Fireworks

Gill Furniss Excerpts

Monday 29th January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Gill Furniss (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones) on her eloquent and balanced introduction to this important debate.

We, too, should approach the debate in a balanced way. I sympathise with the backers of the campaign in that I recognise the stress and anxiety that fireworks can cause to vulnerable people, including children and people with certain mental health issues, and to pets and livestock. There is a particular issue for animals because of the unannounced nature of fireworks, which can leave animals vulnerable. Dogs often stop eating or self-harm to avoid the perceived threat of the noise.

I also recognise that most fireworks are used responsibly and provide great enjoyment for many people. Fireworks at special festive events such as Diwali, Chinese new year and new year’s eve are seen as a crucial part of cultural celebrations.

As other hon. Members have noted, the legislation is 13 years old. It is important to have this debate and see if the legislation is up to date and fit for purpose. Strict rules about the quality, quantity and sale of fireworks are relevant to this debate, such as the Fireworks Regulations 2004 as amended by the Fireworks (Amendment) Regulations 2004, which were designed to tackle the anti- social use of fireworks.

Since January 2005, the sale of fireworks to the public has been prohibited, except by licensed traders. However, fireworks can be sold by unlicensed traders for Chinese new year and on the preceding three days, for Diwali and on the preceding three days, for bonfire night celebrations between 15 October and 10 November, and for new year celebrations between 26 and 31 December. That period around bonfire night is rather long. Will the Minister consult on that and whether it should be reduced?

Under the 2004 regulations, it is an offence to use fireworks after 11 pm and before 7 am without permission, except on permitted fireworks nights when the times are extended. The regulations allow fireworks to be used by a person employed by a local authority to put on a display that the local authority has permitted, or for a national public celebration.

Other relevant legislation includes the Explosives Regulations 2014, which relate to the storage of fireworks; the Pyrotechnic Articles (Safety) Regulations 2015, which deal with the safety of fireworks as a consumer product; the Animal Welfare Act 2006, which makes it an offence to cause suffering to animals; the Environmental Protection Act 1990, which gives local authorities the power to investigate a complaint about excessive noise and to take necessary action; and the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003, which tackles noise coming from homes or gardens between 11 pm and 7 am.

On the whole, I am satisfied that there is a significant amount of regulation around fireworks, and that for the large part, people buy and use fireworks responsibly. However, I wish to press the Minister on a couple of issues. First, local trading standards bodies tend to enforce the laws surrounding fireworks, but deep Government cuts to local authority budgets have reduced their staffing by up to 56% since 2009, according to National Audit Office figures published in 2016. In this case, and in other areas of consumer protection, it is difficult to imagine that their reduced resource capacity is not having a direct effect on their ability to properly enforce the laws already in place. I ask the Minister how his Department can ensure that trading standards bodies are sufficiently resourced.

Secondly, much of the law, particularly around the quality of fireworks, derives from European directives. Much of the consumer protection framework comes from the EU and we rely on EU bodies for many enforcement mechanisms, including, crucially, cross-border consumer protections. Following the UK’s exit from the EU, what enforcement mechanisms will be in place to ensure that UK consumers can be confident that they are buying safe goods?

Although we do not support a change in the law at this time, I agree that the Government should gather statistics on the sale and use of fireworks, and on complaints made about their public use, so that we can better understand whether more needs to be done to restrict fireworks in future. The statistics are not centrally gathered, but it is important to ensure that we have that data about the use of fireworks so that we are better informed. It would also be useful for people working in trading standards, the police, and enforcement. Does the Minister recognise the importance of centrally monitoring that data?

We know one set of statistics, however. In 2016-17, hospital admissions due to the discharge of fireworks were at their highest since 2006, with 184 recorded instances. Since we do not have the data on the sale of fireworks, we cannot make a direct assumption, but there may be a link between firework sales and the reduction in enforcement capability.

One way to mitigate the disturbance of fireworks is through communication, which could encourage people who wish to use fireworks to make their neighbours aware well in advance to give them time to prepare for any disturbance. Equally, fireworks exceeding 120 dB should not be sold to consumers. Many consumers may not know that low-noise fireworks are available, and perhaps there should be greater encouragement of the use of such fireworks.

Animal charities such as Blue Cross already produce information on animals and fireworks, with advice on the best ways of reducing stress for animals when fireworks are set off. The RSPCA and the Kennel Club also do a great deal of work to communicate how best to reduce the impact of fireworks on animals.

Has the Minister considered bringing together concerned groups and charities for a public awareness campaign to raise awareness about the danger of fireworks and ways of dealing with them, in particular at times of steep use such as on new year’s eve or during other festivals? Greater communication is important to allow those who enjoy fireworks to do so responsibly. It would also give greater assurance to those who are concerned about the impact of fireworks on the vulnerable.

Delivery Charges (Scotland)

Gill Furniss Excerpts

Wednesday 20th December 2017 Westminster Hall

[Gill Furniss (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries. I will be brief, because we have all had a long week. I congratulate the hon. Member for Moray (Douglas Ross) on securing this debate on a very important issue for his constituents, and I applaud his eloquent speech. The residents and businesses who have campaigned against huge and often arbitrary surcharges and delivery delays deserve much praise for bringing the issue to public attention and forcing the Government to respond. Much credit is also due to the research done by Citizens Advice to draw together evidence of the very patchy picture.

This is not simply an issue that affects a few people on remote islands. According to a Citizens Advice Scotland report, the average delivery charges for customers are at least 40% higher in the highlands than in the rest of the UK, and in the Scottish islands and Northern Ireland they are approximately 50% higher. One million people live in the affected areas in Scotland, despite often living in sizable cities and towns. Being charged up to five times the standard delivery cost is a huge issue, especially for businesses with frequent orders and low-income residents.

It is very welcome that the Government are finally investigating the issue, but Ofcom needs to be empowered to clamp down on geographic discrimination in the provision of deliveries. Ministers would not tolerate it for a minute if delivery charges were higher in their country piles than in inner-city locations, so why should they tolerate it for Scottish families, who are as much a part of the UK as people living at any other address?

Citizens Advice Scotland has recommended that the public and private sectors co-operate to reduce costs. It suggests exploring the possibility of extending Scotland’s network of pick-up and drop-off locations in places such as parcel lockers, convenience stores and post offices, which can reduce costs for delivery companies. Has the Minister considered Citizens Advice Scotland’s recommendations? If so, will she give us a timeframe for responding to them? I would also welcome her response to the suggestion from my hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Hugh Gaffney), who has had an extensive career in the postal service, that Ofcom could be given the power to cap surcharges.

I look forward to swift recommendations from Ofcom for protecting Scottish customers and businesses from higher charges and slower services. Labour is committed to a high-quality delivery network that provides a timely and cost-effective service for all customers. I conclude by expressing my support for Royal Mail and its deliverers at this busy time, and wishing them all a happy Christmas and new year.

Sector Deal for Steel

Gill Furniss Excerpts

Tuesday 19th December 2017 Westminster Hall

[Gill Furniss (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship today, Sir Henry. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) on securing this timely debate and on his continued commitment and passion in advocating for the steel industry. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Redcar (Anna Turley), whose passion and commitment would definitely have given her a lot to say in the debate, but who cannot be with us today.

The steel industry has gone through a tumultuous few years, but the sector has successfully managed to navigate its way back to a more stable position as it heads into 2018, although it is by no means out of the woods. I join other hon. Members in highlighting the industry’s positive economic and social impact. The sector provides well-paid, skilled jobs in areas such as south Yorkshire, where the average steelworker is paid 40% more than the local average wage. As my hon. Friend the Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden) set out, it is crucial to the social fabric of communities such as those in Wales or south Yorkshire. Indeed, the case for supporting and backing our steel sector in particular and manufacturing more broadly is more acute today than ever. A post-Brexit Britain will require rebalancing the economy, both by sector and by geography, if we are to embrace the opportunities of the future.

This is indeed a timely debate. Earlier this year, the Secretary of State issued an open-door challenge to industry to approach the Government with proposals to transform sectors through a series of sector deals. In September, the steel sector met that challenge when six chief executive officers of steel companies and all three relevant unions—Community, Unite and GMB—addressed key issues facing industry with a comprehensive plan and tangible solutions. Each company detailed the specific investment, jobs and research and development commitments that it could make. In turn, the sector made requests of the Government, notably to eliminate the electricity price disparity and establish a future steel fund with match funding of £30 million a year.

Unfortunately, the Government have failed at every opportunity to respond to the sector deal. On Friday, they finally published a report, “Future capacities and capabilities of the UK steel industry”, which revealed that the demand for finished steel products in the UK will increase from 9.4 million to 10.9 million tonnes by 2030, opening up an opportunity of £3.8 billion per annum. That is welcome news.

My hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey) made it clear that those opportunities can only be harnessed with full Government backing and support, which makes a steel sector deal more necessary than ever. However, for too long the UK steel industry has been neglected by the Government. Their industrial strategy merely paid lip service to the industry while failing to provide any tangible solutions and failing to respond to the steel sector deal proposal at all.

As I have mentioned, the industry is not out of the woods. There are fundamental issues hampering its competitiveness and innovation capability, and it is down to both Government and industry to work together to create a level playing field for steel. The UK steel sector faces excruciatingly high electricity costs compared with its EU counterparts, with an average electricity price disparity between the UK and Germany standing at £18 per megawatt-hour, which translates into a total additional cost for UK steel producers of around £43 million per year. The Helm review was published recently and it made some welcome recommendations, but the steel industry needs urgent action now if it is to be sustainable in the years ahead.

Furthermore, the industry is lagging behind in research and development spending, which is crucial to the growth and innovation of the sector. I am proud that the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre, which my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) is very familiar with, is a world-renowned R and D centre. It is located in south Yorkshire, near my constituency. However, despite such pockets of excellence, the number of people employed in R and D in the steel sector in the UK have declined from around 900 to around 95 today—a 90% reduction—with closure or divestment of UK technology centres at Port Talbot, Rotherham and Teesside. The loss of locally based expertise and knowledge limits productivity development and innovation in the UK industry.

If the Government’s rhetoric on productivity is to be believed, why are we in a dire position when it comes to R and D funding? Last month, the Government committed £2.3 billion for R and D in 2021-22, but they failed to respond to a parliamentary question when I asked, “What proportion of the funding will be allocated to the steel sector?” Can I get an answer from the Minister today?

Beyond electricity prices and R and D, it is clear that there needs to be more proactive engagement with the supply chain if the sector is to capture the opportunities I have outlined, particularly in the construction and automotive sectors, where the big opportunities lie. As the report notes, these opportunities can only be captured

“if a comprehensive strategy and policy to reshore supply chains back to the UK is pursued.”

Given the strategic importance of the sector, it is absolutely vital that the Government, the steel industries, the trade unions and the workforce continue to work to resolve some of these key issues. Disappointingly, we have seen very little action to alleviate these issues. First, in the autumn Budget there was no mention of energy prices or an energy efficiency fund for industry. Although there was some money for R and D, as I have pointed out, there has been no detail about whether the steel sector can expect to benefit.

The Government’s recently published industrial strategy set back many hopes of capitalising on the opportunities ahead. It did not include any detail or offer any tangible solutions to the steel sector. What detail there was focused on a handful of elite sectors, in which the UK already has a competitive advantage. It also provided very little to those who do not live in the golden triangle made up by London, Cambridge and Oxford. The absence of the sector is telling. Months after the steel sector deal had been proposed, it appears that the Government have made no effort to ensure that there is progress on it. In essence, the industrial strategy dashed any hope of the Government and industry ever delivering a deal.

In what little mention of the sector there was in the strategy, on page 239 the Government said that they would develop a “commercially sustainable proposition” for the steel sector, but there were no other details. Can the Minister explain what a “commercially sustainable proposition” means? What progress has she made on developing such a proposition, and what is the timetable to achieve that?

I accept that we are short of time today, so I will conclude. It is clear that our steel industry is at the cutting edge of UK manufacturing, producing some of the best-quality products. The future of the industry should see it playing a central role in the transition to a low-carbon economy; continuing to lead the world in quality and innovation; and capturing huge opportunities to the tune of £3.8 billion annually.

However, that is only deliverable if there is a strategic and comprehensive sector deal to deliver on issues such as dealing with electricity price disparities, reviewing business rates, increasing spending on R and D, and ensuring that we have a robust procurement strategy that works for the steel industry. A post-Brexit trade deal and strategy are absolutely essential if the future of the steel industry is to be secure and bright.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gill Furniss Excerpts

Tuesday 12th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Margot James]

The hon. Gentleman has made a good point. Royal Mail is regulated by Ofcom, which benefits everyone involved in the service. The universal postal service includes a parcel service. Companies must have regard to fairness in setting delivery charges, and any failure to be clear to customers before bookings breaches consumer protection law.

[Gill Furniss (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

Today marks postal workers day, when we thank our posties for their hard work and determination in providing a key public service—not that the Conservatives will take any notice. In a privatised Royal Mail, we have seen 12,000 job losses and proposals to slash pensions by 45%. It is a classic case of “one rule for the rich and another for the rest”. Royal Mail has paid out £70 million in dividends to private shareholders, and that is only in the last six months. Does the Minister still stand by the Government’s decision to privatise Royal Mail?

[Margot James]

I stand by it 100%. Royal Mail would have had no future had it not been privatised.

Parental Bereavement (Leave and Pay) Bill (Money)

Gill Furniss Excerpts

Money resolution: House of Commons
Monday 13th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Gill Furniss (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

The Bill offers two weeks’ paid leave to any employed parent who loses a child under the age of 18. Employed parents with at least 26 weeks’ continuous service will also be eligible to receive statutory parental bereavement pay. As my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) made clear on Second Reading, Labour supports the Bill entirely.

The Bill requires this money resolution to proceed because employers will be able to reclaim some or all of their costs from the Government. As the explanatory notes set out, the

“estimated cost to the Exchequer of 2 weeks’ paid leave at the statutory flat rate (currently £140.98 a week) or 90% of average weekly earnings where that is lower, is £1.77m per year.”

There will also be a one-off cost to amend Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs’ systems, which is estimated at £1.25 million.

It is good that the Government have brought forward this money resolution to allow the Bill, which commands support on both sides of the House, to move into Committee. I hope that this is how they intend to proceed on all private Members’ Bills that receive a Second Reading in this Session. I congratulate the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) on championing the issue in the Bill and other hon. Members on both sides of the House on their work to ensure that grieving parents get the support they deserve.

Residential Premises: Product Safety and Fire Risk

Gill Furniss Excerpts

Wednesday 1st November 2017 Westminster Hall

[Gill Furniss (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship, Mrs Main. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) on securing this debate. I also commend my right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth) on highlighting the danger of electrical cables. I am sure the Minister was listening carefully to that part of the debate.

My hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse is a distinguished former firefighter, and I think I speak for everyone when I say we are grateful for the expertise he brings to the debate around fire safety. That expertise was reflected in his contribution today. I also thank Members for their insightful, thoughtful and often harrowing stories of constituents who have faced the consequences of a fire as a result of faulty white goods. We can all agree that it is a terrifying thought, and we all should do everything we can to stop such things happening.

It saddens me to say that residential fires caused by white goods have become all too familiar, with devastating consequences for families across the UK. In my home town of Sheffield, faulty white goods caused 103 fires in residential homes between April 2014 and March 2017 according to the South Yorkshire fire and rescue service. In London, we have seen the horrific effects of such fires. First, my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) detailed so eloquently the Shepherds Bush fire in 2016, which left 50 people unable to return to their homes. Subsequently, we have had the tragedy that shocked the nation—the Grenfell Tower fire. Both fires are thought to have been started because of faulty Whirlpool household appliances. We have heard today about the attitude shown by Whirlpool in dealing with this immensely serious issue. Such horrendous incidents have brought into sharp focus the fact that our product safety system is not fit for purpose, and an urgent and serious overhaul is required if consumers are to be confident once again that the products they buy are safe to use.

For most consumer products in the UK, it is the responsibility of businesses to ensure conformity with the general requirements set out in the EU’s general product safety directive and implemented by the General Product Safety Regulations 2005. The power to enforce product safety law and oversee product recalls falls to local authorities’ trading standards bodies. However, it is becoming increasingly evident that the deep and continued cuts to local authority budgets since 2010—according to a study commissioned by the Chartered Trading Standards Institute, they have led to some local authority services being cut by 50%—have widely diminished the ability of trading standards to properly inform and enforce product safety measures.

Indeed, there is often a lack of knowledge within trading standards departments on what advice to give manufacturers and the appropriate action to take if faulty goods have been identified. That is no wonder, given the reductions of up to 56% in the staffing of trading standards bodies since 2009, according to National Audit Office figures published in 2016. Incidentally, the lack of expertise within trading standards bodies, as well as their lack of knowledge of the advice to give and action to take, has given manufacturers the flexibility to decide for themselves what action to take. That, of course, is often not in the best interests of consumers and safety.

In the case of Whirlpool, potentially dangerous advice has been issued about the safety of appliances and the circumstances in which to use them. In a Westminster Hall debate on 26 April 2017 led by my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith, we heard about Whirlpool’s total lack of responsibility and accountability. As a result of the lack of expert knowledge and enforcement, we are seeing the vast failure of the product recall system, which is simply not working.

According to Electrical Safety First, an average success rate for an electrical product recall in the UK is between 10% and 20%. That means there could be millions of recalled electrical items still being used in UK homes. There is not a single register for UK product recalls readily accessible to the public online, which makes it difficult for consumers to check whether appliances they have in their home are subject to product recall. That means not only that dangerous products may still be in people’s homes but, worryingly, that those same products are sometimes being sold in second-hand shops. Does the Minister agree that there needs to be much better regulation to control the second-hand selling of any product subject to a recall notice? In the United States, is it illegal to sell something under recall, and fire investigators in London, for example, have found dangerous appliances subject to a product recall being sold in second-hand shops, which is of great concern.

The bruising evidence requires serious action. People’s lives are on the line, and we ought to do everything we can to ensure that the products they buy are safe to use. There has been a series of reviews and recommendations of the current product safety regime. In March 2015, Baroness Neville-Rolfe launched an independent review into the consumer product recall system, led by the consumer champion Lynn Faulds Wood, who is widely respected in consumer protection. Her key and central recommendation was that

“an official national product safety agency...to show leadership and coordinate the system, promoting, protecting, informing and empowering business and consumers”

be created. Sadly, the Government’s response was that they do not

“believe that setting up a new public body in the current financial climate would be an effective use of taxpayer’s money.”

Can the Minister inform us what assessment the Government made of the cost to the taxpayer of setting up such a body, what that cost was, and whether other sources of funding for the body were considered?

In 2016, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy’s working group on product safety was launched. When it finally published its recommendations in July 2017, shortly after the Grenfell Tower disaster, I was dismayed by its half-hearted response to what consumer groups such as Which?, Electrical Safety First and the Chartered Trading Standards Institute had been calling for. The report did not acknowledge that real change is needed in the product safety regime and did not go far enough in ensuring that consumers would have easy access to information about the products they buy or that proper enforcement mechanisms would be in place to remove faulty goods effectively from the market.

There is pretty much a consensus among consumer bodies that the product safety system is not fit for purpose, and that a centralised Government agency, as proposed by Lynn Faulds Woods in 2016, is necessary to co-ordinate and enforce product safety laws. We also saw that broad consensus displayed yesterday in the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee. Will the Minister explain why the Government are so intent on resisting that common-sense approach, backed by a wide variety of consumer bodies and consumer champions?

Leaving the European Union will bring about its own set of opportunities and challenges for UK consumer protection, but thus far we have heard very little about the Government’s plans for consumer protection after March 2019. In a Westminster Hall debate on 10 October about the effects of the UK leaving the EU, it was clear that the Government had side-tracked consumer issues in the negotiations. As I said then, consumer protections did not feature in the Brexit White Paper, or as any of the 12 negotiating principles.

I am particularly concerned, and it has been strongly expressed to me, that the ability and robustness of the current product safety regime to withstand the pressures of the weight of the EU consumer rights laws that will be transferred into the UK is questionable. There is therefore an even more urgent need to seriously overhaul the UK’s product safety regime to ensure that consumers can easily access information about product recalls in a single place, and to co-ordinate and strengthen the enforcement mechanisms available so that consumers are properly protected after Brexit and beyond.

draft Electricity Supplier Obligations (amendment and excluded electricity) (amendment) regulations 2017

Gill Furniss Excerpts

Monday 16th October 2017 General Committees

[Gill Furniss (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

The regulations are essentially a series of sensible clarifications and adjustments to the working of the scheme to exempt energy-intensive industries from paying money towards the cost of supporting energy schemes, such as contracts for difference given to low-carbon projects such as offshore wind. We support the idea that energy-intensive industries should not have that requirement placed on them in addition to the cost of the substantial amount of energy they use, so we will not divide the Committee on the regulations.

However, I would like the Minister to address and clarify questions arising from the new regulations. The first is on the consequence of exemptions on the bills of non-exempt industry and, particularly, on the bills of domestic energy customers. The regulations and their amendments will have a consequence for domestic bills, as obligations to pay for the cost of renewable underwriting are socialised across those paying bills. The exemption of part of that constituency of bill payers will result in marginal increases in obligation payments for everyone else.

It is suggested in the explanatory memorandum that domestic users should anticipate an increase in their bills of around £1 a year. However, in the impact assessment published alongside the original 2015 regulations, it is suggested that the effect of the regulations will be to add about £1.80 to a domestic bill. Will the Minister clarify whether the difference between those figures represents a lowering of the cost of the exemption as a result of the amendments, a change in the method of calculating domestic bill costs or simply a mistake in translating the costs between the two explanatory notes?

The second question relates to a passage in the explanatory memorandum that sets out the difference in the intention and outcome of the regulations. Paragraph 8.8 describes the Government’s intention

“to remove the provisions in the 2015 Regulations that allow direct competitors of eligible EIIs which are not in themselves eligible”

for relief under the regulations to also “claim the CFD exemption.” The memorandum indicates that the proposal was not approved by the EU for state aid, so it is being discontinued. The Minister mentioned that earlier, but we would welcome a more focused clarification, as it appears to have resulted in some over-exemption of liability to pay for green energy costs and thus to possible recovery of that over-exemption from companies that were initially exempted but no longer are.

I note that a mechanism for recovering and redistributing over-exemptions in certain energy-intensive industries is not included in the regulations because it seems that a workable model for doing so has not yet been identified. Will the Minister tell the Committee what the extent of those over-exemptions is, and when she is likely to identify a mechanism for recovering and redistributing those sums? That could be important for the overall effects on domestic bills.

Royal Mail Delivery Office Closures

Gill Furniss Excerpts

Wednesday 11th October 2017 Westminster Hall

[Gill Furniss (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship, Mr Gapes. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) for securing this debate. Her campaign to fight for the future of the local delivery offices in her constituency is inspirational; she made Royal Mail stop and reconsider what seemed like an inevitable closure. I commend her for standing up for good local postal services for her community and for a certain future for postal workers. I would like to mention the many contributions by hon. Members from both sides of the House—in particular, the hon. Member for Angus (Kirstene Hair), who was the only Member representing the Conservative party.

Last week, CWU members sent a clear message to Royal Mail when they voted by a momentous number—almost 90%—in favour of strike action in defence of their job security, their pensions and the future of the service. Defying the draconian Trade Union Act 2016 and attempts to quell the power of unions to demand better workers’ rights, the stunning vote was a clear mandate for a strike. My hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Hugh Gaffney) went into that very eloquently so I will not dwell on it, but I am extremely disappointed to say the least by the Royal Mail’s approach to the ongoing dispute with CWU members. It showed the workers very little respect, but, as always, defended Moya Greene’s right to earn almost £2 million per annum, which in my view is completely obscene. The Royal Mail has now escalated the dispute to the High Court. We await that decision tomorrow, but I think it should have honoured the decisive result in the ballot. I welcome both sides back to the table to try to sort this matter out.

The Labour party supports a delivery office network that remains the heart of a community-based Royal Mail, with local posties based in our communities, mail delivered on time and parcels available for collection quickly and easily. Local delivery office closures often leave the most vulnerable and most affected with longer trips to collect mail and, in many cases, later deliveries of crucial post.

The Royal Mail insists that there is no programme of closures, but only ad hoc decisions to close offices where there are operational issues, but that flies in the face of the evidence. Since it was privatised in 2013, 75 delivery offices and up to 90 scale payment delivery offices, where postal workers are based, have been closed. Yet with £850 million more due to be taken out of the Royal Mail in dividends, it is clear that profit, not service, is driving the agenda for the Royal Mail. We have had one closure in my city of Sheffield, but that is dwarfed by large numbers in Manchester, London and many other places. It is difficult to believe that those closures represent anything but a planned programme to cut costs and drive profits in the privatised Royal Mail.

The Royal Mail also insists that there will be no compulsory redundancies. That is welcome, but the closure programme has already forced hundreds of staff to move workplace at a time when changes to the pension scheme are making working relations difficult for thousands of postal workers. I accept that as the type of post changes to more parcels purchased online, so must Royal Mail’s process. We might therefore expect to see a clear plan to adapt, relocate and improve delivery offices where there is need to provide more parking or parcel storage, but the current programme of closures has no timeline and no agreement, and there has been no overall public communication.

I welcome Royal Mail’s efforts to leave parcels safely with trusted neighbours and to offer quick and easy redelivery or pick-ups from local post boxes or facilities, and I am sure that can go further. However, although those options suit some people, for many—especially those in difficult-to-access properties or unpredictable working patterns—they are not appropriate. Everyone, including Royal Mail, knows that people still need collection points. Given the volume of mail we are talking about, that will normally need to be a delivery office. For example, in parts of Sheffield the closures are forcing some people to travel five miles through pretty terrible traffic to a city-centre delivery office with no free parking. Of course, not everyone owns a car, so we can imagine the anxiety that causes many constituents—in particular disabled constituents who have to make that journey, possibly by public transport. We all know about the reliability of that.

Delivery office and scale payment delivery office closures often mean that residents and businesses will receive much needed post later in the day. We need our nation to be as productive as possible, but later post will prevent work from being done. The programme is bad for our economy.

When the Government, together with their bedfellows, the Lib Dems, sold off the Royal Mail at an excruciating low price, there was a clear statutory promise under the Postal Services (Universal Postal Service) Order 2012 that a universal service would continue. I believe delivery office closures are the start of a slippery slope towards a reduced service, falling far short of that promise.

The universal postal service order is a statutory instrument that sets out Royal Mail’s responsibilities as a universal postal services provider. Article 4(d) guarantees that Royal Mail provides delivery offices as an option for the collection of undelivered mail. The closure of so many delivery offices is the start of a threat to the cherished and vital universal service. The order as it stands does not specify a distance from people’s homes or any specification for a collection service. What action does the Minister propose to take to protect delivery offices under the universal postal service? Does she agree that the order is far too vague on how Royal Mail must provide collection services?

The truth is this: there is little currently to stop the universal service from becoming universal in name only. The Government must give Ofcom, as the regulator, a stronger mandate under the universal service order to defend the wider network of postal deliveries. Otherwise, we face the prospect of Royal Mail becoming just another mail delivery company, delivering a service that gives residents and businesses their post later, and of longer journeys to collect undelivered mail.

The Labour party believes in a publicly owned Royal Mail: a people’s post, integrated with a strengthened Post Office, offering a wide variety of services including a post office bank. Such a move would provide a much better basis for an efficient service, potentially combining the collection of parcels with much-valued services to local people. The Government have still, after nearly a year, yet to respond to the submissions to their consultation on the future of the post office network. Will the Minister tell us when they will respond?

My hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood, who moved the motion, and the many other Members who have spoken so passionately have my support in their fight for their local delivery offices, which provide the basis of a high-quality local service. With a Labour Government, we will, once again, have a postal service working simply to provide a high-quality, affordable service: one that does not dress up cuts as improvements or flog off the Royal Mail estate to prop up dividends, but provides a first-class service for citizens to receive their mail at their door or in their local area.

[Mike Gapes (in the Chair)]

Before I call the Minister—I hope she will leave the mover of the motion a minute or two to have the final word—I remind her that we need to conclude the debate by 5.3 pm.

Leaving the EU: Consumer Protection

Gill Furniss Excerpts

Tuesday 10th October 2017 Westminster Hall

[Gill Furniss (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship, Mr Streeter. I congratulate the hon. Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford) on securing this important debate and particularly her eloquence and passion in introducing it. I also thank hon. Members present for their thoughtful and constructive contributions, which have vividly highlighted the importance of consumers to the UK economy, but also raised serious questions about what Brexit means for consumers and consumer protections.

Each month, consumers in the UK spend £100 billion in the economy, supporting local businesses, our manufacturing services and employees. Many of the consumer rights that we enjoy are embedded in EU legislation and institutional arrangements. I am disappointed by the Government’s approach to consumer concerns and by their refusal to set out the foundations of consumer protections post-Brexit.

The Government failed to mention consumer protection in their Brexit White Paper in February. They did not dedicate one of their 12 negotiating principles to consumers and consumer rights, and that barely had a mention in the Prime Minister’s 5,357-word speech in Florence. In addition, the Government continue to threaten that “no deal is better than a bad deal”, which could mean the UK crashing out of the EU and being forced to accept World Trade Organisation rules, which dictate tariffs on food of up to 62%—that is for beef—and on other goods such as cars. It will come as no shock that one third of consumers think that they will not be represented in the Brexit negotiations.

The Minister will say that the UK has played an important role in consumer protections, and I agree. The UK has often been a beacon for consumer protections in the EU and also globally, with countries across the world looking to us for our consumer protection laws, and we should be proud of that. However, consumers have been left with little assurance about whether, beyond Brexit, they will continue to enjoy the same rights and protections, or what the Government’s Brexit agenda will mean in this regard. Constituents across the country are asking, “Will it result in the UK being forced to accept chlorinated chicken from the US? What will be the overall impact on food and safety standards? What enforcement structures will be in place to support consumer protections?” There is much more they are asking about, as they do not have any clarity on those critical issues.

To begin with, there is deep concern about the current drafting of the Government’s key legislation, the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill. That Bill—in particular, clause 7—goes beyond the ability of Ministers to make technical changes and enters the murky waters of giving Ministers carte blanche powers to “prevent, remedy or mitigate” any “deficiency” in EU law, with no clear criteria about what that means. In effect, they can make whatever changes they see fit behind closed doors without proper parliamentary scrutiny. If left unchanged, that could have a devastating impact on consumer protections, with Ministers effectively able to bring about wide-ranging change on consumer issues such as food, product safety standards, approval systems and oversight of financial services. The uncertainty about the direction of consumer protections after Brexit leaves consumers in limbo about their rights and protections. This is not a question of simply copying and pasting the legislation from the EU into UK law; it is far more complicated with regard to how we apply the law.

Once we leave the EU, the Government maintain, we will be leaving all the EU bodies, so from the point of our departure, the consumer protection legislation of the EU and that of the UK are likely to drift apart, as interpretations of such legislation will differ. As a result, there is little clarity about questions of jurisdiction, conflict of laws and enforceability after Brexit, with the Government making no effort to clarify those issues.

For example, it is crucial that we maintain cross-border consumer protection so that consumers have the confidence and security that the products they are purchasing are safe. Consumers no longer operate within geographical boundaries, so a key tenet of the Brexit negotiations should be to maintain current protections but also to maintain co-operation agreements to maintain the existing rights when people are dealing with companies based in other EU member states.

As the head of consumer policy at Citizens Advice said in evidence to the Justice Sub-Committee of the House of Lords Select Committee on the European Union,

“It is one thing to say that the rule of law applies, but if there is no right to compensation when travelling abroad, or purchasing from an EU trader, if the cross-border agreements are not there to back it up it is not worth as much as it would suggest.”

We have still not heard anything from the Government about what cross-border co-operation post-Brexit will look like. Will the Minister lay out the Government’s position? Furthermore, the current UK consumer protection regime is under severe strain after seven years of Tory budget cuts to local councils. For example, the current domestic products safety regime is not fit for purpose and needs urgent reform, yet at every opportunity the Government have dismissed calls for such changes. The Government’s working group report into product safety, published on 20 July, was disappointing and refused to acknowledge that real change was needed in the product safety regime. It offered no serious proposal to ensure that proper enforcement mechanisms were in place to remove faulty goods from the market. That raises serious questions about the robustness of current enforcement regimes and their ability to withstand the pressures from the weight of EU consumer rights laws, which would be transferred into UK law. We have had no clarity from the Government about what agencies they intend to establish, how much funding that will require, or what their roles and powers will be when breaches of consumer law are found.

Warm words will not cut it. We cannot trust this Government’s vague assurances that consumer protections will be safeguarded when they will not even properly engage with consumer groups. When I asked the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union how many times he had invited and met consumer groups to discuss negotiations on the UK leaving the EU and their implications for the consumer in the UK, his response was that Ministers and officials have met with consumer organisations such as Which?, MoneySavingExpert and Citizens Advice, and that they have plans to host a roundtable with consumer groups. All of those organisations have expressed frustration to me about the difference between engagement with businesses and with the consumer side, with the latter receiving very little attention from senior Government figures. Lip service has been paid to consumers, but there have not been any tangible outcomes in action from the Government, as no consumer and Secretary of State level roundtable or working group has been established. Finally, 16 months after the EU referendum we have yet to see a detailed plan about when this consumer roundtable, which the Secretary of State mentioned in his reply to my parliamentary question, will be held. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Mr Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

Order. I call the Minister to respond. If she could leave two to three minutes for the initiator of the debate to wind up, that would be great.