Have you ever checked your bank statement and found some dodgy looking charge you don’t remember signing up for? I know I have.

For me it was, bizarrely, for a plant identification app. At some stage in lockdown, I wanted to work out what a particular plant was in our back garden in Stalybridge, and agreed to pay a few quid for a reliable looking app which would correctly identify the plant and how best to care for it. Fast forward six months and I realised the few quid I thought was a one-off download cost was actually leaving my account every single month, despite only using the app a handful of times in a single day.

At the slightly more painful end of the spectrum, my wife Claire once clicked up on a pop-up to buy a couple of pairs of sports leggings for around forty quid. What she didn’t realise was she had inadvertently taken out a subscription for sports leggings and would be charged forty pounds a month for them, despite only ever receiving the first pairs.

In both cases, we eventually got our money back, but with a degree of stress and frustration on the way. At the moment, it is easy for companies to dupe consumers into longer term payment plans than they realise they are signing up for. We both felt daft for not spotting the devil in the detail, but we’re not alone: Citizen’s Advice estimate £306 million per year is was on unwanted subscriptions in the UK.

That’s why this week I announced that the next Labour government will crack down on rip-off subscription traps. We will legislate to ensure customers must ‘opt in’ to rather than ‘opt out’ of subscriptions that automatically renew. At the moment consumers only need to be informed about their continued subscription, not given a genuine choice.

In a cost of living crisis, it is vital we protect shoppers and make sure they are getting the best value for money possible. I’m proudly pro-business, but decent businesses know the way to get customer loyalty is through good service and value for money, not through hoodwinking people into paying for products they don’t actually want.

There’s been a warm welcome to our proposals, especially from consumers with attention deficit disorders who have told me they are especially vulnerable to clicking through killer clauses in the small print. You shouldn’t need to be warily checking every syllable just to make a simple purchase online. Consumers must have control and a conscious choice over where their money goes and it’s time the law is on their side.