Faulty Electrical Imports

Martin Docherty-Hughes Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd March 2016 Westminster Hall

[Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

It is nice to see you in the Chair, Mr Davies. I am pleased to take part in this debate, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) on securing it. I must declare an interest: I was formerly the secretary of the Scottish Accident Prevention Council, so I am keenly aware of many of these issues. For the record, I have never used hair straighteners—faulty or otherwise.

[Geraint Davies (in the Chair)]

Nor have I.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes]

Households face the continuing challenges of squeezed incomes and rising prices for essential goods and services, so consumers are increasingly vulnerable to making distressed purchases. Many are tempted to buy fake and often faulty electrical goods. Like others, I am particularly worried about my constituents on low incomes. The elderly and others in disadvantaged situations are particularly susceptible to exploitation by unscrupulous businesses seeking to benefit from consumer vulnerabilities.

Inferior electrical goods pose a host of dangers to the public, and often leave behind a legacy of safety concerns and property damage, about which we have heard today. As other hon. Members highlighted, counterfeit electrical goods follow consumer trends—fake Fendi handbags cannot really injure people, but a faulty fake washing machine can kill people in their beds with smoke and fire.

Fake items often contain faulty parts that can overheat, catch fire or cause electric shocks. Like many other hon. Members, I have read the Electrical Safety First report, “A shocking rip off”, which found that a key reason why fakes are sold so cheaply is that they often have no short-cuts, lack specific components or contain substandard ones. According to the charity, the increasing sophistication of fake production means that often the only way of identifying items as counterfeit is by checking their internal components, but that is not on many of my constituents’ minds when they make a purchase, particularly if they do so online.

It has never been easier for counterfeit products to enter the UK marketplace, given the number of internet-based sales portals and social media marketplaces. Anyone with a bank account and internet access can import products from anywhere in the world. I do not want this debate to be about preventing them from doing so; that is not what we are talking about. At the same time, the resources of the agencies tasked with tackling the counterfeiting menace are being spread even more thinly, as alluded to a moment ago.

Faulty electrical products are thought to cause billions of pounds-worth of damage every year, both from the economic impact and from the fires and injuries they cause when they malfunction. Although the figures for fires caused directly by counterfeit electrical products are hard to come by, fires caused by electrical products are responsible for nearly 3,000 domestic house fires in Scotland alone per year. The average cost of a house fire is estimated to be about £44,500. Even if only a small proportion are due to faulty electrical goods, the direct financial impact is likely to be significant, leaving aside the human cost of such fires.

In my constituency—the one and only West Dunbartonshire—between 2009 and 2015, more than 11% of all accidental house fires were caused by faulty electrical items. I was further worried to learn that Citizens Advice Scotland reported a 17% increase in annual calls from consumers who have concerns about electrical products. Although much has already been done to tackle the importation of faulty electrical goods into Scotland and the rest of the UK, those figures show that there is a real need to fully understand the issue and to deal with it sooner rather than later. In liaison with partners, including Electrical Safety First, the Scottish trading standards services are working hard to identify and take robust enforcement action against the supplies of faulty electrical products.

In my constituency, West Dunbartonshire trading standards officers work tirelessly to protect consumers from imported and often unsafe electrical products. In the run-up to Christmas 2015, they prevented 1,000 non- compliant hoverboards—that ubiquitous item—from entering the UK. We have all read about the safety issues surrounding that newest fad gadget. In that case, it was deemed that the boards contained faulty plugs, cabling, chargers and batteries, which could have led to the devices overheating, exploding or catching fire.

Recently, the West Dunbartonshire trading standards office, like many other trading standards offices across the UK, has been contacted by worried consumers who have fire safety concerns about recalled tumble dryers. One of my constituents who has responded to the recall has been told that they will get their modification visit in May 2017. That is a scandal. They are supposed to continue to use the potentially dangerous product in the meantime or to take up the company’s generous offer of a new machine for £99 in place of modification.

The Scottish Government have proposed to the Smith commission that consumer protection be fully devolved to Scotland. I ask the Minister, why is it not? Why are we not helping consumer protection organisations to work together across the rest of the UK? More importantly, why are we not bringing consumer protection closer to the consumer?

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Boles]

I do not know off the top of my head, but I am happy to write to the hon. Gentleman about that, and to copy in other hon. Members who have attended the debate. We have quite a range of expertise in the debate, and it would be useful to have contributions from hon. Members on both sides, including, perhaps, representatives of the Scottish Government, who I know also do a great deal of work on the question.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes]

The Minister mentioned the problem of the internet. Does he recognise that the internet is also a hope for the future, in relation to consumer rights and protection? People can put reviews on eBay and Facebook, and there are greater opportunities through technology than we have been giving credence to in the debate. I hope that the Government will take cognisance of the changes that are coming in technology, in the next 20 years, because what we have seen so far will pale into insignificance.

[Nick Boles]

I entirely agree. Before I took the intervention from the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) I was coming on to the fact that, for all that the internet has created opportunities for criminals and those who would abuse freedom, it has nevertheless also created even greater opportunities for legitimate traders and consumers. As the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Martin Docherty-Hughes) says, there are opportunities through the internet to share information about suppliers who have failed to live up to their obligations, and products that do not do what they are supposed to do, or are counterfeit or faulty.

In the debate, several hon. Members picked up on the idea of introducing a new charter mark, but I want to warn against viewing that as a panacea. As hon. Members will be aware, electrical goods are already required to carry the CE mark, and the problem is that lots of people fake that; so introducing a new charter mark would not itself necessarily deal with the problem. I presume that people would fake the new mark just as they did the previous one. It is more a question—and perhaps this is what was being suggested—of asking social media sites and trading platforms such as eBay, Facebook and Amazon to take responsibility themselves for having the kinds of review information that the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire mentioned, and to be proactive not just in taking products down but in kicking traders off their sites. Of course the traders would all go off and set up in a new guise two months later, and return to the sites, but consistent and persistent work to try to prevent consumers being ripped off or put at risk is needed. I assure the hon. Member for Swansea East that the Government will continue to work with her and other Members, and Electrical Safety First, to try to ensure that we have the problem under control.