ABSTRACT
A Royal Commission was established, yielding the Molony Committee Report on Consumer Protection in 1962. This prepared the ground for what became the Trade Descriptions Act 1968, the centrepiece of the current law and the principal object of investigation in this chapter. Proposed European initiatives to prohibit unfair commercial practices suggest a similar, albeit not necessarily identical, trend towards rather more broadly phrased controls. The European Commission has proposed the adoption of European Community (EC) measure forbidding unfair commercial practices. The Trade Descriptions Act 1968 introduced provisions designed to control aspects of practices likely to mislead consumers about prices. Traders were able to evade them while still employing practices that were, as a matter of policy, equally objectionable. In common with other consumer protection statutes, the Trade Descriptions Act contains defences which mitigate the apparent severity of the main offences which impose strict liability.
