ABSTRACT
A concern to protect the safety, health and economic interests of its citizens through consumer protection legislation has been one of the characteristics of the Welfare State. In the UK, the first significant event was the establishment of the Molony Committee, which reported in 1962.1 As a result of the Committee’s Interim Report, the Consumer Protection Act 1961 had made the first attempt to regulate product safety. The Committee’s Final Report led to the Trade Descriptions Act 1968. The 1970s saw the passage of the Fair Trading Act 1973, which established the Office of Fair Trading (OFT), and the Consumer Credit Act 1974, which introduced comprehensive regulation of consumer credit. Various amendments in the area of product safety culminated in the Consumer Protection Act 1987, Part II of which introduced a general safety requirement as well as consolidating previous powers. Part I of that Act introduced strict product liability and Part III adopted a new way of regulating pricing misdescriptions through the use of a broad, general clause. In the 1990s, we have seen an overhaul of food safety regulation by the Food Safety Act 1990 and further amendment to the Sale of Goods Act 1979,
by, for example, changing the implied term of merchantable quality to one of satisfactory quality.2
