Residential Premises: Product Safety and Fire Risk

Margot James Excerpts

Wednesday 1st November 2017 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Margot James)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Main. I congratulate the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) on securing today’s important debate. I know that he has long championed product safety, drawing on his great expertise in fire safety, and it is a matter that he and I have discussed outside debates such as this.

Every injury and fatality in the fires that have happened recently is of course an absolute tragedy for the families and friends of those affected. No one can fail to be moved by the tragic stories of those affected by the fires in Grenfell Tower and in Llanrwst, or by any of the other fires that have been mentioned today. I listened carefully to what the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) reported about the three-year inquest into the two tragic deaths at Llanrwst and the critique he made of Whirlpool’s involvement in that inquest. Those are some of the reasons for my commitment to improving the system, so that we have fewer tragic cases such as those we have heard about in today’s debate.

I have picked up on the sense of urgency now required of the Government and I understand the frustration that some hon. Members expressed at the pace of change. I am aware that it is more than a year since I have been the lead Minister in this area and more than a year since the fire in Hammersmith that prompted the latest wave of concern. One of my first actions as Minister was to bring together fire safety experts and stakeholders in the expert working group on product recalls and safety. I am sorry that the recommendations have disappointed the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Gill Furniss), but virtually all the organisations—with the exception of Which?—that she said were frustrated by some of the proposals not going far enough are members of the group and have the opportunity to input into the recommendations and the follow-up. Having received the group’s report, we are now at the stage of taking the actions needed to deliver improvement. I have been asked by several hon. Members, not least the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse, when we will publish our response. We will do so later this year, hopefully by the end of November or in early December.

However, we are already making improvements that have been recommended by the expert group in a number of key areas. One such improvement is the new code of practice on recalls and corrective actions being developed by the British Standards Institution. That will help manufacturers and enforcers follow best practice on recalls and make them more effective in future. The consultation on those proposals closed last week, and we expect the code to be available by the end of the year. That will provide important clarity to businesses about how we expect them to prepare to deal with incidents involving unsafe goods, and how they should work with trading standards and my Department in the event that a recall or corrective action programme is necessary.

The hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse and many others who spoke today mentioned Lynn Faulds Wood’s call for a national product safety agency. The working group has also called for more central capacity to support consumers and local trading standards agencies on product safety and recalls—something that the London fire brigade and Which? have also been seeking. We are now actively considering how that can be delivered, and we will address that particular recommendation later in the year in our response to the working group’s report.

With regard to the recalls website and registration, we recognise that consumers need access to the best recalls information to keep their homes safe. We have upgraded the Government recalls website on gov.uk, as urged by hon. Members, to make it easier for consumers to check for recalls and to register their appliances. We know that more can be done, should be done and needs to be done, and we are working to deliver further improvements to the website.

As the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse mentioned, the success rate of recalls is thought to be as low as 10% to 20%. We have heard a lot of criticism of Whirlpool’s response to fires, but its success rate is now more than 50%, in terms of machines it has either modified or recalled. I responded to the question asked by the hon. Member for Hammersmith earlier this week by letter, but this morning Whirlpool let us have the most up-to-date figures for its tumble dryer modification programme. Whirlpool has provided the figure of 1.7 million machines that it has now modified or replaced. It has therefore resolved almost all the registrations that have been made, so the numbers are not likely to rise significantly until more consumers register their appliances.

One reason why recalls are not always—virtually never—as effective as they should or could be is the difficulty in contacting owners and getting them to respond. Some people respond very quickly. Some were contacted by Whirlpool up to 10 times and still failed to register their machine or take the necessary next steps.

People can protect themselves by registering their appliances with the manufacturer so that they can be contacted quickly if their products are subsequently subject to any corrective action or recall. We have made that easier by including registration links on the central recalls website. Now, if people register their email address, they can get an automatic notification of any product that has been put on recall since they registered.

Safe homes are not only delivered through effective recalls of electrical products; they are also delivered through planning and building regulations that require buildings to be of a safe design and construction. That involves meeting fire safety regulations that require houses of multiple occupation to fulfil fire safety standards, a product safety system that requires all domestic appliances to be safe when they are sold, and appropriate action to be taken when faults are found.

The right hon. Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth) made some important points about the cabling of buildings. I will follow up with colleagues in the Department for Communities and Local Government, who have responsibility for building regulations and construction products, and make sure that either they or I write to him in response to his points.

Several hon. Members called for product safety checks in tower blocks, including the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce) and the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson). In the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower fire, I asked the working group to advise me on the merits of that approach for tower blocks. The general view of the working group was that there were logistical and technical difficulties. The chair wrote to me and said that there was some interest in the approach, and he reported that a number of members of the expert group

“have been in active discussions with housing associations, community groups and fire and rescue services to consider and identify best practice”

for checks in tower blocks, but there were “logistical and technical challenges” to the approach of mandatory safety checks. He said that,

“most general safety checks of electrical goods…may not pick up a range of potential issues or problems in an appliance. It would be more effective to concentrate any outreach activity of this nature on checking appliances against recall lists, and registering appliances for any future safety alerts.”

Fire and rescue services already have good community safety programmes in place, with more than half a million home visits each year. I will explore with colleagues in the Home Office the possibility of using those visits to provide information and advice about registering appliances and checking against recall lists, as per the advice from the chair of the product safety group. We believe that is likely to be more effective in identifying any potentially unsafe goods than visual checks on them.

There has been some criticism today of standards for electrical appliances, including for fridge-freezers. It is important to remember that standards are not the law; the law requires products to be safe. The standards themselves are updated regularly to ensure that they reflect modern technologies and so that safety can be continually improved.

As hon. Members will know, my Department has been working with the London fire brigade and others, through the British Standards Institution, to improve the international and European standards for fridge-freezers. My officials recently met the Association of Manufacturers of Domestic Appliances to discuss how we can increase levels of fire resistance in those appliances, as well as the director of standards at the BSI, and Which?

The European standard is currently being reviewed and the BSI has submitted proposals for amending the standard to CENELEC, the European standards organisation that is responsible for the current standard. That will be considered at CENELEC’s next meeting later this month. Officials are continuing to seek views from the Government’s chief scientific adviser on revisions to and interpretation of the standard, and recently met the chair of the BSI technical panel for fridge-freezers.

[Andy Slaughter]

Will the Minister say whether, as part of that investigation, action is likely to be taken to phase out or get rid of fridge-freezers with plastic backs, which is a particular concern raised by Which? and the London fire brigade? I expect the Minister has seen the same videos as we have of the extraordinary spread of fire through plastic-backed rather than metal-backed fridge-freezers.

On fridge-freezers, would the Minister also address the Grenfell point? When does she think we will know the actual cause?

[Margot James]

The answer to the question on timing is that the safety inspections have been completed on the particular fridge-freezer that led to the fire. The report on that investigation will be published very shortly; I will ensure the hon. Gentleman has a copy immediately after it comes out. I am sure that the aspect of the capacitor, and the insulation in which the capacitors are often placed, will form a part of the report, as well as of the discussions that the BSI is having at European level.

The hon. Members for North Ayrshire and Arran and for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough talked about Brexit and asked for reassurance on our intentions. I am pleased to be able to reassure Members that our priority is to continue the UK’s strong history of protecting consumers, to ensure that consumers can rely on safe products now and in the future. We will ensure that, as part of our relationship with the European Union post Brexit, we maintain close links with the existing European consumer protection bodies.

As the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse recognised in his speech, it is important that we all play our part in keeping people safe in their homes. The Government must get the framework right and ensure that there is appropriate enforcement to support businesses in compliance. Manufacturers and retailers must comply with the law by not placing unsafe products on the market and by taking the proper action if products are found to be unsafe. Consumers also have an important role to play in making sure their homes are safe, following safety advice and registering their domestic appliances so that they can be quickly contacted should a problem be identified.

I am mindful of the challenges presented by second-hand machines. The hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) also raised the issue of counterfeit electrical goods. I accept her invitation to meet manufacturers to hear about their concerns first hand.

I understand the calls to do more and to do it faster. As hon. Members will agree, it is important that the changes we make deliver protections that work, and that we address the concerns as urgently as we can, within the constraints of making sure that they are the right solutions. We know that more needs to be done. I believe the actions that we are now taking will improve safety, and I agree with hon. Members that we definitely need to do more.