Introduction

This chapter analyses the policy behind the use of criminal law controls and, more latterly, civil law enforcement to control unfair trading practices which have a negative impact on the trading framework within which both business purchasers and consumer buyers acquire goods and services. It addresses the controls previously and currently in place that protect these two disparate groups of purchasers. It is structured as follows

Section 2 provides a background to this topic and looks at the way that the law has recently developed and the introduction of two new sets of Regulations, the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 and the Business Protection from Misleading Marketing Regulations 2008.

Section 3 analyses the enforcement strategy that underpins the enforcement of both of these sets of Regulations, while Section 4 looks at the criminal law controls that are in place for both sets of Regulations. The first part of the section details the criminal law offences contained in the two sets of Regulations and identifies which offences require proof of mens rea and which are strict liability offences. The second part of the section considers the statutory defences that are open to someone charged with an offence contrary to either set of Regulations, with particular reference to the parameters of the due diligence defence and the defence of ‘innocent publication’. The section concludes by looking at the liability of ‘another person’ for offences against the Regulations.