This is International Consumer Safety Week and I am at the International Consumer Product, Health and Safety Conference in London.

Delegates are here from all over the globe, and all involved in making the world a safer place for children and adults. They are from all sectors including governments, the EU, regulators, lawyers, businesses and consumers.

Lots of discussion on hazard data, risk and communication of risk, market surveillance, fair competition, piracy and counterfeiting. It is fascinating to see how danger warnings are now being communicated to consumers via U Tube, Twitter, Flicker, Blog and more.

In the USA next year an interactive database will be launched on which consumers will log their own unsafe product experiences. A real challenge for public authorities as to how they respond and for businesses too. In the UK consumer safety is one of the many roles performed by trading standards including the checking of imported products at ports with Customs. Successive recent Governments however have behaved as if the problems are all over. If only.

We don't know the scale of any problem however because in 2002 the Government stopped funding the UK injury database. It is a head in the sand policy that needs to be reverted especially as we are now so out of step with our EU and international trading partners.

Energy Selling - No Cold Calling

I was struck by today's announcement by the energy regulator OFGEM that it is to look at the profits being made by the six primary energy companies. Are they playing fair? Alastair Buchanan the OFGEM CEO suggests that they may not be.

Of course if the energy market to consumers was truly competitive then consumers should be confident in their ability to shop around, switch supplier and secure the best deals around. But I think many are asking just how truly competitive the market is with seemingly each supplier following suit when it comes to raising prices. It always just seems a matter of time before they are all on the same hymn sheet.

This comes on the heels of the concerns recently expressed as to whether the energy companies are all complying with the new Code intended to aid transparency of pricing when it comes to, for example, doorstep selling. At TSI we have been saying for three years that the doorstep cold call selling of energy is outmoded and unfit for a 21st century consumer energy market.

The OFGEM Code is intended to be its last chance saloon to prove that the industry can cold call cleanly. Alas I see no future for such a crude selling method for such an increasingly high cost product. The more expensive our gas and electricity gets the more inappropriate doorstep persuasion and selling is. I look forward to one day seeing Alastair Buchanan agree.

A Leap of Faith?

It's been quite a week - again. Tuesday saw the House of Lords debate the 2nd reading of the Public Bodies Bill. A Lords constitutional committee had earlier been extraordinarily critical of the Bill and the proposed use by Government of secondary legislation to ignite its quangos bonfire and limit Parliamentary debate - the so called Henry VIII process.

On Tuesday scores of Peers queued up to say their piece on the Bill, mostly expressing concerns about the Bill itself but also about the many public bodies affected by proposed abolition or change. Trading standards, Citizens Advice, local government, and Consumer Focus all featured. There was even a quarrel over the definition of what is a consumer. There was clearly considerable concern across the floor over the proposed loss of consumer law enforcement from the OFT.

Is this really a sensible time to place even greater reliance on local authorities who are even as I type having or choosing to slash their trading standards budgets? Lord Borrie, a previous OFT Director General quoted my words from our latest TSI TS Today publication: 'a leap of faith, I just hope it isn't a leap in the dark'.

Time will tell but I sense we are only at the beginning of this quantum leap.

A Consumer Minister...and much more

Seeing and hearing Ed Davey MP on television and radio this morning reminded me that the portfolios carried by modern day junior Ministers in Government are impossibly large. There he was talking for the Government on its plans for the post office network and the levels of investment to be made and there I am wondering how he manages to spread his time between such a spread of key roles.

His job title of Minister for Employment Relations, Consumers and Postal Affairs perhaps makes my point. Ed Davey is a very able and very likable man and I have had the pleasure of meeting with him several times. He performed admirably this morning in articulating the Government case. Similarly when he was on 'Question Time' recently he was clearly able to contribute his personal, his LibDem Party's and the Government's position robustly on a range of topics including his views on the London Mayor' interventions in the housing benefits debate.

My point is that today's consumers in our UK society deserve and should demand that any Government has a 'Consumer Minister' with a portfolio that only includes them and provides a focal point for and across Government, is an advocate for consumers in Whitehall and Westminster and is not otherwise having to spread him or herself so thinly, albeit so ably, over such a broad political and subject canvas. Consumers are the lifeblood of our economy and they deserve such bespoke attention.

TSI president calls upon council leaders to recognise 'extraordinary circumstances'

Yesterday our TSI President, Baroness Christine Crawley, kindly hosted myself and a TSI team in the House of Lords.

First we all met with Baroness Royall to talk about the issues raised by the Public Bodies Bill for trading standards, consumers and legitimate business and how she might respond, as leader of the opposition, to these concerns. Her interest and support are a fantastic boost to TSI.

Baroness Crawley then took time out of her hectic schedule to personally sign more than 200 letters to leaders of councils calling for them to recognise the 'extraordinary circumstances' trading standard services face and the need for sustained funding.

Those letters went out last night. This morning they should be in the hands of the people who can and will influence the funding of trading standards services. I hope they appreciate that these are indeed, as Christine says, 'extraordinary circumstances' and take action to sustain the funding needed to support the vital work done to protect consumers and legitimate business.

Supporting small business

Good to see that the Prime Minister has asked Lord Young to take a hard look at how small and medium sized businesses can be helped more. Small and Medium Enterprises, SMEs, employ 60% of the workforce and are major players in our UK economic recovery ambitions, including the switch from a reducing public sector workforce to a growing private sector one.

It surprises some to know that the Trading Standard Institute,TSI, is a self-financing not for profit SME as well as a professional body representing trading standards practitioners. Our members work in both the public and private sectors too and that makes us uniquely well placed to understand the pressures and burdens on small businesses. We should be extraordinarily well placed to comment to Lord Young. He says he wants to listen and so I shall be sending an invitation.

I always say that front line trading standards people are as much about wealth creation as those in front line business. Why would they want to do anything but work with and support good business, enterprise and employment? It suits government sometimes to paint trading standards and other local government based regulators as a burden rather than the help they actually are. It's my job to help Lord Young appreciate that.