Recall of Tumble Dryers

John Redwood Excerpts

Monday 17th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Kelly Tolhurst]

I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s concern, specifically for his constituency, given the desperately sad incident that occurred there. He is absolutely right to ask these questions and raise these concerns, as would be any consumer who believed they were at risk.

We carried out the review at the behest of my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Burton (Andrew Griffiths), who ordered a review of the Whirlpool modification process in 2018. As the hon. Gentleman will know, the review looked at the effectiveness of the technical modification and the adequacy of the outreach programme. It concluded that the risk was low, and was further reduced by the modification. Following the review, we issued a 28-day notice letter to Whirlpool, specifying issues on which we wanted more information and assurances. We were unsatisfied by its response, which is why, on 4 June, we issued a letter of intent of notice of a recall.

Following conversations that I had with the hon. Gentleman last week, he wrote to me at the end of the week asking for a meeting. As I said to him last week, I should be more than happy to meet him to discuss any of his concerns about the ongoing process. My absolute intention is to ensure that we hold companies to account when we do not believe that they are carrying out their legal obligation, which is to place safe products on the market.

The hon. Gentleman is entirely right to be concerned about the future prevention of fires. I can tell him that, according to Home Office data, there were 224 fires caused by tumble dryers in 2017-18, a 10% reduction on the previous year’s figure of 808. We will obviously do all that is required to ensure that consumers are kept free of harm. We are following due process, in line with the regulations, in order to ensure that Whirlpool carries out its obligations.

I am more than happy to answer any further questions from the hon. Gentleman in detail as the process continues, and, as I have said, I am also more than happy to meet any colleague at any time.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Can the Minister give us some indication of how many machines the Government think are still out there which could be risky, in the light of the high incidence of fires that she has reported?

[Kelly Tolhurst]

In response to a query from Which?, Whirlpool said that 1.7 million cases had already been resolved. It estimates that another 500,000 machines are still in people’s homes.