Safety of Electrical Appliances

Debate between Jim Shannon and Mike Wood

Monday 24th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mike Wood (Batley and Spen) (Lab)]

I hope, Mr Speaker, that you will consider that, on the first day of United Kingdom home safety week, it is appropriate that I raise the concerns of my constituent Martin Squires, who on 6 January 2012 did what hundreds of thousands of families in this country will undoubtedly be doing this very evening—he went to bed having first programmed the dishwasher sited in his kitchen. The dishwasher caught fire, and Martin believes that it is only by chance that he and his young family were not burned to death as a result.

That is bad enough, but in his attempt to come to terms with what happened to him and his family and to get to the bottom of its causes, Mr Squires has since become much more concerned with the safety of all those of us using white goods. I think it is true to say that he feels extremely let down both by the manufacturers and by the recall system for faulty and dangerous goods. In his own words,

“I purchased a product in good faith with hard earned money from a reputable company, which with hindsight was a potential death trap that they planted in my family home. As each month goes by I feel angrier with Hotpoint and the UK recall system. Hotpoint knew they had a problem with this product before my fire and whilst they started to contact customers in October 2012 they did not make the problem public until April 2013.”

He has found the system for recalling faulty products to be piecemeal, inflexible and designed, in essence, more to secure the profits of the producers than to protect the public. In fact, we know that the system is entirely in the hands of the manufacturers who produce the faulty and potentially lethal goods in the first place.

The Electrical Safety Council, which, as one might imagine, has done an enormous amount of work in this area, suggests that Mr Squires’ experience is far from unique, with such appliances causing over 17,000 domestic fires and 40 to 45 deaths in this country each year. Yet over 1 million appliances that are known to be faulty may remain in use in UK homes as we speak, every one of which has the potential to start life-threatening fires, as in my constituent’s case, or to emit gas, poisoning people as they sleep, as happened to Richard Smith and Kevin Branton, two young men who, as reported to this House in a recent debate and as shown in the Official Report of 11 March 2014, died in their sleep when a Beko cooker gave off carbon monoxide. This is a serious situation which it might be felt the Government of the day would want to play a part in mitigating. Perhaps I may come back to what I think the Government could and should do to improve matters.

First, I would like to look at the recall system that is supposed to operate when a safety risk to customers is discovered. It appears, at best, to be extremely flawed. The onus is on the manufacturer who produced the faulty product to initiate and organise the process, which, on average, leaves 80% of these defective and dangerous goods unreturned or unrepaired. Underfunded local trading standards services are responsible for enforcement and even have powers to order recall, but they rarely use them. Such other sanctions as there are appear to be derisory. Why is that the case when 1 million recalled goods are still in use in customers’ homes, and when 17,000 fires and up to 45 deaths a year result from that fact?

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for bringing this important matter to the Chamber for our consideration. I have sought his permission to intervene. In Northern Ireland, a new scheme has been brought in by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment to retrain electricians periodically to make them aware of new regulations and the safety of electrical appliances so that they can use their expertise to advise their customers. If that scheme has not been introduced on the UK mainland, does the hon. Gentleman think that it should be?

[Mike Wood]

The situation is so bad that any scheme that could make a positive contribution and improve it would be welcome. I am grateful for that information, because I did not know about that scheme.

Things appear to be much better in product areas as varied as motor vehicles and food. I cannot speak for the Minister, but I understand that the Government say that the difference is due largely to the lack of traceability in electrical goods, as opposed to motor vehicles. Apparently, neither the manufacturer nor the retailer has sufficient information about the vast mass of people who purchase white goods. How, then, can we have a customer safety system that depends on exactly that knowledge? If traceability is the key to stopping fires and deaths, a quite different system must be introduced.

In my view, we need a third-party organisation with which people can register when they buy white goods. That would overcome the reticence of customers in giving their personal information to manufacturers or retailers, no doubt for fear that the data will be used or abused to bombard them with advertising and for other commercial purposes. Will the Government consider such a development? Will they consider a much more radical model that takes the process of recall out of the hands of the manufacturers altogether, so that it can be undertaken entirely in the interests of the consumer and their safety, rather than in the commercial interests of the producers?

I point the Minister to the American system, where the Consumer Product Safety Commission does just what I have suggested. As far as one can tell, it produces much better results for the consumer and their safety than we manage. I am not known for advocating the wonders of American practice generally, but our system is failing UK consumers and they have a right to expect better. In our system, commercial interest is allowed to determine how, at what pace, by what means and, indeed, if at all a manufacturer meets its responsibilities to recall defective products.

The trading standards service in my area reported to me at least one recent example of a manufacturer refusing to issue a recall notice at all, even though the trading standards service and the local fire service considered that it should. Neither of those agencies, whether individually or collectively, had the ability to force the company to act. The Chief Fire Officers Association says that it is

“very concerned about the number of faulty products in people’s homes.”

There is little wonder in that if the situation nationally is the same as the situation in my area of west Yorkshire, where the number of house fires is decreasing, in large part due to the professionalism, expertise and work of the fire service, but the number of fires caused by electrical goods remains stubbornly high. Chief fire officers have also said that they believe the recall system to be “unsuccessful and inadequate”.

The situation is that tens of thousands of dangerous and defective goods are left in people’s homes, causing 17,000 fires and up to 45 deaths a year. The responsibility for those goods obviously rests with the manufacturers, the importers and the retailers. The system to reduce the threat and protect the public safety is diffuse, unclear and too open to conflicts of interest.

I have some questions for the Minister about what the Government might do in the face of this threat to the public. First, will the Government ensure more traceability for electrical goods and consider a third-party agency to overcome the customer reluctance to provide details at point of sale? Secondly, will they investigate systems such as that in the US, where the onus for recall is essentially out of the hands of manufacturers? Thirdly, will they greatly increase the penalties, which are currently derisory—fines of £5,000 for multinational companies—given that the lives of my constituents and many others have been put at risk? Fourthly, will they start to collate data—it is ludicrous to me that they should need to start to do this—from, for instance, the 200 or so trading standards services and the fire services about the full extent of the dangers posed by these electrical products? Fifthly, will the Government listen more to people such as my constituent Martin Squires? He has had enormous difficulty in getting anybody to listen to the dangers that his family were put in and the lessons that he thinks should be learned. He wants the interests of consumers to be considered, not just those of producers, so that people’s lives are put less at risk.

Finally, to be helpful to the Minister, perhaps I might suggest that she introduce some of those suggestions as amendments to the Consumer Rights Bill which is making progress through the House.