Here are the climate-related sections of speeches by MPs during the Commons debate Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill (Second sitting).
15:02 Neil Coyle (Labour)
An interesting point to make is that we did a joint project with the Utility Regulator for Northern Ireland on what consumer expectations might be of future regulation and decarbonisation. Consumers were very clear that, in addition to trusted accessible information and concerns about costs or financial health, they wanted absolute protection from safety fraud, obsolescence or mis-selling, but they also wanted clear and robust standards on certification, registration and standards for installers, and protection against damage and disruption during installation. That is moving away from something that is perhaps more price-led and economic to where we need to have a minimum enforceable standard that works for everyone, so that we bolster the safety net and create confidence in markets. The more that we do that, the more consumer spending we have in the economy, which is good for everyone.
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15:12 Seema Malhotra (Labour)
Touching briefly on greenwashing in particular, we acknowledge that existing regulators have powers to tackle that and that there are existing programmes of both education and enforcement. However, greenwashing claims are hugely prevalent and there is a lot of work to be done. It is an issue that, for us, has real risks associated with the net zero transition, because we are going to get consumers to make quite different choices around what they eat, what clothes they buy, how they heat their houses and what vehicles they drive. Some of those are quite big-ticket items in terms of cost, so there is a real risk for consumers and a real need for them to be able to trust the information they are given, which links back to the points my colleague Noyona was making about consumer confidence.
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