Lloyd's Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly
CONTRACTS FOR THE SUPPLY OF SERVICES UNDER THE 1982 ACT
J. R. Murdoch
LL.B., Lecturer in Law, University of Reading.
Introduction
Part II of the Supply of Goods and Services Act 1982, headed: “Supply of Services”, was brought into operation on 4th July 1983.1 Its provisions (which, like the rest of the Act, apply to England, Wales and Northern Ireland but not to Scotland) represent an attempt to codify the basic obligations of every person who carries out services under a contract. The impetus for this attempt was given by a report published in 1981 by the National Consumer Council, entitled: “Service Please. Services and the law: a consumer view”. Notwithstanding its title, however, the report did not restrict its recommendations to the consumer field and the subsequent legislation likewise applies without discrimination.
The new statutory rules governing the supply of services provoke two general comments. First, they are regarded, both by the draftsmen of the National Consumer Council report and by Parliament, as purely codificatory of the common law. We shall later consider the validity of this assumption but, even if it is accurate, it raises the question of why such codification was thought to be either necessary or desirable. The answer to this, it appears, is that to enshrine even well-established consumer rights in statute gives them added clarity, facilitates reference to them and places them more squarely in the public eye.2
The second general characteristic of Part II is that of an interim measure, for it was announced in the House of Commons on 20th July 1982 that the Law Commission had been asked to consider, in the light of the 1982 Act:
“(a) what reforms, if any, should be made to the terms to be implied by law in a contract for the supply of a service; (b) whether, as against a consumer, the exclusion or restriction of the supplier’s liability for breach of any of such implied terms should be prohibited; (c) the consequences of breach by a supplier of any such terms”
and to make recommendations. When it reports, the Law Commission may of course regard Part II in its existing form as the optimum solution; however, it is difficult to believe that an avowedly interim codificatory measure was truly a matter of any great urgency.
1 S.I. No. 1770 of 1982, activating ss. 12–16 and so much of ss. 18 and 19 as relates to Part II. The delay of six months in implementing this Part of the Act was to allow interested parties to apply for exemption from one or more of the new statutory duties.
2 N.C.C. Report, p. 23.
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