Consumer education Alliance event - post event document

Consumer education Alliance event - 4 November 2005









Post-event document

Introduction



The first consumer education Alliance event, hosted by the OFT, took place on 4

November 2005. It was attended by over 100 delegates from business,

consumer organisations, education, government bodies, regulators and trading

standards.



The event provided a forum for discussion on topics including consumer

education priorities and campaigns, engaging 'hard to reach' consumers, forming

partnerships with business and learning from work outside the UK. Some key

messages emerging from the day included the need for:



• targeted, efficient, effective consumer education

• coordination between members to develop the Alliance

• guidance and simplicity to aid consumers

• partnerships with business and other organisations

• annual solid evidence pinpointing the skills consumers lack

• planning further ahead for campaigns and campaign evaluation

• making use of existing networks to reach the 'hard to reach'.



This document provides a record of the event including transcripts of the

speeches and discussions which took place.









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Key note speech – John Fingleton, Chief Executive



Philip Collins, the new Chairman of OFT, and I, are extremely enthusiastic about

the integrated mission of the OFT as a consumer and competition agency, and

we are extremely pleased to be taking on Consumer Direct. As you know, we

have argued that the consumer trading standards area properly belongs in OFT

and we see consumer education as an integral part of that. The Alliance is a real

milestone I think in our consumer education programme, and we see it as a very

important part of our delivery on our statutory mandate.



I am going to talk about three general themes today. First, why consumer

education matters. Secondly, why the work of the Alliance matters. And thirdly,

to talk a little bit about what we are here to do today.



Why consumer education matters?



Let me start that question by asking what does an educated consumer look like?

This turns, of course, on to the empowerment of consumers which is more than

simply knowing rights under the law, and more than just knowing how to shop

around. It is really about understanding the system. For example:



• whether to use a broker intermediary or to buy direct

• it is about knowing how to negotiate - something that all of us, I think,

feel great about when we learn how to negotiate better, but it is difficult

to do it - to start it (the learning) yourself

• how to get redress, and when you are entitled to redress

• where to go for good quality service

• it is about being able to be assertive and confident enough to make

demands and ask questions. When we go for dinner with our American

friends, they are very much more demanding about service in restaurants

and about other things, than some of us Europeans

• it is important to be confident and savvy about using the internet to

research and compare prices before you buy things. I think that is a great

tool for us as consumers, and it is important that we are able to use it

well

• spotting scams rather than falling for them, and learning from our friends

about what are scams. We all see these emails coming in; scams

traditionally took a different form but increasingly a lot of them are on the

internet and we have to watch out for them.







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It is not about empowerment just for individual transactions, but helping people

to develop lifelong skills that will benefit them. This is important for us

individually and collectively, because the skills we need to develop and acquire

throughout our life, as markets develop, as competition develops, will help us

when faced with new choices, more complex products or different price

offerings.



If we think about mobile phones, none of us had to think about mobile phone

tariffs ten years ago. We all have to address that issue now. It is about being

able to cope with those new choices as time goes on, and knowing how to

educate yourself, rather than simply taking information about individual markets.

It is about the process of learning.



When you think about education, we do not just educate people by teaching

them facts, we also teach them how to educate themselves, and it has to be the

same here.



But it matters to us collectively as a society as well. The more people that are

empowered consumers, the more they will benefit the rest of us. There is a sort

of critical mass effect that brings markets forward and that is hugely important

as part of the programme, but not the only part, for addressing issues for

vulnerable consumers. If the market is working better, it will work better for

everybody, not just those who are empowered.



Consumer empowerment also drives competition from the bottom up - and that

drives productivity, growth and value for consumers. In fact there can be a

virtuous cycle - if there are more and more informed and empowered consumers,

that will encourage and provide incentives for businesses to provide us with

reliable and useful information as part of their competitive strategies.



So consequently, I think that gives further impetus to the consumer

empowerment and so you get a virtuous cycle that is generally better. It is also

important for addressing general expectations we have about markets and again,

thinking about how for example, Americans, or people in other countries where

markets have developed in a different way, about what expectations they have

of markets. Whether the Government should be regulating prices, or whether

they expect the market to deal with issues, and also supporting consumer

redress. I think is something that really is developing now in Europe as a whole

and that we should support.





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So, overall I think there are huge gains to be made from consumer education,

and I probably do not need to sell that to this audience because we are all in that

business.



Why the Alliance matters



Consumer education is a challenging business. It is not going to be easy;

consumers have to have something in it for them, some obvious benefit because

it is costly learning to negotiate. Taking time to think about different offers and

so on, is a time consuming business, and many of us live in increasingly time-

poor but financially rich lifestyles which often makes it difficult to prioritise the

choices we make.



Sometimes we make bad decisions and we need to reflect on that and think how

we allocate our effort. Drawing on this virtuous cycle point I made earlier,

consumer education has what economists call positive externalities; if some

people are educated and empowered, that benefits everybody else. It is obvious

there is not enough of it going on. That is why we need to coordinate better and

work together. As I said, markets are changing, with new products, more

complex pricing, so for that reason, it is also challenging. One of the biggest

challenges I think we face is that these days it seems like everybody is trying to

educate citizens about everything, whether it is prostate cancer or some other

issue that is coming up, the environment, whatever.



Everybody has got an agenda, and if you talk to school teachers, they are

getting education packs from every state agency; in fact I am going to come

onto the number they are getting just in consumer education alone. So we have

to do consumer education better and smarter because everybody else out there

is competing with us for their time in the citizen's mind.

I do not want to depress people about the extent of the challenge, but I thought

Jim Murray from BEUC when he was speaking at our Competition Consumer Day

made a nice comment from Brecht where he said 'if the Government has lost the

confidence of the people, we must change the people.' I think we have to think

about consumer education as how far can we go, and we should not think about

it being a difficult task and saying 'well we can't do that', but rather that we

need to make even more effort to do it. But we are not doing it well. We lack

coordination. All of us have responded to these challenges by putting in more

effort, but we have been doing it individually, rather than collectively and one of







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the purposes of the Alliance is to bring us together around a common strategic

focus and strategic objectives.









Now I am sure you have all heard the DTI's figure that there were at least 75

different teacher packs focussed on consumer skills created when the citizenship

module was introduced into the national curriculum in England. Clearly some of

these were excellent. But talking to teachers, a lot of them want one single good

pack that they can use, rather than 75 different ones. Many teachers, trainers,

educators and advisers, just do not know what resources are out there, and do

not know how to get access to them, and many of them have not got the time

or inclination to sort through them, especially when there is so much else being

provided to them by other agencies and other interest groups in society.



Now, too many expensive resources sit idly on shelves, or are useless because

they are out of date and we need to address that as well. I think with such

levels of fragmentation, existing consumer education networks often lack

sufficient profile and resources to make the most of their expertise. We are

putting in a lot of effort, but we are not necessarily getting the maximum return

out of it. I am not saying there is not excellent work going on out there, there is,

but we need to do it better, and smarter, and I think it is appropriate that we

think about this in National Consumer Week, which is just coming to a close.









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In terms of how we do it better, a central part of this is the use of evidence in

our work, and thinking about how we can learn from what others are doing well,

from what we have been doing well, from our own mistakes, and trying to avoid

duplication and waste. We at the OFT will not, and cannot, act alone or commit

resources without the evidence that supports a good understanding of what

really works. It is important in this context that we work closely with business in

delivering this important programme. But we cannot do this alone. I think

nothing illustrates better why we cannot do this alone than lifelong skills. Issues

about literacy and numeracy affect our ability to succeed and the OFT is not in a

position to effect this on its own. The Alliance is certainly better positioned to

work with specialists in this field, particularly our colleagues in the Department

of Education and Skills and to take their expertise on board. We worked with the

FSA closely with their work on financial capability which again is an example of

something that has a wider benefit for all of us. The point I am making here is -

to achieve an educated population of consumers, we need to work together in

different places, using different areas of expertise. Not that we should not be

doing things, but we should be doing things in a more specialised and

coordinated way. So I think the Alliance has important work to do because of

the challenges we face and also because of the lack of coordination in what we

have been doing up until now.



What are we here to do?



It is basically about action rather than words. We are here to start the work of

the Alliance, and I focus on two things. I think working together requires that we

recognise that each individual member can and must contribute, ensuring that

every member benefits through savings in time, resources and the development

of specialised expertise, and knowing where they can play to their fullest

strength. We must be innovative and creative in what we do through teamwork

and learning from each other, and I think we should think about this as a

teamwork project. All of us in our own organisation work in teams and I think

we probably know how a good team can contribute so much more than the sum

of what each individual can do. So we should think about this as a team working

project where we are working jointly to deliver in that way, with bigger benefits

for all of us in society as a whole.



The second thing I would focus on today is developing evidence to do our work,

getting a picture of what is out there at the moment and understanding better

what each of us is doing. We are already conducting research to map the







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existing consumer education activity, and I believe this early work will provide a

solid foundation for our future planning.



So let me conclude.



We are here for a new start. Sixty-three organisations and individuals have joined

the Alliance and hopefully more will do so. Many of you here today have shown

commitment and energy in bringing this work forward, and I would like to thank

you for that. But in reality, our work has only just begun; we the people in this

room need to address these issues in a coordinated way and that is why it is

important that today we are thinking about a step change. We are not here just

to talk about it, but to start our work. One example that I might just mention is

that the OFT is trying to use its Credit campaign as an experiment for this

coordinated approach.



Business has an important role to play and the Hampton debate has floated the

concept of a new trust between business and Government, one founded on the

responsible company ,the engaged employee and the educated consumer - the

words of Gordon Brown. I think we have to recognise the crucial role that

business has to play in delivering reliable and useful information to consumers

because ultimately business is the interface with the consumer at the time of the

transaction. We cannot do it all sitting here in the background, it has to be

delivered on the ground. I welcome our business colleagues here today, and I

look forward to working closely with them as we go forward.



So today we have got to get stuck in, work closely together. We are going to

have to commit time and effort, where evidence shows that it works, and we

are also going to pull back from some efforts and activities that do not work or

where we think others in the Alliance are better placed to act. We are in a

changing and more demanding environment, with new products and new

services, and with the OFT taking on Consumer Direct from next Spring,

consumer education will have a higher profile and I think we need to be poised

to meet that challenge.



Today is about making a difference to consumers and by the end of the day's

work, I hope you will have a better idea of how the Alliance work is relevant to

what you do.



So in summary, consumer education matters to us all individually, and in making

markets work better and improving the welfare for everybody in society. We are





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not doing it well at the moment; we need to be smarter in how we do it and our

coordination work today is critical in that. I think we are here today to start that

coordinated work in a meaningful way. The planning phase is over and it is on to

action. I think this is a great time to be in consumer education. We the people in

this room are in a position to shape the future. The Government and government

policy is responsive to greater consumer empowerment and I think we need to

support business and consumers themselves in delivering that agenda in the

marketplace.



I am thrilled to be joining this team, and look forward to hearing what other

people have to say about consumer education today and working closely with all

of you as our work develops. I believe that working together we can really make

an important difference.









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Sofa session: Business and consumer education - unnatural

bedfellows?



James Bellini: I introduce the debate really, by turning first to you Gordon

Madden, from ASDA. We have had the policy discussions, we have had the

reports, we have had the speeches. It is time to get stuck in, are you ready for

it?



Gordon Maddan: I am indeed. The first point I would make is I would echo

John's comment, that it is a great time to be in consumer education. For the first

time I think in terms of local authority level, education will not be the poor

relation of enforcement as it has been in the past. From a retail perspective then,

well-functioning markets that are competitive are very good for businesses that

are efficient. And we see it in the supermarket sector; they have driven

tremendous increase in range, price competitiveness and customer service and

we are all for markets that work effectively. As far as consumer education is

concerned, education is a potentially difficult word in terms of business seeing

that as one of its primary roles. Our primary role is to serve our customers as

well as we possibly can and over the last 20 years, the need to compete on

service has driven the service provided to customers, well beyond the legal

minimum basis, and I know in terms of consumer education, that causes some

problems because you are educating consumers as to their rights to return

products etc, yet the practices in the high street often go well beyond those

legal rights, and therefore causes confusion to the consumer when they go to

retailers who are not so advanced in customer service.



James Bellini: We will come back to you in a second Gordon, because that is

obviously a very positive start, but it is very much a retail perspective. Wearing

your CBI [Confederation of British Industry] hat Keith Richards, is that the way,

in your view, most of British industry and business sees it?



Keith Richards: I think it is. I think there is an absolute need for business to get

involved in consumer education. It is not the business of business to be

educators, the business of business is to sell and make profit, but also to make

sure there is accurate information and advice available to consumers, to help

them make informed choices. The difficulty for business, I think and this is a

point that has been made this morning and the NCC [National Consumer Council]

I think put it in a nutshell in one of their reports, is that currently consumer

education is inefficient, uncoordinated and fragmented. So do we put a sticking







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plaster on it, or do we start from scratch? I think the idea of starting with

something new has got to be the only way to deal with that. In terms of

business and success, I think ill-educated or ignorant consumers are very

dangerous for reputable business. They are probably the kind of consumers who

help support disreputable business because their decisions are based on,

probably a belief that what they are being told is true. But there is a real interest

in reputable business to make sure that their customers are knowledgeable, well-

informed and well educated.



James Bellini: Ed Mayo, you were obviously mentioned there by Keith. We have

had two voices of business already, both saying, yes smashing, come on in the

water is lovely. We all want informed consumers. So why do we have such a

patchy picture? Why hasn't it actually taken off?



Ed Mayo: I think we have seen a big improvement from a very low base - I mean

we have been involved in this for some time. In Wales we launched one of the

pioneering consumer education websites. It was only in 2001 that we called for

a national strategy on consumer education. In 2003 the powers were given to

the OFT and under Penny's [Boys] excellent leadership on this, the OFT has kind

of grasped that. So I think we are still in the early stages of it, and the goodwill

shown by the number of people that are here today, is a goodwill that needs not

to be frittered away. I think that there are some things that we can do as

consumer organisations and certainly, we need to be involved in consumer

education. We got the go-ahead this week for a new initiative on health literacy

which is just one more component of the consumer education from the NHS that

will be involved. Consumers themselves have a responsibility and I think that

needs to be accepted.



James Bellini: It is such a huge area though isn't it? Because practically

everything a citizen or a consumer does is a form of consumption, and you just

mentioned health, so we are going to spend all day being educated if we are not

careful.



Ed Mayo: Well I think the truth is that people are not educated; people learn and

there is recognition of that in the work around education. I think also there is a

challenge here to Government in terms of what John Fingleton was talking about

this morning in terms of fighting for that space within the limited curriculum.

What underpins people's capabilities, is not just information, it is skills and

capabilities; there needs to be a set of competencies. We cannot have children







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leaving school without those core competencies and that is about basic literacy

and it goes a bit beyond that.









So I think there is a bigger agenda here which is that, and you will find in the

education field, people like Mike Tomlinson and others who have done reviews

of education, would agree entirely that we have to have a schooling system and

here is a responsibility of Government, that delivers people ready for the world

beyond leaving school. And we have seen big improvements in terms of the

enterprise agendas, there has been a recognition of equipping children for the

workplace, equipping children potentially for those that want to be

entrepreneurs, that has been taken into school, and what we have not had is

equipping people with the life skills to be consumers in the markets.



I do not want to focus on Government because I do not think it necessarily

starts there. But there is surely a common interest for all of those here in the

Alliance, come to this group under the auspices of the OFT to fight for those

bases to be got right by Government. I think there are other things Government

can do. The conversation was about strange bedfellows; maybe we can just find

common alliance by focusing on what Government could do. But I do think

regulators get in the way sometimes on this and in the health field, I take the

examples of drug and prescription leaflets. I do not know the last time you

picked up a medicine, whether you read the thing that folds out, and of course

you probably did not, and the data and information that is in there – probably in





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12 languages – is pretty much impossible to decipher. And yet we know that if

consumers know more about what the medicines are, what the risks are, then

they are more likely to stay the course, they are more likely to get healthier as a

result. What is the problem? It has been actually a regulatory framework that has

basically told businesses, and a risk framework, that has got the lawyers on to it

and you get something that simply does not work for consumers. A simple

example of where things could be done better.



James Bellini: Colin Brown, maybe I can bring you in. Regulators can get in the

way?



Colin Brown: Well I am sure they can, but they can also do an awful lot. In some

extent, regulators working with business in partnership is where you can get

some of the biggest payoffs. I know Martin Coppack from the FSA [Financial

Services Authority], a financial officer, is here and he delivers a massive

consumer education and dare I say it, almost an advice service, through the web

in terms of choice of product; by getting information in a standardised form from

all the different firms and therefore people have got this web tool. I used it the

other week to select a mortgage myself. It actually works, so regulators doing

the right thing can actually deliver a lot to consumers, single issue awareness

campaigns as well. You all heard about this Canadian lottery scam where elderly

people are phoned up and told they have won the lottery and have to just send a

few thousand in to claim their money. At the OFT we did a major public

awareness campaign on that one issue and we found it really hit home and six

months later, 35 per cent of the public remember that campaign. That did an

awful lot of good, so yes, of course regulators can send out confusing messages

and make things too complicated and we have to try and make things simpler, or

you can also hit the spot.



James Bellini: But you see, a lot of educational programmes are campaigns, as

with your Canadian lottery thing and to me as an outsider, that strikes me as a

recipe for being patchy and one off and closed-end.



Colin Brown: I am not so sure about that. I think that if the campaigns were

inappropriate, if we were doing campaigns on literacy for example, that is not

the way to get financial, or other literacy improved through a campaign, but if

it's a single issue piece of awareness that we want to produce then a campaign

is the right thing to do. After all, remember that advertising for firms is to

actually sell their products and services, that is run on the basis of campaigns

and they work, which is why they spend billions of pounds on them. So I do not





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think we should be scared of the label, campaign, but we should make sure that

we use campaigns appropriately.



James Bellini: Bill Goodland, retailing has been around a while and you have got

lots of customers, you talk to them every day I would imagine. How informed

and educated do you find they are? Are they interested in being good customers

in that sense of educated and informed customers?



Bill Goodland: Well I think they are increasingly educated, but as you say right

now we have, in the UK, about 35 per cent of homes with broadband, so it has

really become a mass market phenomenon. But I remember when I started out in

this job in 2001, we did a survey of how many people in the UK understood, or

what did people understand by the term, broadband? And we found that 4 per

cent of people felt that they knew what the term broadband meant. This was

only four years ago, and of them, half confidently said it was something to do

with radio. So you can see the challenge we took on and so I think that is a

good illustration of how, particularly for the hi-tech sector, consumer education

is an absolutely pressing commercial issue, because understanding comes before

adoption. Before customers are willing to pay for something, they absolutely

need to be aware of it.



That is one issue, but there are other I think commercial aspects to consumer

education for us. One is that in particular in the internet space, customers who

do not understand products are much more expensive to support. We have two

to three hundred thousand technical issue-related calls every month, and you can

work out at a couple of pounds a call, that is quite a big cost for our business.

So we are very interested in driving education on some basic technical issues

into our customer base as much as we can and providing information to allow

them to help themselves. I think Keith Richards makes a good point as well, just

a last thought. Having invested in, in our case, a national fibre optic network at

very large expense, we are very keen indeed that we do not find competitors or

interlopers passing off services or products which are not actually as good as

they say they are, and taking our market and taking our customers. So a lot of

our defence against that is to make sure that customers are able to differentiate

between the real, in our case, proper broadband service and other things which

may look and sound like they're genuine broadband services, but may not be,

and there are examples of those.



James Bellini: A lot of the studies I read tell me that consumers, customers, are

overawed by choice, they are confused. The word we use is simplexity, they





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want you to help them, they do not want to be educated so they can make the

decision themselves, is that something that resonates with you?



Ed Mayo: It is. In a world of increasing choice, what consumers look to, are

different groups to be choice editors for them and it may be the supermarket you

go to, it may be the magazine that you read. It is a way of packaging those

choices to fit people's lifestyles and that puts both a responsibility and an

opportunity in that service relationship. As soon as you have a service

relationship, then I think you have an interest in something that is less

transactional, so you have an interest in consumer education.



I wanted to pick up the point about broadband. I think it is an excellent example

and my reading of it Bill, would not be that there was a mass Governmental or

other kind of educational campaign, or even Alliance members were going out on

the streets talking about this is what broadband is. It is that the industry actually

got it right in terms of a simple product that people could understand and got the

pricing. I think we are still not there, but confusion marketing is terrible for

consumers, so just to get the pricing and the product right, I think created its

synergy, so rather than being education and then products and business will

follow, I think these are mutual and these go in a circle.



The real opportunity is that business has this incredible complexity of

interactions with consumers in terms of delivery of this. The way that products

are done, the way that services are designed have these fantastic opportunities

to really build that understanding, or to destroy it. I wonder if I could throw in,

just for Gordon here, an idea that is pioneered by my colleague Steve Brooker,

who is here today, which is: here is an idea for retailers. As part of what you do,

could we see you putting the telephone number for Consumer Direct, the

helpline for consumers which is going to be coming to the OFT, could we see

you putting that at checkouts or even having it on till receipts? Of course we will

give you 18 months to do it, but could we see a future in which business

engages in the support infrastructure that is there for consumers in that kind of

way?



Gordon Maddan: A lot of what retail is about is building trust in the brand and

that trust is based on a whole lot of factors where consumers have expectations

of the business, and we are doing the right thing across a whole range of

different areas that they can't possibly think about or articulate for themselves

and you have to be in the market of satisfying that expectation and trust. In

terms of support for the Consumer Direct website, we support the alcohol Drink





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Aware website in our advertising, on our packaging and various other websites

and in principle I cannot see a particular problem in doing that.



James Bellini: I have heard people say, wow, if I am running a business the last

thing I want is a load of demanding, educated customers coming in through the

door. What do you think of that?



Ed Mayo: I think that is a really interesting point. One of the things I am really

excited about the Alliance is that what we are doing is broadening this idea of

consumer education from the idea of rights that people have when things go

wrong, to getting the best out of the working market. I think that is so important

for people in business to understand, that we are not trying to give a few more

weapons to people who are on the other side, we are trying to actually improve

the communications between the supply side and the demand side. What goes

wrong in this country I think more than the States, for example, is that the

messages that come back to retailers in particular, from customers are so poor.

People go away from the store or the restaurant without actually saying what

they thought was wrong with it. They might not bring their custom back but

that is an incredibly difficult message to interpret; sales went down that month,

what did we do wrong? Actually you want customers not to just know their

rights, but customers who are more confident, more assertive in just saying, I do

not like that, I would prefer it like that. That is the point, isn't it - to get an

engagement between one side and the other to improve the market.









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Allan Asher: Allan Asher from energywatch. You started off by saying that it

was time to get stuck in. I disagree with that to this extent. People have actually

been getting stuck in for 25 years. I think there are, as we have heard, vast

numbers of activities going on. I think I would change your introduction a little

bit, to time to get strategic rather than get stuck in, and as we see from the

developments in the Alliance, people are starting to understand across the

sectors some of the common competencies that people want to build, some of

the common tools, some of the common traps, areas of failure, things like that..

I would hate the idea that it all converged to a single programme. I think it is

great to have a wide range of diversity and innovation and things like that, but

rather useful if that is done in the context of a critical dialogue within groups

where people have got a sense of where we are going.



Keith Richards: It is all about being strategic really, about sharing agreements

about common points of contact and common points of action. I do not think

there is a one-stop shop, one single simple solution to this whole issue and yes,

people have been involved in it for many many years and as I said when I made

my opening comments, we are still in the position where there are problems. So

we cannot go on like that and having an alliance has got to be a way of bringing

all those loose connections together. I mean the thing that disappoints me about

today, and about the Alliance, is the lack of the media, because the role of the

media in generating consumer expectations, generating the kind of demanding

consumer who comes through the door and thinks they are well educated and

thinks they know what they are entitled to, either from a product or from a

service. When things go wrong, they are often ill-informed because of what they

have read or seen in the media. And I would say this wouldn't I? But from my

own industry, the travel industry, which gets fantastic media coverage, good

selling product and bad - I mean no other industry that I am aware of has a

weekly prime time television programme, Banking from Hell, or anything like that

you know, Holiday's from Hell yes! And for many consumers, they watch the

programmes or read the papers and they believe that if they have a problem

rather like that person and for every complaint, there is a refund, which is from a

legal point of view not true, and from a business trying to provide good service

point of view it would put them out of business if that were the case. I think you

have to engage the media, which is very difficult because they are only going to

go for stories that make good reading, and that are going to be sexy and great to

watch on television. So nice worthy issues about education and rights and

responsibilities does not always attract their attention, but to have them

engaged in this kind of alliance, I think that is a strand.





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James Bellini: Speaking as an on and off journalist myself Keith, it is not a story

if there is no conflict. Journalists are only interested in things where there is

conflict and that is why probably the most interesting consumer programme is

something like Watchdog, where people are thrown to the wolves every week,

or every day or whatever it is. But the other half of it, media, we have got to

stretch that term haven't we? Maybe I can ask you Bill to have a comment on

this because you are in the hi-tech space, the internet space. I do not know how

many web logs you read, I read a lot of the blogging area. A lot of that started

actually, in complaints about companies, you know, do not buy this toaster, I

bought it and the handle fell off on the third day. And these are all citizen

correspondents as we call them now, it is a kind of free uncontrolled newspaper,

that is media as well isn't it? Is that a negative or a positive development?



Bill Goodland: Well it is a bit of both I think, certainly from my perspective. I am

on the receiving end of lots of comment and lots of online speculation about

every product move and change that we make. But if I say to you that actually,

if you consider that we spend a lot of money on things like focus groups which

are in effect the same thing, so we take the view that some of these sorts of

sites that are dedicated to looking at our company and to consumers getting

together and talking about our company, some of the feedback is actually quite

positive and you may or may not choose to believe whether I really think that.

But I can tell you that there is one site in particular that was focused on ntl and

for a while, because it was just run by one of our customers, it struggled

financially and we actually paid for it to continue, so we funded its existence. I

guess that is real evidence that actually the feedback we were getting from that

site was genuinely useful to us, engaging the quality of customers' experience of

our service and in developing new products. So it can be good, but sometimes it

gets a bit close to the bone.



James Bellini: Penny Boys, do you want to come in?



Penny Boys: I wanted just to ask Bill to think one step further. From your

experience of that website, could you deduce behaviours in customers that were

causing repeat problems? And could we have that shared more widely in some

sort of Alliance way?



Bill Goodland: That is an interesting question. Do we use feedback from these

sorts of sites to understand the services that we offer and to change what we

do? Yes, we do. Simple examples would be, to be a bit parochial for a moment,

a year or so ago, we had mounting feedback from customers about the problems





18

they were encountering with email spam. In response, we spent, I was going to

say a small fortune, a large fortune, implementing quite sophisticated controls.

We do not have that problem anymore, our spam controls have become now an

element that drives consumer advocacy on our behalf which is a good example

of listening to that online community. How do we share that? Well we do share

that learning to some extent because we participate in a lot of bodies like our

trade association ISPA [Internet Service Providers Association] for instance, so

around areas where we think there is industry benefit to sharing knowledge, we

are absolutely keen to do that. On areas where we think there is competitor

advantage, and we get a lot of that feedback as well from customers about

features of products they would like to see, no we keep that to ourselves,

thanks very much!



Ed Mayo: While you are thinking about that, in September 2004, a consumer put

up on the website, information about how using a Bic pen you could very quickly

disable a bicycle lock and word spread very quickly on the internet, far faster

than the company was really able to respond with denials. It ended up having to

offer replacements that were something like £7 million worth and then develop a

better product, and so this is a different world out there. We should not

approach consumer education as if this was about a deficit in consumers and we

should not approach it as if the business case for this is about corporate

responsibility or being nice to injured teddy bears. This is about consumer power.

We are launching an index later on this year called the Active Consumer Index,

which is just tracing the rise of consumers being active in the choices that they

make in the market place, and we are doing work with the writer, journalist,

Charlie Leadbetter, on the involvement of consumers in processes of business

innovation, so there is that opportunity.



Now I think, in relation to that, I always trust business when they say we can

make a profit out of this. When they give us other excuses, I am not quite sure I

always believe them. But there is another area where we do have to get

strategic in the way that Allan said, because there is one part of the consumer

education story which is about driving competition, there is another part which is

about where markets are failing, and in particular, where consumers are more

vulnerable and are being ripped off. It is fine for the big brand names and those

who have got a reputation to do this stuff and to do it right, but for others, there

are business incentives to rip consumers off. I will give one example which is the

car repair and servicing sector. £4 billion of consumer detriment, which is just a

staggering figure, and that is because for good theoretical reasons, high

information asymmetries, i.e., not everybody knows what is going on, a large





19

financial purchase done on an infrequent basis and those are exactly the

conditions that economists would tell us are where consumers get ripped off.



Now, we have been active in this field and I hope helpful in the work that OFT

and industry has been doing to try and resolve this problem. But I think this is a

great area where actually, in terms of vulnerable consumers, the OFT should be

taking this sector as a great example of what can we do with the Alliance, what

can we do as the OFT in terms of it taking this sector to inform consumers

about their rights and to start to put alongside other regulatory enforcement.



James Bellini: Colin can I add something; I know you are going to reply to that,

raise the OFT's role and outlook, but a lot of people would say excuse me, it is

all getting very cosy, isn't competition actually about polarisation, almost about

economic confrontation, rather than the title of our session this morning, getting

into bed with one another, it should be the opposite of that.



Colin Brown: Yes, do not forget competition is between people selling things,

and making things, not between the consumer and the producer, and the

supplier. It is these chaps that ought to be competing with each other, not with

me. There are ways in which they have common cause. They would not join

together in trade associations, and come together in the CBI and Institute of

Directors and things like that if there was not a level of exchange and sharing of

information and activity, which was not to some extent, helpful to them as a

whole, so keeping the market buoyant. There is lots of things that they want to

do together, so I do not think that there is a problem there. But I think you

wanted me to pick up these points that Ed is making. I absolutely agree that in

some sectors, we need to pay particular attention to the fact where in the short

term and medium term, it is commercially beneficial for traders to rip people off

and to maintain a lack of consumer information and awareness and so on, and it

is not just cars, it is the building and home maintenance sector as well. We need

to think very hard about the degree to which we can improve things with

consumer education and consumer awareness and the degree to which we need

to use other tools. I think we can go somewhere further with consumer

education but I think Ed would agree, I think there is a limit to what we can

achieve there, simply by working on the demand side. I think actually oddly

enough in the building sector, home maintenance sector, we can probably do a

bit more with consumer education than in the motor sector, because I think

people really come at what they have done in their own homes, very ill-

equipped, very unprepared to say, can I have a contract. Whereas I think on the

whole, things that go wrong on the motoring side, are structural and are real





20

asymmetries of power and information. I think in home maintenance we can get

somewhere with consumer education.



James Bellini: Gordon, can I put this other half of the cynical view that here

comes ASDA and all your competitors with all these consumer awareness

programmes, or whatever, and people will stand back and say, this is just a

cunning marketing wheeze to make them look good guys, win some brownie

points. Can it backfire in that way?



Gordon Maddan: You have got to be very careful in terms of tone of voice with

communication with your customers. What they want from us is information and

things that make their life choices easier for them, they do not want us to be

preaching or selling any particular line to them, but in terms of being a medium

of mass communication, one business alone may have twelve million customers

coming through the door each week. We produce a healthy eating magazine four

times a year, health advice etc. To pick up on Ed's point, two million copies and

that is the sort of mass communication out to difficult target audiences that

regulatory authorities can not do. And that is the sort of strength that we can

bring to alliances to get better information out there to help consumers make

those choices. I do not think that is cynical or exploitative in any particular way,

it is good business sense to do that.



James Bellini: All of this comes down in the end and I think Mano Chandy

[strategic consultant with COI who in the morning presented the initial findings

of his research, commissioned by the OFT, to map UK consumer education

provision] talked about it this morning, about funding, very patchy and needs to

be much more centralised and organised if you like and integrated. But Keith,

coming to you, CBI hat on again, do you think industry is generally happy to get

out the chequebook and say right, we will put our money where our mouth is on

this, get strategic, get stuck in, whatever it is going to be, but let us put some

money in?



Keith Richards: Well I think you saw from some of Mano's Chandy's slides it

does, and where it sees a benefit for business, as I said right at the start, the

business for business is to be in business, and to make money. So yes, and they

will do it, because it makes good business sense. It wraps up all of these points

about having well informed consumers, who are buying the product. Because

they have been able to make an informed choice and they know it is the right

thing for them, and that when things do go wrong, they know that there is one







21

place which is where they bought it that they can go back to and get a fair

hearing. Now you do not get that with the less reputable businesses out there.









And the point that was mentioned earlier about tying up with Consumer Direct,

we work very closely with Consumer Direct and the CBI supports Consumer

Direct in its aims, in the very simple sense that if you can allow business to be

aware of what is going on, prevent consumers rushing off and washing their

dirty linen very much in public on the web or anywhere else, by feeling that they

are going to get a fair hearing, with business, that is the best place to go to get

your problem sorted out. Then business can control that, which means not only

controlling their costs, but also controlling the PR, for that that is potentially,

horrendously expensive. For good business, PR is very important. So all of those

things mean, I am coming back to the title, gone are the days where, business

and enforcers in the consumer movement, it is a 'them and us' situation, it is

not. We may not be getting into bed with each other, but we are probably sitting

on the sofa holding hands. And that has got to be the best way to take it

forward. There will always be differences, but there will be huge synergies to be





22

gained for reputable business by dealing with those who educate and those who

enforce.



Dan Mace: Dan Mace from the Citizenship Foundation, educational charity. One

way it seems to me that the unnatural bedfellow thing might indeed be

unnatural, is the initial choice that consumers have to make is, do I need the

product? I am not at all sure that businesses who are selling products are going

to be very helpful in educating consumers in that choice, and indeed, they may

very well be going far too far the other way, and I do not think we have

addressed that yet.



Alice Maynard: I am Alice Maynard from Future Inclusion. Keith has just given a

very nice qualitative summary of the business case for consumer education, but I

wondered to what extent businesses are quantifying that business case and

understanding the impact on the bottom line.



Keith Richards: I think it depends on the business but I think a lot of businesses

are quantifying it, just as now a lot of businesses are looking at corporate

responsibility principles and actually quantifying those. A lot are still at very early

stages, but the point is that they are taking the steps necessary to start

quantifying how they perform out there in the marketplace. I think one of the big

driving forces behind the need to do that has been the technology, the web-

based internet transactions that are increasing, in travel it is certainly the case,

and the ease with which consumers can go out and tell the world about their

experience. So it is become a necessity for every business to invite that, to

allow that comment to come in and be seen to be dealing with it. And what do

you do with it then? Well you have to quantify it because if you do not and you

carry on trading in the same old way, then you are going to get more and more

of that in the future and you will lose control of it, so it is not great. Lots of

businesses are doing a hell of a lot, some are not, but I think most reputable

businesses are now on the ladder.



Jenny Cobley: I am Jenny Cobley from the Basic Skills Agency. I wonder if you

could comment on what kind of moral responsibility, if any, business has

towards the 20 per cent who really struggle, not only with literacy and

numeracy, in other words, reading and understanding information that you put

out, but also possibly with poverty, possibly with finance, possibly with housing,

and struggle even to survive from one day to the next.









23

Ed Mayo: I will reinforce the point, it is a moral responsibility but also a

commercial responsibility as well, because sometimes when business does not

actually recognise the many people in that situation, or assumes that there is a

standard customer that they can deal with in a certain way, they are missing out

business opportunities. We are doing some work at the National Consumer

Council, one of my colleagues Philip Cullen, on the basis that a lot of times

consumers lose out, it is not actually some great business conspiracy to rip them

off, it is actually sometimes businesses being stupid, and I think in this area, it is

a case of stupidity, that there are those markets there and if you do not work

out how to sell to those, you will be losing out. But beyond that, I think there is

also a wider moral issue about inclusion, because we live in a market society and

people need essential services, and to be robbed of the opportunity to have

access to those services on an affordable basis, is what poverty means today. It

means that you can not really take part in society around you.



One example is, half of the poorest households have no access to home

contents insurance, and the people that are most at risk in terms of crime and

burglary, are those least able to fall back on things like insurance that other

people take for granted. Now, we are working with the insurance industry on

that; we are hoping we can bring the moral case and as you say, we are hoping

we can bring a commercial case. The key concerning consumer education, is

that really the work that needs to be done, basic skills is a very strong focus,

but more widely in terms of consumer education, does take resources, and it

does take efforts and I think much of that needs to come from government and

we need to be as an alliance I think, building up our own sense of what that

need is and what we need to see of government in further education and in

schools, really delivering on that.



James Bellini: I am just going to ask you all individually on the panel if that is all

we have from the group on the floor here. I just want to leave you with a

comment from me as a consumer and somebody who keeps a roving eye on

business. To me, the most intelligent businessmen I have ever come across

normally regard complaints and feedback from their customers as the most

priceless free research for the development of their businesses, so informed

consumers, people who are prepared to stand up and complain, they are the

ones who make businesses more competitive. So with that little gem, Gordon,

your wish list, what is top of it?









24

Gordon Maddan: Well, prior to the wish list, just to say that is why we are so

enthusiastic about the functioning of Consumer Direct and the evidence base

that that will give in order to drive real improvement.



James Bellini: And to get this alliance cracking, what is needed?



Gordon Maddan: I think coordination, consolidation and a national identity for the

work that is going on. We would not run a supermarket as 280 separate shops,

each running their own little campaigns, their own policies and procedures, each

producing their own literature, we would get the economies of scale to really get

the thing moving with some pace.



Ed Mayo: On top of my wish list is following up with a letter on Monday to

Gordon to take forward the idea of putting Consumer Direct in there. I think this

is the big opportunity, from those of you from the business sector. We need

your knowledge and contact with consumers and there will be opportunities I

believe where there is a strong business case for you to be able to do that and

we need to look at where that case exists. We need your expertise for example

in fields like marketing, and I think slightly different to what Colin was saying. I

think this field is dominated by communications and by campaigners but actually

this is about marketing and it is about learning. Consumers respond to emotional

issues, as much as they do to information, and we must remember that

consumer education is about people learning, rather than a push process of

leaflets, or the like, so that is my commitment to you Gordon on Monday.



Keith Richards: Well, I think, send out some invitations to the media for a start

to be involved in this process. I think you need to think very seriously about how

you engage with the media but I think that is crucial. But for me with my CBI

and my ABTA hat on 20 per cent of the population have literacy levels below

that of an 11 year old. How easy is it for those people to understand the

information, the labels, what they are being told by a sales person? And the

illiteracy point, from the travel industry, how many of those customers going on

a package holiday are going to understand the price panels in the brochures?

And that is going to store up problems for later and create issues, so clarity of

information, educated consumers, bringing the media in, and I think not just

looking at making sure people understand what they are buying but in addition to

that, make the right kind of purchases and behave in a certain way and

understand the consequences of not doing things, such as, not insuring or not

maintaining their property, or something that they have bought, or buying things

on the cheap or not using the tools to identify who the reputable traders are,





25

such as the OFT's consumer codes regime, all of those things. That is the

consequences of not doing something and getting that information out to

consumers is absolutely vital too.



Ed Mayo: I want to retract what I said earlier, because I have just been having

some bedtime conversation here with Gordon and in fact I am not going to write

to him, I am going to write to Tesco's, Sainsbury's and Morrison's to campaign

for them to take up the same initiative I think. It is a very helpful suggestion.



James Bellini: Colin, are you heartened by what you have heard?



Colin Brown: I am very heartened. I mean if I were to add to the wish list I think

it is to do with the Alliance, rather than specific actions for people to take. I

think we should go forward on the basis that it is an alliance of people doing

different things and we should not think that there is going to be one monolithic

answer that delivers one thing that we want here. Penny came up with the idea

of naming it the Alliance and I think it is a brilliant step forward. The point is

there are all these different activities, there are people in lots of different

situations and consumer education and awareness is delivered in all kinds of

different ways and different purposes that comes through. Business's own

systems, it is delivered by regulators, it is delivered by the people in the

educational world and so on and I think as long as it works and we have an eye

on evaluating and evidence of things actually delivering the goods, we should

just make sure that we encourage as much as possible across as broad a front

as possible.



Bill Goodland: Well I completely endorse that and I guess I would add that I hope

in this process that everybody retains a sense of balance because I think on the

alliance theme, the challenge firmly sits undoubtedly partly with business, to be

clear, and more frank and straightforward in the messages that we send out,

partly with regulators of course to make sure there is a level playing field, but

also I think partly with consumers and with the media. In the hi-tech sector, we

could certainly live with fewer shock horror internet stories and I do not think

ultimately the volume of those over the last few years, helps build confidence.

So I think sometimes the right response to some of those stories is caveat

emptor. I think it is encouraging consumers to make sure that they are well

educated and choose providers who are straightforward and reasonable in their

claims, so I think a group effort is required.









26

James Bellini: Thanks for that, thanks gentlemen, thank you all of you delegates

as well for your contributions. We have overrun a bit, in television you get

sacked for that, but I think it was well worth it, we had some fantastically

interesting stuff there. To just bring it to a close really with a couple of round up

points, we have covered huge amounts of ground and I have been keeping notes

here. There is a consensus certainly with the panel, on a need for an alliance

approach. Core competencies we were told start at school, we have got to start

much younger and it is a lifetime thing. Taking the title of this particular session;

think about moving from strange bedfellows to actually discovering and working

on common ground as a way forward. Regulators we were told, can get in the

way and I think that is something maybe that was taken to heart there.

Customers want guidance, they want navigation, they want simplicity and boy

do I agree with that as a victim of what you call confusion marketing. Certainly I

think there is a lot out there and actually research backs it up as well. So I think

a very important point from the floor there, getting stuck in really should be

about getting strategic, where are the common areas, where can the leverage be

best employed if you like. We talked a little bit about online communities. I

personally believe, and I think Bill would obviously endorse this, will be

increasingly important as conduits of information within this whole marketplace

of education. We were reminded about consumer power, it is not about

businesses selling more products, it is about consumer power. We then rounded

up as you know with a couple of thoughts about action points. I will just

summarise those for you. We were talking about more coordination, how can we

get this alliance really on the road and motoring. It is really about coordination, it

is about creating a national identify for it, a personality if you like, to use a brand

term, to enjoy the economies of scale as we heard from the ASDA side of the

equation. Very much your expertise as members, as partners in this alliance,

your expertise has to be put on the table, without that it does not really go

anywhere and start thinking about the Alliance possibly as not being a monolithic

concept, but actually as made up of a lot of separate parts. We heard from Keith

Richards there a plea, on several occasions for more involvement with the media

and I would include the new media in that as well. So that is a partial summary,

I hope I have not missed out anything particularly important, and I hope you

found - I did - it of particular interest and value to all of you. At the start of a

very exciting project. I personally as an outsider and as a consumer of your

progress, I wish you all the best of luck in the years to come. Bill Goodland,

Colin Brown, Keith Richards, Ed Mayo, Gordon Maddon, thanks for your input

this morning, thanks all of you for being such a terrific group of delegates.









27

Breakout session: Campaigning for consumer education

Summarised by Sue Cook, Head of Publishing and Marketing, OFT



The question that we were looking at was, can campaigns deliver consumer

education? And we were really looking at this to think, well, campaigns could be

seen as a way of increasing awareness, perhaps changing behaviour. Consumer

education's about skills, so can the two things work together or are they

exclusive? And we had quite a discussion about this because certain people, like

me for instance, thought that if you really work on messages, for instance we

ran a campaign about doorstep selling when instead of just talking about

people's rights, we actually looked at how doorstep sellers operate, how high

pressure selling works and tried to open that up for people and give them the

understanding of high pressure sales techniques which has enabled them to deal

with all sorts of occasions.



So that was a way we thought that campaigns could actually deliver education

in terms of improving people's skills, but looking at it in more detail, the problem

with campaigns is that they tend to be ephemeral, they tend to be big bang PR

campaigns and then they fade away. So we thought that campaigns could be

effective but not as the only tools used to deliver a message and that it really

ought to be part of a much more carefully thought out group of activities carried

out by different members, probably of the Alliance, so we looked very carefully

at what the messages were. We looked very carefully at targeting and the

interesting thing I think about that is that people on the ground who are involved

with education, trading standards and so on, felt that a national campaign can

provide the topicality which makes it easier for them to deliver the education at

a local level.



The conclusions really that we came to from that were that we ought to work

together on campaigns but have much longer timescales than we've had in the

past, so that we ought to be planning a year ahead. We ought to be developing

things that people can use at the local level, we ought to be developing not only

tools but messages that people can use at a local level and that we ought to

take much longer and this isn't just the OFT, this is generally. We ought to take

much much longer to engage our partners right across the public and private

sector and that we ought to do fewer campaigns but bigger campaigns. Taking

the point that Allan made that we really need to focus much more on evaluation,

pay for future work but be able to show that there's real value with working

with campaigns in order to provide consumer education. So in the end we







28

thought yes, campaigns can be a really useful tool to deliver consumer education

but with those sorts of caveats and we need to work together to make them

effective.









29

Breakout session: Lessons from outside the UK



Deborah Matties (of the Bureau of Consumer Protection at the Federal Trade

Commission [FTC]) opened by telling the group a little about the work of the

FTC:



• education is a main priority for the FTC – they see the role of consumer

education being to enhance confidence

• they try to leverage consumer education on the back of litigation success

– when a case is successfully prosecuted they try to get consumer

education messages into the resulting publicity

• information is targeted at specific groups and tends to be of a practical

nature. Examples of recent initiatives include 'teaser' websites that

purport to offer eg rapid weight loss programmes. When consumers click

on the site, educational messages are displayed

• business education is also important, especially regarding advertising

standards

• no materials produced by FTC are copyrighted and other organisations are

encouraged to reproduce / copy website content, especially if businesses

want to use information

• the FTC often asks judges to award money to the FTC for consumer

education projects in cases that are successfully prosecuted

• current areas of focus include identity theft, building credit, privacy,

weight loss programmes, information/website security and safe computing

• a stand-alone website www.onguardonline.gov has recently been

launched specifically about safe computing.







Allan Asher (energywatch) put forward a definition of consumer education:



• enabling consumers to act in their own interest; acting on their behalf

when they can't

• it is important to separate out messages to these two groups.



It was agreed that it is extremely important to involve business and other

organisations in consumer education.



• Partnerships are important to the work of the FTC – whether they be

business, political or campaigning organisations. Recent successes include







30

a partnership with Ebay, whose website contained free downloadable

mother's and father's day cards. These cards gave tips on how to avoid

spam, online fraud and spyware.

• In Australia, trade associations are active in consumer education.

• It was also agreed that it would be useful to have a database of

international experiences where material could be logged, though it was

acknowledged that consumer education and its definition is different in

each country.









31

Breakout session: New ways to engage 'hard to reach' consumers



This breakout session was facilitated by Carlene Golightly, Priority Consumer

Manager, energywatch.



The session began with Carlene sharing her experiences with energywatch in

connecting with 'hard to reach' consumers. The main barriers Carlene

experienced were:



• people do not know about the service/support on offer or where to go

• mistrust of some agencies, suppliers, energy grant providers or outsiders (if

these bodies are not from their community)

• communication – language, tone or format

• fear of losing face/ pride

• rural consumers – lack of information, support

• form filling, no one to hand hold especially for people with literacy problems

• officialdom – the Department of Work and Pensions tell us that 50 per cent

of home visits are cancelled daily, mainly due to fear of this.







What does 'hard to reach' actually mean?



It was agreed that 'hard to reach' covered a wide area from those individuals

living with disabilities, people who experience language barriers, to those who do

not have access to the internet.



A strong theme that arose from the discussions was that an individual or group

does not become 'hard to reach' just because they cannot be found, and just

because they cannot be found it does not make it their problem.



Why are people hard to reach?



• Erosion of local support



It was argued that as a society we have become too efficient. Over the last

10-20 years we have been encouraged to become more streamlined and in

doing so have lost that personal touch at local level. Some believed that

society has reached a point where we are actually becoming less efficient by

trying to become more efficient.







32

Many believed it was important for people to make time for those 'hard to

reach' people on a one-on-one basis. They also believed that the most

successful type of relationship is peer support as this has a snowball effect.



• Lack of community



It was believed that there are two approaches required. In the short term,

continue trying to reach those who are hard to reach whilst in the long term,

develop a community aware society so that people do not become hard to

reach. However, to do this would take a generation and would need to begin

with the children by teaching them how to help themselves.



• Funding cuts and changes



The group felt that there are many good initiatives in place for reaching 'hard

to reach' consumers. The problem with many of these initiatives is funding.

There seems to be a belief that initiatives have a short shelf life. When it is

no longer 'new' or 'fashionable', funding is often stopped in favour of another

'sexier' initiative despite the progress being made. The group believed that

initiatives that work need to be continued.



• Targets



It was agreed that there needs to be a change with the nature of targets and

the way they are set. We live in a very target driven society and currently,

there is too great a focus on 'selling' or distribution targets.



For example, a target to distribute 50,000 more leaflets could be relatively

easy to achieve but this target does not take into account whether the

leaflets are reaching those most in need.



It is OK to have targets but there needs to be more emphasis placed on

setting targets for engaging people. There also needs to be more evaluation

but this is costly and probably the main reason why not enough is carried

out.









33

Possible solutions



There were concerns that by trying to think of new solutions to this problem, all

that actually results is further fragmentation. Networks are already in place and

there is no need to start something new. Instead, a focus should be placed on

making what is already out there work, for example, the Citizens Advice

Bureaux.



• Better information to all staff



The group believed that those delivering information aimed at the 'hard to

reach' need to be better informed. There should be more work done with

staff so that they understand, thus improving communication and support.



• Peer/informal support



There was a belief that peer to peer support was the best way of

communicating with the 'hard to reach'. There are too many professionals

that don't necessarily assist. It was also believed that professionals need to

be informal in their approach but informal does not equal non-funded.









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• Use community champions



It was suggested that 'community champions' should be targeted. These

would be in a better position to communicate with the 'hard to reach'.

However, it was argued that setting a champion would not be necessary if

everybody acted as a champion and did their part in passing on skills and

information.



• 'Unholy alliances'



It was argued that people are not hard to reach as companies are already

reaching them. New alliances need to be formed between businesses and the

information providers. However, it was believed there would be issues with

the 'hard to reach' trusting businesses which would need to be addressed.



• Use schools, universities and community work



There was a belief that there is a currently a huge opportunity develop a more

community aware society with the reorganisation of extended schools. It was

also believed that working with specialist schools or schemes such as the

Duke of Edinburgh award would also be a good way of getting into

communities.









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Breakout session: Setting priorities



The group provided some very useful reminders about the importance of keeping

the Alliance strategic and the importance of not confusing information and

advice with skills that consumers need. The group also warned that when

looking at consumer education abroad, it should not be assumed that it could

merely be replicated into UK culture.



The main points raised were:



The Alliance and the OFT's leadership of the Alliance needs to add value by

giving a more solid evidence base for setting priorities in the future. Specific

ideas were:



• Consumer Direct Database

Using the Consumer Direct database, not just from what it is telling us

generally or things that are useful for business, or things that are useful for

enforcement, but look at what it is telling us about areas where we need to

more research to find out how consumers are going wrong, what skills they

are actually lacking which is leading to large numbers of queries or large

numbers



• Evidence of where things are going wrong

The group agreed that evidence of where things are going wrong is needed

but also something more systematic. For example, regular surveys that the

OFT are already doing about consumers' understanding of their rights, but

this needs to be broadened and repeated on a regular basis, to be more

specific and pick up the sort of information about consumer understanding.

That is likely to give some more ongoing and reliable data over time, not only

about where efforts need to be focused but also whether the Alliance's

responses are having any effect.



The group agreed that all this should be done on at least an annual basis, but it

should also be supplemented by some more specific initiatives by the Alliance

and the planning group to listen to what is going on in the hard to reach groups,

via those intermediaries that are closer to them.



There needs to be some kind of product flowing from the above, produced by

the OFT and the planning group each year for the benefit of the Alliance that is







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fed back to them that will then enable all participants in the Alliance better to

understand what role they can play. It needs to be done on an annual cycle in a

way that then links into other people's planning work programmes, budgeting

etc., particularly important of course for trading standards.









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Consumer education Alliance event delegate list



Name Position Organisation

Chris Isaac Abbey Government Relations Abbey

Claire Forbes Director of Communications Advertising Standards Authority

Tony Depledge Director - Transport Policy Development Arriva plc

Gordon Maddan Regulatory Affairs Manager Asda Stores Limited

Keith Richards Head of Consumer Affairs Association of British Travel Agents

Peter Hammond Customer Focus Director Bank of Ireland

Jenny Cobley Senior Assistant Director Basic Skills Agency

Dawood Pervez Bestway (Holdings) Limited

Hilary Hall Chairman Birmingham Botanical Gardens & Glasshouses

Graham Wynn Assistant Director Consumer Affairs British Retail Consortium

Jay Parmar Head of Legal Service British Vehicle Rental & Leasing Association

Nikki Piper Project Manager Cambridgeshire Trading Standards

Karen Butler Public Affairs Manager Cattles plc

Mano Chandy Strategic Consultant Central Office of Information

Lara Samuels COI Client Account Team Central Office of Information

Richard Day Strategic Analyst Central Office of Information

Jon Hopkins Managing Consultant, Strategic Consultancy Central Office of Information

Michael Warren Central Office of Information

Linda Lennard Visiting Fellow Centre for Utility Consumer Law, University of Leicester

Janice Chisholm Consumer Education and Advice Officer Cheshire County Council Trading Standards Service









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David White Chief Executive Children's Mutual

Nico De Klerk Associate Director Citigate Dewe Rogerson

Francesca Hopwood Road Assistant Social Policy Officer Citizens Advice

Dan Mace Trustee Citizenship Foundation

Linda Jackson Senior Legal Adviser Confederation of British Industry

Rod Armitige Head of Company Affairs Confederation of British Industry

Andrew Marsh Head of Communications Consumer Council for Water

Jan Smith Head of External Affairs Consumer Credit Counseling Service

Lynn Duggan Quality and Training Manager Consumer Direct

Azzizza Khuddoos Research and Policy Assistant, Trade and Economics Consumers International

Programmes Officer, Eastern Europe and Former

Elena Wolf Soviet Union Consumers International

Seb Fitzjohn Dell

Atul Sharda Head of Education, Information and Advice Department for Constitutional Affairs

Patricia Malcolm Department for Education and Skills (DfES)

David Hingley Assistant Director CTSA Project Team Department of Trade and Industry

Steven Warren Head of Communications Department of Trade and Industry

Caroline Roberts Direct Marketing Association

Michael Seeney Director of Public Sector Strategy Eaga Partnership Limited

Robert Miller Senior Director of Legal and Public Affairs eBay UK Ltd

Emma Byrne Director of Corporate Communications Egg

Russell Hamblin-Boone Head of Policy and Communications Energy Retail Association

Carlene Golighty Priority Consumer Manager energywatch









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Allan Asher Chief Executive energywatch

Paul Kirkbright Executive Manager energywatch

Neil Munroe Director, External Affairs Equifax plc

Alex Webster Consumer Affairs Executive Experian

Deborah Matties Staff Attorney Federal Trade Commission

Ashley Holmes Head of Legal Affairs and Policy Development Finance & Leasing Association

Sarah Quigley Policy Assistant Financial Ombudsman Service

Martin Coppack Financial Services Authority

Karen Gorman Associate, Financial Capability Department Financial Services Authority

Patrick Moore Partner Freestyle New Media

Alice Maynard Director Future Inclusion

Julie Megrath Senior Consumer Affairs Officer General Consumer Council for Northern Ireland

Michael Claridge Director of Business Relations Goldsmiths University of London

Teresa Havell Hampshire County Council

Graham Palmer Director UK&I Country Manager Intel Corporation

Leon De Costa CEO Judicium plc

David Binney Director KMC International

Michael Clancy Director, Law Reform Law Society of Scotland

Nicola Tudor Team Leader Consumer Advice LB Tower Hamlets Trading Standards

Neville Walton Director of Corporate Communications Legal & General Group

Judith Barnard Director of Communications Leonard Cheshire

Jim Dredge Programme Director - Public Policy & Regulation Lloyds TSB

Margaret Humphreys Policy Officer Local Authorities Coordinators of Regulartory Services









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(LACORS)

London Metropolitan University / Institute of Consumer

Mike Kitson Academic Leader in Consumer Sciences Sciences

Simon Benn Managing Director MBA Publishing

Patrick Fawson Director of Corporate Affairs MFI Furniture Group

Olga Pulickal Paralegal Morgan Walker

Yasmin Al-Shamari Paralegal Morgan Walker

Andrew Packer Regulation VFM Team National Audit Office

Steve Brooker Senior Policy Officer National Consumer Council

Ed Mayo Chief Executive National Consumer Council

Helena Twist Chairman National Consumer Federation

Howard Gannaway Research Fellow (Financial Education) National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE)

Jennifer Adams Senior Lecturer Northumbria University

Malcolm Padley PR Director ntl

Bill Goodland Director of Internet ntl

Dr Jeanie Cruickshank Head of European Regulatory External Relationships O2 plc

Jacqueline Caspary Head of Contact Centre Ofcom

Alistair Hogg Contact Centre Associate Ofcom

Anna Smith Contact Centre Manager Ofcom

Claire Pressdee Contact Centre Manager Ofcom

Natalie Siega Contact Centre Manager Ofcom

John Fingleton Chief Executive Office of Fair Trading

Penny Boys Executive Director Office of Fair Trading









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Sue Cook Head of Publicity and Marketing Office of Fair Trading

Colin Brown Director, Consumer Regulation Enforcement Office of Fair Trading

David Fisher Director, CRE and Hampton Review Teams Office of Fair Trading

Ken Savage-Brookes Consumer Education Team Office of Fair Trading

Paul Burton Consumer Education Strategy Manager Office of Fair Trading

Mike Ricketts Director of Communications Office of Fair Trading

Christine Wade Director, Consumer Regulation Enforcement Division Office of Fair Trading

Tom Stapleton Consumer Education Team Office of Fair Trading

Gary Furlonger Codes - Promotion and Policy Office of Fair Trading

Hannah Milford Office of Fair Trading Office of Fair Trading

Denise Ellis Unfair Contract Terms Unit Office of Fair Trading

Dr Richard Sills Director of Operations Office of the Telecommunications Ombudsman (OTELO)

David Laverick Pensions Ombudsman Pensions Ombudsman

Richard Henchley Law and Public Affairs Consultant Periodical Publishers Association

Toby Hicks Communications Executive Periodical Publishers Association

Wendy Van Den Hende Chief Executive Personal Finance Education Group (pfeg)

Tony Hills Head of Corporate Social Responsibility Post Office Ltd

Graham Tolley CAN Coordinator / Facilities Manager Postwatch / Consumer Council for Postal Services

Liz Cunningham Strategic Manager Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA)

Anna Lemmon Subject Adviser, Curriculum Division Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA)

Carol Brennan Senior Lecturer Queen Margaret University College

Sharron Keightley Advocacy Manager Royal National Institute of the Blind (RNIB)

Andrew Pulford Researcher Scottish Consumer Council









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Christopher Payne Regulation & Compliance Adviser SMMT Ltd

Dr Howard Handley Director of Customer Services South East Water

Antony Mannion Company Secretary SSL International plc

Surriya Surbamaniam Team Leader Consumer Advice Surrey County Council

Henry Mehta Head of Customer Accounts and Debt Management Thames Water Services Ltd

Gregory Hunt Head of Business Relationships The Chartered Institute of Arbitrators

Yvette Yates Service Delivery Manager The Chartered Institute of Arbitrators

Trading Standards Institute / Consumer Education Liaison

Elizabeth Manford Lead Office Consumer Education Group (CELG)

Juliet Wells Consultant WA Partnership

Mark Ryder Divisional Officer Warwickshire Trading Standards

Katrina Ritters Senior Research Associate WBS

Stephen Crampton EU Adviser Which?









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