New measures aimed at enhancing and clarifying consumer rights have been unveiled today by the UK’s Consumer Minister Jo Swinson.

Introduced to streamline the overlapping and complicated areas of existing consumer based legislation, the proposals in the new draft Consumer Rights Bill will also help to boost the country’s economy by £4 billion.

At the moment, consumers spend more than 59 million hours a year dealing with goods and services problems, which is one of the main issues that this new Bill aims to combat.

One of the areas of business that will be targeted specifically will be digital content, ensuring that consumers will always be entitled to a repair or replacement of faulty digital content, such as online games, music downloads and e-books.

The Bill will make requirements on businesses clearer, ensuring that they know exactly what they have to do in order to ensure consumer rights are protected. This will include enforcing a 30 day time period for consumers to return faulty goods and get a full refund.

Although many businesses already employ consumer friendly policies, the current legislation is unclear, so it is difficult and time consuming for businesses to understand what is legally required of them, this Bill will help businesses be able to implement the requirements quickly and easily.

Consumer Minister Jo Swinson said: “For too long the rules that apply when buying goods and services have been murky for consumers and businesses. The situation is even worse in relation to digital content.

“It is about time consumers knew what their rights are and businesses have clearer information on what is expected of them when problems inevitably do arise”.

Which? Executive Director, Richard Lloyd, said: “The new Bill of Rights will bring consumer law into the 21^st Century at last, making it easier for everyone to know their rights and giving people more power to challenge bad practices.”