Bills for consumer affairs agency clear lower house+

TOKYO, April 17 Kyodo - Bills to form a new government agency to comprehensively deal with consumer affairs cleared the House of Representatives on Friday with unanimous support, paving the way for the body to be set up as early as this fall.

They are likely to be enacted into law within this month if deliberations at
the opposition-controlled House of Councillors go smoothly.
''The new agency will be based on a completely new concept that places top
priority on the interests of consumers'' unlike the existing administrative
entities that rather focus on those of manufacturers, Chief Cabinet Secretary
Takeo Kawamura told a press conference.
The consumer affairs agency is expected to be launched with a workforce of
about 200 and to take over operations such as administration of labeling,
transactions, and ensuring safety from related ministries and agencies.
The bills stipulate that the prime minister would be authorized to issue
warnings and orders to companies that cause consumers trouble in cases in which
victims cannot be protected under any of the existing laws.
The plan was initiated by Prime Minister Taro Aso's predecessor, Yasuo Fukuda,
in January last year amid a spate of food-labeling scandals and related
incidents that undermined public confidence in food safety, such as a food
poisoning case involving Chinese-made frozen dumplings.
The bills were originally submitted to the Diet last September, but Diet
deliberations were suspended until recently due to fierce wrangling between the
ruling and opposition blocs.
The main opposition Democratic Party of Japan refused to even debate the bills
and submitted counterproposals for setting up a more powerful agency.
But the party made major concessions on the heels of last month's revelation of
a fundraising scandal involving a secretary of its chief Ichiro Ozawa, which
has cast a pall over the party's prospects of winning a general election that
must be held by this fall.
A senior DPJ official also expressed concerns that the party's intense
opposition to the bills could have given the public the impression that the
party is not enthusiastic about improving consumer affairs policy.
Meanwhile, the ruling coalition of the Liberal Democratic Party and the New
Komeito party also agreed to revise the government-proposed bills to
incorporate some ideas from the opposition party's counterproposals.
Both sides agreed to set up a monitoring body comprising experts on an equal
footing with the new agency, instead of forming it under the agency as proposed
by the government, so as to grant it stronger authority and enhance its
monitoring functions.