Is there a future for Consumer Futures?

What's in a name? Well, that depends on who you ask. In our exclusive interview with Mike O'Connor this week, the chief executive of the ­newly-christened Consumer Futures insists that the rebranding of the organisation formerly known as Consumer Focus and its accompanying restructure will increase its influence. It will also get added firepower through being folded into Citizens Advice, he says.

It’s a rather woolly, newspeak type of a name. It fails to explain what the organisation is or does – a cynic might argue that it is simply a bit of window dressing to distract from the scaling down of the organisation. Its remit has been slashed back from the finance sector and other non-regulated industries. As swingeing public sector cuts continue, its “merger” with Citizens Advice looks suspiciously like an exercise in cost cutting. The organisation admits it will become less public facing; will it become less effective too?

The remit that Consumer Focus has been left with is patchy and confusing. For example, it has responsibility for water in Scotland but not in England; and energy in Wales, Scotland and England but not Northern Ireland. There is also an obvious question about whether the Consumer Council for Water should be folded into the organisation: it seems the logical move. That it hasn’t happened suggests someone somewhere isn’t joining the dots: again, that doesn’t bode well for the organisation’s future.

Rarely have consumers needed a stronger voice. There is widespread disagreement about the efficacy of the reforms to the energy retail market in the face of spiralling bills. There is also a €1 trillion shortfall in investment across Europe, we learn this week, for which consumers will inevitably have to pick up part of the tab. Energy is being used as a political football and security of supply is becoming an ever more real concern. Compared with all that, a name change looks like very small fry indeed.

Ellen Bennett