Residential Premises: Product Safety and Fire Risk

David Amess Excerpts

Wednesday 1st November 2017 Westminster Hall

[Sir David Amess (Southend West) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) on securing this debate. He has real expertise in this area. He was a first-class Fire Minister, as indeed was the right hon. Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth), who is sitting next to him. I also pay tribute to the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter), for whom this was a constituency issue in 2016, and he has not let the matter drop. In the light of the disaster at Grenfell, I am sure that I share with colleagues a sense of optimism that, at the end of the debate, our excellent Minister will leave us with a positive plan of action.

In this debate, what I term white goods are large electrical goods used domestically, such as refrigerators and washing machines. I have been provided with an excellent brief by the secretariat of the all-party fire safety rescue group, Mr Ronnie King, and by Electrical Safety First, a UK charity dedicated to reducing and preventing damage, injuries and death caused by faulty electrical goods.

In 2016, 1,873 fires were caused by domestic electrical white goods, which is a truly shocking figure. Five fires a day in the UK are caused by electrical goods, and three a day involve tumble dryers. Of course a fridge-freezer was the initial cause of the Grenfell Tower disaster; the inquiry into that is taking evidence, and we will see where that leads us.

Electrical Safety First proposes that the Government provide free mandatory electrical checks for homes in tower blocks. Colleagues might say, “Free checks are all very well and good, David, but who’s going to pay for all this?”, but perhaps we could come up with some innovative ideas; I could ask the Minister how we could address that.

Housing associations and local authorities should have a legal responsibility for ensuring free mandatory electrical safety checks, including of fixed electrical installations and appliances in properties. Housing associations and local authorities should keep a register of the white goods contained and operating in their tower blocks, regardless of an apartment’s tenure, and should ensure that tenants register those products. The cost of that is enormous—between £48 million and £60 million over five years, which is a huge amount of money—but again, I say to the Minister that we might be able to come up with an innovative way to deal with that cost.

Current policy, as my hon. Friend the Minister knows, is that there is an “expectation” that landlords will keep electrical installations safe, but we all know that there is a vast gap between an expectation and ensuring that a policy is delivered.

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

Does the hon. Gentleman not think it important that the safety checks be compulsory, not mandatory? If we are thinking about ways of introducing them, let us look at what we do about gas safety checks: every landlord has to provide a certificate.

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[Sir David Amess]

I hope that the House will unite in the view that we cannot compromise on safety, and I very much agree with the hon. Lady’s point, which I hope my hon. Friend the Minister will take on board. As the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse said, it is simply not good enough for these products to go unchecked for years in socially rented properties.

The hon. Member for Hammersmith told the House about a serious fire in Shepherd’s Bush in 2016 that was caused, as the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse said, by a faulty Whirlpool tumble dryer. Whirlpool was aware of the fault but failed to recall the products, instead advising customers not to leave them unattended and saying that repairs would be carried out in due course. That does not seem good enough, really. Most Members present attended the Adjournment debate on this issue in September last year.

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills established a working group on product recalls and safety in July this year, and I congratulate the Government on that. Its key recommendations are: having centralised technical and scientific resource capability, to support decision making and co-ordination of activity in local authorities and the businesses they regulate; having a detailed code of practice that is informed by behavioural insights research; and considering establishing central capacity to co-ordinate product safety corrective actions. Furthermore, it was recommended that manufacturers and retailers work together, through standards-setting bodies, to develop technological solutions to product marking. Finally, the registration by consumers of appliances and other consumer goods with the manufacturers should be encouraged, to make corrective actions—including product recalls—more effective. Of course, to go back to the earlier point, it is compulsion that the House is looking for, but I understand that it is pretty difficult to frame a law that achieves that effect.

In August this year, the London fire brigade wrote to the Government on the anniversary of the Shepherd’s Court disaster. The Total Recalls campaign aims to: make white goods safer by having a single, publicly accessible register of product recalls, including of international products; publicise recalls better, to reduce confusion; publish risk assessments when a fault is identified; ensure greater regulation of second-hand appliances, which is very important; change the way that fridges and freezers are manufactured—a big ask—and ensure that all appliances are marked with model and serial numbers. Also, sleeping risk should be included as a factor in risk assessments.

Dany Cotton, the London Fire Commissioner, says:

“How many more devastating white goods fires does there have to be before the Government makes it easier for consumers to check whether their fridges and freezers are on the recall list?...This is not the time for further reports and recommendations, it’s time to take action.”

I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister will understand the slight sense of frustration there.

In 2014, a coroner at the inquest of Santosh Benjamin-Muthiah, who died after a fire caused by a faulty Beko fridge-freezer, recommended a series of measures to improve product recalls. These changes are yet to be made. The review has been ongoing for almost three years, and as yet there have been no substantial improvements made to the system. It is about time that we acted on the group’s recommendations.

As we have heard, in September a press release from Which? referred to a fire in Wales that killed two people, which was caused by a Whirlpool tumble dryer. Neil Gibbins, the chairman of the group, has said that “significant progress” is being made. There has also been talk about the publication of a standard PAS—publicly available specification—7100 form, which would set out the process for monitoring product safety and the actions that should be taken if something goes wrong. That idea is under consultation, and I believe that the steering group is meeting on 8 and 9 November. The PAS will give guidance to enforcing bodies to help them work with the product supplier to achieve a successful resolution to a safety issue. The report also highlighted the need for additional specialist resources to help provide guidance and enforce it if necessary. Neil Gibbins said:

“I am anticipating an update on this from our BEIS colleagues at the next meeting of the working group, scheduled for Nov 28th …We must ensure that British Standards continue to be devised and updated by people who have access to the best possible information to help them make decisions, and that agreed standards are applied, and where they are not, action is taken.”

Jeff Williams, a former offshore engineer with responsibility for fire safety systems, wrote to the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse to say:

“Connection between faulty goods and cladding, for example a tumble dryer may be in action a yard from flammable cladding—you cannot make flammable materials safe by using fire barriers—the only solution is to use non-combustible materials.”

I am vain enough to say that our all-party fire safety rescue group does good work, and if we had been listened to, I believe that the Grenfell disaster would not have taken place. I do not want to be giving interviews after there is a fire in a school, to find that our recommendation that all new school buildings have sprinklers fitted was ignored. The voices of the hon. Members for Poplar and Limehouse, and for Hammersmith, should be listened to. The figures are shocking. We had the recommendation from the working group and from London fire brigade. Now is the time for action. We do not want to read terrible headlines yet again in our newspapers in the months and years to come.