We need Trading Standards because Capitalism won’t regulate itself

It’s said that every regulation is written in blood.

That is to say that whenever you see a rule or a sign saying “Thou shalt not”, it’s probably there because someone, somewhere, at some point, looked around and decided “I certainly shall” and proceeded to make a very expensive mistake that hurt them or someone else.

The thing is that without that rule, someone might look at the thing you did and think “well, they took a risk but it probably won’t hurt me too.” or, worse, “Oh. It only hurt someone ELSE?”

People can make a lot of profit out of only occasionally hurting themselves or by only hurting other people.

Even when we have the rule, people will cheat if they think they won’t get caught or if they think the cost of getting caught is less than the profit they make until they are.

In our market capital consumer economy, it’s important to understand that we, as consumers, are not operating on a level playing field when it comes to the things we buy. We often don’t know as much as the manufacturer or the seller about the product we’re buying. How safe is it? Can it be easily repaired? Is it good value for money? What chemicals are we exposing ourselves to by using the product?

Whenever we trade, we need someone we can go to to ensure that standards are being upheld.

The news in The Herald today is that Trading Standards in Scotland have been crippled by ongoing budget cuts to the point where it’s simply becoming ineffective. Their work isn’t just about waiting until a consumer is hurt by a dangerous product and then fining the company afterwards. They do a lot of work to inspect companies and their products to try to make sure they aren’t dangerous before they reach consumers. They are one of those quiet public services that operate a little bit like sewer systems. Not only do you only see how they work when things go wrong, things don’t go wrong precisely because of the people making sure they don’t.

A good example brought up in the Herald’s reporting is that while Scotland has banned single-use vapes, if Trading Standards doesn’t have the resources to inspect shops then some may choose to cheat and flout the ban. This goes too for selling vapes of any kind or other age-controlled products to under-age children. Note that the current inspection target is already pretty weak - an average licenced retailer could expect to be tested by Trading Standards only once every ten years (compared to some sectors like mobile phone retailers who can expect inspections monthly). And yet, it seems that we’re failing to meet even that low target. In many respects, this problem is very similar to the problem we identified several years ago where the lack of inspections and compliance at the UK’s goods borders has made it much easier for dodgy goods (including contaminated meat!) to be smuggled into the UK.

The people most likely to be hurt by defunding Trading Standards are not the producers of dodgy or dangerous goods are not the people who make them or even the people who sell them (though it will hurt retailers who do trade fairly as they will be undercut on price by the cheats), but consumers like us. More than that, the places the burden of risk disproportionately on poor and more vulnerable members of society who are both less able to shop elsewhere, perhaps more likely to purchase a cheaper good despite the risk and who are much more likely to be targeted by advertising from the producers of the goods.

Rules are written in blood but they are still only as strong as the will to enforce them. If we lose Trading Standards, we’ll lose far more than we realise before it starts to hurt us.