§ 34. Miss Boothroydasked the Secretary of State for Prices and Consumer Protection how many, and what proportion, of the complaints received annually by local trading standards and consumer protection departments are about apparently unjustified charges and price increases which are not covered by the Trade Descriptions Act or Prices Act.
Mr. Alan WilliamsI understand that information about complaints collected by the Office of Fair Trading from local authorities is not classified in the form sought by my hon. Friend but that in the last 12 months for which figures are available, from July 1974 to June 1975, about 29,000 complaints referred to high or increased prices. This was about 7 per cent, of all the consumer complaints in the same period.