should be complementary, enabling us all to work together to deliver consistent and coherent services for all consumers, whilst respecting local needs. The Framework also asks you to complete a short information return. This will enable us to gather some basic information about what you are doing. In future years, we will want to start developing proper performance indicators, but for this year we are simply asking for baseline information. So this Framework is the first step in the process of creating a robust performance assessment system for trading standards. A system which is useful to you, and which supports performance improvement. Because this is the first year, we are very keen to have your views on the Framework – particularly those of you who were not involved in pilots. We will be revising and developing the Framework in future years, taking account of the feedback you give us. We will also be taking into account the work that is needed to produce the plan and information return. Working with the steering and reference groups, and looking at the experience of the pilot authorities, we have tried to avoid making this a burdensome process. We have stressed that the trading standards plan can be part of a larger plan – and that there is no set format for how it should be produced. All we are asking is that it is clear to your staff and stakeholders what you intend to do on the issues which the plan covers. I am conscious that some trading standards services contain very few people – I would like to say to you especially that we believe that, even for smaller services, the Framework is useful in supporting a robust planning process. But we understand that you are unlikely to produce as long a plan as a larger service. If you only have 5 people working in trading standards it is much harder for one of you to find time to write a plan than if there are 50 of you! And you may well be part of a larger department which produces its own plan. Please do what you can, and tell us what works and what doesn't work. We are taking the same approach with the information return. For all of you. This is very much a first year and we will review it. Please fill in what you can – but don't change your IT systems to collect information that is not currently available. We think that you will find it useful to have the national summary of the information we have asked for, but we will be seeking your views on whether there are more useful pieces of data that we should collect. We believe that the Framework will add real value to your work. It will help you to monitor and improve your performance, and to set meaningful local objectives to sit alongside the national standards. But the Framework isn't the only way that we want to work with you. In time we will develop performance indicators to assess performance and to enable performance between different services to be compared. But we want to go beyond this. We want to identify areas of best practice, and to help you adopt it across the board. To help you not just to measure your performance, but to improve it. To put in place practical ways to support you in becoming more effective and efficient, and to tackle any problem issues. We therefore want to work with LACOTS and TSI to develop a peer review process. Peer review can do many things. It can identify best practice, which can then be publicised across the whole service. It can determine, for an individual service, what it does well and where it is struggling. And most important of all, it can provide that service with practical advice on how to improve its performance in any areas it finds difficult. It can be a very powerful tool. Today I would like to invite LACOTS and TSI to work with us on this. A peer review process must be led by the profession yourselves. Only people who are experts in trading standards can identify best – and worst – practice. So I would like to see LACOTS and TSI come forward with some practical proposals for how a peer review process might work. Proposals which will have the support of the profession, and which will be useful. Proposals which take account of the work that Audit Scotland are doing, and the lessons that are learned from that. I would like to see a peer review process in place by the end of the 2002 – 2003 year. I have set aside some money from the Modernisation Fund for this – it is now up to you to come forward with some ideas to make use of that. Modernisation Fund We will also be using the Modernisation Fund to support trading standards services in other ways. I am very pleased to announce today that we will be investing £10 million from the Fund in the coming financial year, to support projects which deliver real benefits for consumers locally. The Fund was introduced to help trading standards and other agencies respond to the challenges of enforcement in an ever-changing world. To raise the standard of consumer protection at the local level – where it really matters and where people really feel the difference. And to support practical measures to increase consumer safety. Some valuable projects have already taken off during this last year, the first of the Fund. They have begun to make a real difference. I would like to highlight some of these achievements. The consumercomplaints.org website, developed in this region by the MidCOTS group, will be officially launched at a reception this evening as part of the UK Online strategy. This website has been developed as part of a wider project that aims to pioneer new Trading Standards skills, techniques and methods of regulating the electronic marketplace. The consumer complaints website offers a single point of access for consumers who wish to complain or make an enquiry to their local Trading Standards Authority. It also provides a facility for consumers outside the UK to make complaints or enquiries about UK traders. Since going live in October the website has received consumer complaints from as far afield as the USA, Norway, New Zealand and Japan. Another innovative website to benefit from the Fund is ripofftipoff.net developed by Leicestershire and Northamptonshire Trading Standards. The website provides useful tips for consumers on how to avoid being scammed. Since going live in December, the website has received 7000 hits. It also provides an on-line facility for consumers or traders to give details of suspected rogue traders. Details can be left anonymously. These are assessed and passed onto the relevant agencies for further action. There have been 36 such notifications so far, all of which have provided genuine information about possible scams. And it helps put enforcers in touch. One complaint from Leamington Spa about a retailer and a product was notified at the same time to two Home Authorities as well as to Coventry Trading Standards. The site is innovative. An evaluation over the next few months will determine how much need there is for it. It is a small part of a bigger project to build a SCAM database. The database will be accessed through a secure internet site and will allow those of you in Trading Standards to check out whether scams already have a known history and who else is interested in them. Potentially the site could be of great value to several enforcement agencies. Another project, run by SETSA in the South East, looked at the particular problems faced by vulnerable consumers. They have produced a 'toolkit' which can be used by enforcement agencies, voluntary groups and social services across the South East, to help tackle the problems which particularly affect this group. For example, a booklet and video called 'Think Twice' aimed at senior and vulnerable consumers. It covers issues ranging from doorstep selling and bogus callers to junk mail and choosing a gardener. And it provides useful information on how to complain about a problem, including relevant contact details. On consumer safety, 12 projects have been funded during the last year. They include: A scheme with West Lothian Council to provide home safety equipment, including fireguards and stairguards, for 1000 low income families with children under 5. Another with Powys Alliance for Health, providing free electric blanket testing and replacement, together with general safety advice, for over 65s in the area. And with Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council, a project offering a falls prevention service to older residents, together with appliance testing and an equipment loan and repair service. In the world of trading standards, the regional co-ordinators supported by the Fund are now in post. They are starting to improve the way you communicate with each other and share information. This will raise the standard of service that you all provide to consumers and business. We will continue to support this valuable work in the second year of the Fund. Which brings me on to how we are going to invest our £10 million this coming year. I have allocated half the fund, £5m in total, to support effective enforcement. Out of this we are providing £2.5 million to Local Authorities in England, Scotland and Wales, through the Revenue Support grant, to fund the implementation of the Stop Now Orders. We are putting aside a further £0.5m to fund initiatives which support the use of Stop Now Orders, perhaps through further training, or the sharing of good practice. Another £1m of this £5m will continue to support cross boundary enforcement projects which started last year, and fund new cross boundary projects focusing on e-commerce. And, as I have already mentioned, we will continue to fund the Regional co-ordinators, and will support the introduction of the National Performance Framework for Trading Standards. In addition to the funds allocated for effective enforcement work, I have allocated £1.5m to continue to support the work on improving trading standards capabilities. Using this money we will continue to fund the DTI scholarships, and to support the development of distance learning materials. £2m will be used to support the development of Consumer Support Networks, providing consumers with the help and information they need at a local level. Finally, last November I announced that the funding for home safety from the Modernisation Fund will be £1.5million this coming year. Once again we will be working with ROSPA and the Child Accident Prevention Trust. Supporting home safety initiatives, building on this year's activities. The applications process for the Fund is now open. The closing date for safety projects is 15 February, for other parts of the Fund it is 31 March. A booklet containing all the details is in your delegate packs. I look forward to seeing the details of the innovative projects that I'm sure will come forward under all categories of the Fund. I encourage you to think widely and strategically about what it could help you do that would make a real difference for consumers. This is an exciting time for Trading Standards. A time of change, and a time of opportunity. There will be many challenges in the year ahead. Working together we can respond effectively to them. We can deliver a truly first class service for all consumers, making our own contribution to British productivity and competitiveness. |
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Other speeches by Melanie Johnson MP
(the following are available from the archive) |
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