13.—(1) Section 10 of the Supply of Goods (Implied Terms) Act 1973(1) is amended as follows.
(2) After subsection (2C) insert—
“(2D) If the person to whom the goods are bailed or hired deals as consumer or, in Scotland, if the goods are hired to a person under a consumer contract, the relevant circumstances mentioned in subsection (2A) above include any public statements on the specific characteristics of the goods made about them by the creditor, the producer or his representative, particularly in advertising or on labelling.
(2E) A public statement is not by virtue of subsection (2D) above a relevant circumstance for the purposes of subsection (2A) above in the case of a contract of hire-purchase, if the creditor shows that—
(a)at the time the contract was made, he was not, and could not reasonably have been, aware of the statement,
(b)before the contract was made, the statement had been withdrawn in public or, to the extent that it contained anything which was incorrect or misleading, it had been corrected in public, or
(c)the decision to acquire the goods could not have been influenced by the statement.
(2F) Subsections (2D) and (2E) above do not prevent any public statement from being a relevant circumstance for the purposes of subsection (2A) above (whether or not the person to whom the goods are bailed or hired deals as consumer or, in Scotland, whether or not the goods are hired to a person under a consumer contract) if the statement would have been such a circumstance apart from those subsections.”.
(3) At the end of the section add—
“(8) In Scotland, “consumer contract” in this section has the same meaning as in section 12A(3) below.”.
(4) In section 15(1) after the definition of “hire purchase agreement” there is inserted—
““producer” means the manufacturer of goods, the importer of goods into the European Economic Area or any person purporting to be a producer by placing his name, trade mark or other distinctive sign on the goods;”.