Aftermarket June 2022

Competition and Markets Authority. But not anymore. A consultation is due to kick-off either later this spring or this summer. We, alongside our colleagues in UKAFCAR, the British arm of the Association for the Freedom of Car Repair, will be submitting evidence and we urge anyone in the aftermarket with first-hand experience of the inadequacies of the current MVBER to do so too – either directly, or via UKAFCAR. The scope of the CMA’s consultation is, in broad terms, to establish whether MVBER meets its purpose for business and consumers and establish if it adequately provides for recent changes in technology and business models. The resounding answer to all three is ‘no, it does not’, even if its protection is certainly preferable to having nothing. I’ll briefly recap the most pressing reasons why. Insurmountable burdens For businesses, the UK’s 30,000-strong independent sector is finding it harder to repair and service vehicles. Certain parts have been purposefully mis-identified by OEMs to fall outside of the MVBER’s jurisdiction and so are only available to the OEMs’ dealerships – or at a significant additional cost, or with insurmountable burdens for the independent aftermarket. OEMs also continue to restrict access to data, like bulk Repair and Maintenance Information (RMI) that can be L ast summer we helped to bring national attention to the threat posed by the expiry of the European Motor Vehicle Block Exemption (MVBER) regulation, both to UK motorists and the independent aftermarket. The UK inherited MVBER after Brexit, but it runs out in May 2023. Our warning was stark – Failure to replace it would be an existential threat to independent workshops. More than the risk of it going all together, we wanted to highlight the increasing inadequacies with the current MVBER rules, which had been in force since 2012, and the opportunity for the UK to create more robust legislation to protect British businesses and consumer rights. Today, OEMs have found ways to exclude an ever- growing number of parts from MVBER’s scope. This even extends to practices such as parts needing to have a specific code, implementing software before they will work or needing to have the OEM-supplied diagnostic equipment to activate replacement parts. This restricts the functionality of a part for independent repairers – even if the part was developed and made by a major aftermarket supplier. Recent changes While the EU was consulting on the future of MVBER last year, there was a worrying silence from the UK’s 20 AFTERMARKET JUNE 2022 BUSINESS www.aftermarketonline.net Andy Hamilton says that, with the coming of the Block Exemption consultation, it’s time for the aftermarket to make its voice heard BY Andy Hamilton CEO, LKQ Euro Car Parts BLOCK EXEMPTION: TIME TO SPEAK UP...