Office for Product Safety and Standards

Rachel Reeves Excerpts

Wednesday 9th May 2018 Westminster Hall

[Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the role of the Office for Product Safety and Standards.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David.

The Minister will be familiar with my interest in electrical safety and, in particular, household electrical goods. I am sure he has familiarised himself with all my previous debates and correspondence on the issue. I am grateful for the opportunity to discuss the new Office for Product Safety and Standards, and I am keen to hear from him what he will do with some of the serious issues around product safety, and specifically electrical goods. Disappointingly, there has been no parliamentary scrutiny of the functions of the office to date, and I was disappointed that no Minister came to the House to explain what it would be. It was irritating that the Government made the announcement on a weekend; perhaps today we can hear an explanation for that.

The previous Minister, the hon. Member for Stourbridge (Margot James), came to the all-party parliamentary group on home electrical safety in December last year, to explain and to listen to the way forward that members of that group wanted. I pay tribute to the hon. Lady for her work as Minister and her willingness to listen to parliamentarians and stakeholders about the changes required to electrical product safety in the UK.

The APPG on home electrical safety is an excellent forum for many parliamentarians and stakeholder attendees to discuss the priority issues concerning electrical safety. Stakeholder attendees include Electrical Safety First, which assists me with the administration of the group, the London fire brigade and the Chartered Trading Standards Institute, of which I am a vice-president, the Anti-Counterfeiting Group and others. I would like to think that our combined effort and knowledge have kept these matters high on the parliamentary agenda.

Special mention should also be given to my hon. Friends the Members for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) and for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick), who have both worked for a long time to protect people from fires and white good damage in their homes. The APPG’s next meeting is next Tuesday, and I extend an invitation to the Minister to come and listen to a presentation from eBay on what it is doing to prevent counterfeit electrical goods from being sold on its platform—an issue that has got wildly out of control in recent years and, if I am honest, piqued my initial interest in the subject when I held my first debate on this matter in this very room.

I welcome the creation of the office, which is long overdue, and I hope it will help not only to co-ordinate across Government, but to bring together a range of stakeholders to help and advise the office, such as Electrical Safety First, the British Standards Institution, the fire brigades, CTSI and Which?, and many others that are on the frontline of preventing fires caused by faulty products, and that exist to educate the public. The office now needs to reach out to those organisations. I question what it will do to engage stakeholders.

The Minister will be aware that I have previously corresponded with the Department on what I think should be the priority areas. Although I appreciated the Minister’s response, I wonder whether today is an opportunity to share when the strategy will be published and whether electrical product safety will be a priority.

Electricity is one of the biggest causes of fires in our homes, but I see no real Government strategy to help mitigate that risk. Is the office working on a cross-Government strategy? The Home Office has its own “Fire Kills” campaign, but there needs to be a longer, sustained campaign, which Electrical Safety First has been calling for. What is the priority consumer campaign to prevent electrical fires in the home—or where is it? I would like to know what discussions the office is having with the Home Office about fires caused by faulty electrical goods. The Home Office seems to have its own unit, and now the Office for Product Safety and Standards exists, so where is the co-ordination? Can we have some reassurance that there will be joined-up thinking?

I note from the office’s website that one of the first announcements last month was on teaming up with BSI, the UK’s national standards body, to launch the first Government-backed code of practice for product safety recall in the UK. That is a welcome step and is backed by Government, but can the Minister outline whether there will be a Government campaign for consumers on product safety in the strategy? Although initiatives such as “Register my appliance” exist, where is the Government-backed consumer campaign on electrical goods?

There have been significant consumer awareness campaigns from organisations such as Electrical Safety First and the London fire brigade, particularly on plastic-backed fridges, white good fires, counterfeit electrical goods and why recalled goods are openly being sold. The office must get to grips with that issue. From my personal perspective, I do not think it is right that counterfeit electrical goods are sold openly online by the likes of Amazon and eBay. As I have said, the latter will be given an opportunity next week to reassure the APPG meeting, but Amazon has consistently refused to engage and washed its hands of any responsibility, and even though it was invited to next week’s meeting it has declined to respond.

At the last debate, the previous Minister promised a roundtable discussion with Apple, BaByliss, ACG and others to discuss the serious problems they face with counterfeiting and its safety aspects. I keep saying to Ministers that this goes beyond intellectual property; it is about the safety of the public. It is about fire in their homes. It is about the death of my constituent Linda Merron, who bought an electrical product on eBay that burned her house down. It is unacceptable that eBay and Amazon can sell goods that are unsafe and basically get away with it. That would not be allowed on the high street, and the issue will only get worse with the collapse of high street electrical stores such as Maplin, which shows that consumers are increasingly buying online. I want to hear today that the office will tackle those companies that break the law by selling substandard, counterfeit or recalled products.

A closely related problem is the private sales of electrical goods via eBay and Amazon, particularly on Amazon Marketplace. It is my understanding that the Consumer Rights Act 2015 does not cover private sales, so anything faulty could be sold person to person without legal protection. Can the Minister look into that and perhaps write to me about the situation regarding private sales of electrical goods between two individuals, their rights and the consumer legislation? If there is a loophole, I would expect the office to look at it.

It is all very well my calling for greater attacking of the issues and enforcement, but who will enforce this? As the Local Government Association stated in its trading standards review, between 2010 and 2015 there have been cuts of more than 40% to local government, and trading standards has taken the brunt of those cuts. As CTSI has informed me,

“the Office for Product Safety and Standards is a step forwards for consumer protection in the UK. However; there is still a pressing need to ensure frontline trading standards services have the resources to fulfil their duties to protect the public as was noted by the BEIS Select Committee, Lynn Faulds Wood and the National Audit Office.”

[Rachel Reeves (Leeds West) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on all the work she has done to identify these serious issues. She mentions trading standards. The National Audit Office has identified the funding gap there, but I think there is another issue. Local trading standards are responsible for businesses in their area. In Peterborough, where Whirlpool is based, the local trading standards office is responsible for the quality of goods for Whirlpool nationwide. There is a conflict of interest and it does not work, because the local trading standards office does not have the resources to police a multinational company such as Whirlpool.

[Carolyn Harris]

I totally agree with my hon. Friend. It is my understanding that Peterborough actually has fewer than three trading standards officers.

Will the Minister please outline how trading standards will be boosted and supported by this new office? Will there be moneys for the training of more trading standards officers? Surely the Government realise that more people are needed on the ground, and now. Will any support for trading standards be backed up with a proper database of injuries that stakeholders can access?

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Kerr (Stirling) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) and congratulate her on securing this important and timely debate.

Product safety standards is a subject on which we should all be focused. It is not so long ago that I wrote a column for my local newspaper, the Stirling Observer, which focused on product safety—especially of tumble dryers. I received an unexpectedly high response to that article compared with others I had written on more current constitutional issues that we might debate in the House and in Scotland.

I also reflect on the first ever surgery I attended as a newly elected Member, in the Mayfield Centre in Stirling. We advertised the event but only two constituents came along to speak to me, so I had some time to speak to the caretaker. He was delighted to speak to his new MP, because he wanted to point out to me an issue that, so far as he was aware, no one was speaking about: the regulation and safety of tumble dryers. Little did I know that, within a few weeks of that, I would be a member of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee and that we would be conducting an inquiry into the safety of tumble dryers.

This is an important subject, as has already been mentioned by the hon. Member for Swansea East. Our inquiry found, as can be read in the published report, that companies such as Whirlpool have not made enough of an effort to take responsibility for their products and the consequences of their use when they are deemed dangerous. In fact, the report identified that a million faulty tumble dryers are in everyday use in this country. We also identified in the report gaps in the regulatory regime.

I should mention that, during the hearings that we conducted, Whirlpool made commitments about its willingness to respond to the concerns that we raised. We asked it to resolve issues with defective machines within two weeks. It said that it would do it within a week, but we have no way of measuring whether the company has been true to the commitment that it made and put on the record.

[Rachel Reeves]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his work on our Select Committee in probing Whirlpool and Ian Moverley, who gave evidence—or at least answered a few of our questions, but not all of them. On the 1 million faulty tumble dryers that Whirlpool knows about, is the hon. Gentleman also concerned that Which? said that it had found as recently as last month through its mystery shopping that customers with these faulty tumble dryers were still being given the wrong advice? That means there are potentially still 1 million tumble dryers in our homes that could catch fire, like the ones we in the Committee heard about and the ones other hon. Members have given evidence on.

[Stephen Kerr]

I am grateful to the Chair of the Select Committee—I have the privilege of serving on it—for her intervention. She is absolutely right, and I share all those concerns—specifically in relation to the Which? report of recent weeks that suggested that Whirlpool customers were being advised that they could continue to use their defective models, even though they were known to be defective and presented a danger to the safety of the people who lived in homes where they were in use.

Similarly, I am also concerned to hear that the BBC and Which? have reported that some of the machines that have had their defects corrected have then caused fires. This is a significant issue and, as I said earlier, is something that should concentrate all our minds—particularly those of Ministers. I am sure that the Minister will wish to address these specific issues in his reply.

Questions need to be asked, and it is vital that the regulatory regime that we have meets the need that we currently place on it. As we take more products into our lives and rely more on technology, the more we need a regulator with teeth. The new Office for Product Safety and Standards is a promising development, but it will need to be tested against reality—the lawyers and the corporate spin machines that defend the spin cycles of the manufacturers.

I should at this point deviate to tell the House that I had a most interesting experience in the last few minutes while visiting a constituent of mine who is here in Parliament. She is at a drop-in event in Portcullis House sponsored by Genetic Alliance UK, which is a charity that works to improve the lives of patients and carers. I told her that I was coming to Westminster Hall to participate in a debate on tumble dryers—that is how I expressed it, even though the debate is broader—and she volunteered that her tumble dryer had been faulty. It was a different make from the one I have discussed. She returned the machine and was offered £100 and a new machine, but that machine was faulty. This product seems to have endemic issues.

I hope Members will forgive me if I dwell a little more on an issue that has bothered me a great deal since being elected: the apparent ineffectiveness of regulators. For example, Ofgem constantly failed to take on the electricity markets, which were obviously broken, and I have found Ofcom to be generally unresponsive to the wireless telephony and broadband connectivity issues of my rural constituents. The list goes on. The debate is not about that, but I am concerned that the new office could be another ineffectual regulator—toothless, ineffective, and sometimes even, sad to say, supine—instead of a body that the Government, and us as parliamentarians, have put good faith in to defend the best interests of people.

In some cases, regulators fail not because they do not have enough power but because they lack the will and suffer from organisational atrophy that causes inaction. The regulator in this field, the OPSS, must not fail. If it does, there is the possibility of lives being lost—actually, that is beyond a possibility; it is a fact—consumers being ripped off with faulty goods, and untold damage being done to property.

The situation regarding Whirlpool, which I have already mentioned, is one in which our Select Committee expected action on the part of the company. To our knowledge, that has not been forthcoming. Its actions have been inadequate. Instead of responding to the concerns that we raised with it and those of my constituents and others who have raised issues with me that I have passed on, it has resisted action and, in my view, done the bare minimum that it can get away with. An activist regulator would put paid to the inaction, and a test of the ability of the new regulator will be how it pursues this. It is essential that when questions are raised about products, companies act transparently. That is what we would expect, and what we would expect a regulator to insist on.

I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to the debate.