Homes: Gas Safety

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts

Monday 17th December 2018 Grand Committee

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for having brought this debate to the House, and to the Committee for allowing me to speak in the gap. I must declare my role as a co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Carbon Monoxide Group and the chair of two reports that have come from that group. I also work with the clinical group that has been a spin-off from this. I will address prevention, detection, long-term problems and regulation going forwards.

Nobody should think that prevention is associated only with gas. As has already been said, all fuel appliances—anything that burns carbon—can produce carbon monoxide. The biggest problem now is not gas but other ways of burning. Barbecues that people think are safe to bring into a cold tent, because they look as if they have gone out and are just slightly glowing, are an amazing source of poisonous carbon monoxide. Year on year, there are deaths because people do that. The same thing happens with appliances on boats and in caravans. Somehow, when people are on holiday they seem to be less vigilant.

Nobody should think they are safe because they do not have any carbon-burning appliance in their place. Stacey Rodgers, a constituent of Barry Sheerman MP, lost her son because the carbon monoxide from an adjacent property came through the brickwork into the child’s bedroom and the child was found dead in the morning from carbon monoxide poisoning. He was her only child.

Turning to detection, alarms are great but are no substitute for having appliances properly serviced and being aware. The problem with carbon monoxide is that it is not only linked to carboxyhaemoglobin. It is probably also a mitochondrial poison within cells, which means it kills very quickly, even if there are low levels of carboxyhaemoglobin in the blood. However, in one of the reports, we called for all coroners’ post-mortems to test anyway for carboxyhaemoglobin because, if there is any present at all, that must raise questions. Detection has to be early.

People associate carbon monoxide poisoning with death but severe acute poisoning can result in “sub-death”, with strokes, brain damage, personality changes and so on. About 4,000 people attend A&E every year with the symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning, but we do not know the long-term effect of low-level chronic exposure in those who run at a sub-clinical level and never present with their symptoms, and we do not know the effect on children. I remind noble Lords that a child’s head is at about the same height as the burners on a gas cooker, so if there are high levels of carbon monoxide in a kitchen, a child will probably inhale higher levels than an adult, whose head will be above that level and might be in the flow of the draught from a window. We need ongoing research into the low-level effects.

My final point relates to properties. It is a scandal that we do not insist that every landlord has a working carbon monoxide alarm. These alarms cost less than £15, which is peanuts. We should also require that whenever someone takes out a mortgage, they declare that they have a working carbon monoxide alarm, and no estate agent should list a property unless they know that the appliances have been properly serviced and that a working detection system is in place. If we did that, we would raise awareness, at least when there was a turnover of residents in a property.

In terms of travelling, we need airlines and Eurostar to run promotions asking “Are you carbon monoxide aware? Do you have your travel alarm?” Such alarms could easily be sold at all outlets at airports and stations. I also think that we need a levy that goes wider than gas suppliers, because appliances such as barbecues and wood-burning stoves are now sources of carbon monoxide.