The Department of Prices and Consumer Protection was a short-lived United Kingdom government department created by the incoming Labour government in 1974 when the functions of the Department of Trade and Industry were divided between three new departments (the Department of Trade, the Department of Industry and the Department of Prices and Consumer Protection). [1] In 1979 the department was abolished by the new Conservative government and its responsibilities were re-integrated into the Department of Trade. [2]
Colour key (for political parties):
Labour
| Secretary of State | Term of Office | Political party | Prime Minister | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | Shirley Williams | 5 March 1974 | 10 September 1976 | Labour | Harold Wilson | ||
| James Callaghan | |||||||
 | Roy Hattersley | 10 September 1976 | 4 May 1979 | Labour | |||
A tariff is a tax imposed by the government of a country or by a supranational union on imports or exports of goods. Besides being a source of revenue for the government, import duties can also be a form of regulation of foreign trade and policy that taxes foreign products to encourage or safeguard domestic industry. Protective tariffs are among the most widely used instruments of protectionism, along with import quotas and export quotas and other non-tariff barriers to trade.
Free trade is a trade policy that does not restrict imports or exports. In government, free trade is predominantly advocated by political parties that hold economically liberal positions, while economic nationalist and left-wing political parties generally support protectionism, the opposite of free trade.
The 1979 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 3 May 1979 to elect 635 members to the House of Commons.
Rogernomics were the neoliberal economic reforms promoted by Roger Douglas, the Minister of Finance between 1984 and 1988 in the Fourth Labour Government of New Zealand. Rogernomics featured market-led restructuring and deregulation and the control of inflation through tight monetary policy, accompanied by a floating exchange-rate and reductions in the fiscal deficit.
Deregulation is the process of removing or reducing state regulations, typically in the economic sphere. It is the repeal of governmental regulation of the economy. It became common in advanced industrial economies in the 1970s and 1980s, as a result of new trends in economic thinking about the inefficiencies of government regulation, and the risk that regulatory agencies would be controlled by the regulated industry to its benefit, and thereby hurt consumers and the wider economy. Economic regulations were promoted during the Gilded Age, in which progressive reforms were claimed as necessary to limit externalities like corporate abuse, unsafe child labor, monopolization, pollution, and to mitigate boom and bust cycles. Around the late 1970s, such reforms were deemed burdensome on economic growth and many politicians espousing neoliberalism started promoting deregulation.
Regulation is the management of complex systems according to a set of rules and trends. In systems theory, these types of rules exist in various fields of biology and society, but the term has slightly different meanings according to context. For example:
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is an independent agency of the United States government whose principal mission is the enforcement of civil (non-criminal) antitrust law and the promotion of consumer protection. The FTC shares jurisdiction over federal civil antitrust law enforcement with the Department of Justice Antitrust Division. The agency is headquartered in the Federal Trade Commission Building in Washington, DC.
The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) was a United Kingdom government department formed on 19 October 1970. It was replaced with the creation of the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform and the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills on 28 June 2007.
International economics is concerned with the effects upon economic activity from international differences in productive resources and consumer preferences and the international institutions that affect them. It seeks to explain the patterns and consequences of transactions and interactions between the inhabitants of different countries, including trade, investment and transaction.
Trade unions in the United Kingdom were first decriminalised under the recommendation of a Royal commission in 1867, which agreed that the establishment of the organisations was to the advantage of both employers and employees. Legalised in 1871, the Trade Union Movement sought to reform socio-economic conditions for working men in British industries, and the trade unions' search for this led to the creation of a Labour Representation Committee which effectively formed the basis for today's Labour Party, which still has extensive links with the Trade Union Movement in Britain. Margaret Thatcher's governments weakened the powers of the unions in the 1980s, in particular by making it more difficult to strike legally, and some within the British trades union movement criticised Tony Blair's Labour government for not reversing some of Thatcher's changes. Most British unions are members of the TUC, the Trades Union Congress, or where appropriate, the Scottish Trades Union Congress or the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, which are the country's principal national trade union centres.
A voluntary export restraint (VER) or voluntary export restriction is a measure by which the government or an industry in the importing country arranges with the government or the competing industry in the exporting country for a restriction on the volume of the latter's exports of one or more products.
Kenneth John Woolmer, Baron Woolmer of Leeds is a British university lecturer and politician. Coming into politics through local government in West Yorkshire, Woolmer was elected to Parliament for the Labour Party in 1979. He became an effective Parliamentarian and was rapidly promoted, despite clearly allying to the party's right-wing and playing an active role in the intra-party conflict. Partly due to adverse boundary changes, he lost his seat in 1983 and was unable to win it back. Later in life he received a life peerage and was an active member of the House of Lords.
Stanley Clinton Clinton-Davis, Baron Clinton-Davis, was a British politician and solicitor. A member of the Labour Party, he served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Hackney Central from 1970 to 1983, and was a minister in the Labour governments of Harold Wilson, James Callaghan and Tony Blair. He was European Commissioner in the Delors Commission (1985–1989). In 1990, he became a life peer, sitting on the Labour benches in the House of Lords until his retirement in 2018.
The Economic Council of Canada was an independent economic advisory body established as a federal Crown Corporation by the Government of Canada in 1963. Its purpose was to report on a wide range of pressing matters relating to Canada's economic development, focusing on five main economic objectives: full employment, sustained economic growth, price stability, equitable distribution of rising incomes, and a viable balance of payments. The council was dissolved alongside six other government organizations in 1993.
The Prices and Incomes Accord was a series of agreements between the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), in effect from 1983 to 1996. Central to these agreements was an incomes policy to address the stagflation crisis by restraining wages. The unions agreed to restrict their wage demands, and in exchange, the government provided a 'social wage' by various means.
The Labour Party governed the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland from 1974 to 1979. During this period, Harold Wilson and James Callaghan were successively appointed as Prime Minister by Queen Elizabeth II. The end of the Callaghan ministry was presaged by the Winter of Discontent, a period of serious industrial discontent. This was followed by the election of Conservative leader Margaret Thatcher in 1979.
After World War II, many countries adopted policies of economic liberalization in order to stimulate their economies.
The 1997 Dissolution Honours List was gazetted on 18 April 1997 following the advice of the outgoing Prime Minister, John Major. The only honours in this list were 21 life peerages.
The Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Business Secretary), is a secretary of state in the Government of the United Kingdom, with responsibility for the Department for Business and Trade. The incumbent is a member of the Cabinet of the United Kingdom.
Minister for Commerce and Industrial Relations is a position in the government of Western Australia, currently held by Sue Ellery of the Labor Party. The position was first created after the 1993 state election, for the government of Richard Court. The minister is responsible for the state government's Department of Commerce.
