Whirlpool: Product Safety System

Debate between Margot James and Madeleine Moon

Wednesday 26th April 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, Ms Ryan. I congratulate the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) on securing this important debate and echo the remarks of hon. Members about his spearheading of the whole campaign.

We have made considerable progress since I last had the opportunity to engage in a debate on product safety. However, I see from hon. Members’ remarks, to which I have listened carefully, that that has perhaps not been communicated as effectively as it should. Allow me to put that right. I reiterate that the Government take consumer product safety extremely seriously. On the safety issue identified in Whirlpool tumble dryers, I and my officials have been in regular contact with Whirlpool and its management. I must say that I have been shocked to hear the extent to which Whirlpool has not engaged with other hon. Members; I think that it might come to regret that. I hope that, in the new Parliament, it will manage to put that communications issue right.

I met the chief executive of Whirlpool and emphasised the need to resolve the situation quickly and pushed the company hard on meeting its obligations. I have repeatedly pressed it in further correspondence on the need to ensure that consumer safety remains paramount and that consumers have accessible routes to resolve their issues with the company’s products quickly and effectively. I am concerned about the number of unregistered machines still on the market; as hon. Members have mentioned, second-hand machines and people moving into homes with an existing machine and not realising the safety issues make it a complex situation. I will come back to that when talking about the working group that we have set up.

I am concerned to hear of the experiences of some consumers who have registered their machines with Whirlpool and who have faced unacceptable delays in having their machines modified.

[Mrs Moon]

The advice given to one of my constituents was to unplug her tumble dryer, to plug it back in only when she was going to use it and to then watch it. I do not know if the Minister has ever tried to move a tumble dryer or washer dryer when the plug is at the back, but it is not something that can be done. The manufacturers have to take far greater responsibility for keeping our families safe than they do at the moment.

[Margot James]

I agree with the hon. Lady; that is not practical advice.

Whirlpool has, however, been taking action to address the concerns that we have debated this afternoon. The hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) is the only one among us, apart from myself, who has met Whirlpool. What Whirlpool said to her is largely right, in terms of what it has lived up to following the proposals that its representatives made when they met her some time ago.

Whirlpool has increased its engineer workforce by 50%, allowing it to resolve approximately 100,000 cases per month. It has now exceeded the number of cases that it anticipated resolving when it met the hon. Lady. It has modified more than 1.5 million machines—almost 90% of the total number registered with the company—but, of course, that leaves 10% unresolved, to say nothing of all the other machines out there that nobody knows of. Whirlpool now employs the UK’s largest technician workforce, at 1,700-strong, which is almost three times the size of the next largest one in the country.

In response to demands for a full recall, I understand the attraction of that proposition, but the key must be to take whatever action is most likely to achieve the outcome we are all aiming for, which is to ensure that consumers are protected from unsafe products. That may be statutory recall in some instances, but other forms of corrective action, including making modifications to products in a consumer’s home, may be more proportionate, appropriate and effective in other cases. It is often better and more effective to encourage a company to accept its responsibilities and take action proactively.

Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill

Debate between Margot James and Madeleine Moon

Tuesday 5th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Croydon North (Steve Reed). I feel a certain distress about how the debate has been managed over the past six months and the pressure that has been put on so many of my colleagues by pressure groups and Churches who should have known better than to deploy such tactics. I feel that I have been living with a false sense of security after the legislative changes of the past decade. I am indebted to the Prime Minister not only for the Bill, but for the changes he has brought about within my party, which have led to my own election and that of many others and changed the face of the parliamentary party. As a result of the debate over the past six months, we may have gone two steps forward, but I fear we have also gone one step back. The modernisation of the Conservative party is not yet complete.

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

Has the hon. Lady, like me, been particularly angered and frustrated by the tactics of the campaign director of Coalition for Marriage, who has sent out e-mails urging people to write to their MPs saying:

“You will be remembered if you vote for this Bill. You will be held to account for it. We will tell your friends and family and we will not vote for you.”?

This is a free vote. Members should be voting with their conscience, as a free vote requires, not on the basis of threats to electoral prospects.

[Margot James]

The hon. Lady makes the point far better than I could have done. The Coalition for Marriage and some Churches have deliberately and consistently misinterpreted the Government’s intentions by pretending that we were forcing Churches to marry same-sex couples. That was never the intention of the Government, and I and other colleagues would never have supported the Bill had it been so.

Belatedly, only this weekend, the Church of England has finally admitted that it is not realistic or likely that Churches will be forced to conduct same-sex weddings. It is so easy to say that now, when practically every person I meet who does not follow political deliberations in great detail has said to me about the Bill, “Oh, it’s about weddings in churches for gay people, isn’t it?” That is the misapprehension that many of my constituents who are opposed to the Bill have laboured under, including members of my own constituency association. I would like to put on record my appreciation of those individuals who have treated me with courtesy and respect such that I can, in conscience, support the Bill this evening without fear or favour. Many of them, however, believe that we are legislating for gay weddings in church. We are not. I am satisfied by the advice of the Attorney-General that that is an infinitesimal possibility. We have heard about how nobody can legislate against a challenge in the courts, but case law in the European Court of Human Rights makes it infinitesimally unlikely that any such challenge would succeed.