Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what assessment his Department has made of the effect of reductions in funding on local authorities capacity to enforce product safety measures.

Local Authorities are independent from central government and are responsible for their own finances and funding decisions, accountable to their local electorates.

Government identified the need for national leadership and co-ordination of the product safety system and established the Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS) in January 2018 to fulfil this role.

OPSS has built capability to lead on national product safety issues. This includes commissioning a strategic research programme; setting up arrangements to deal with national product safety incidents; and forming a trading standards co-ordination unit to support the work that Local Authorities carry out on product safety in their local areas.

As part of its support for Local Authority Trading Standards, OPSS has made available £600,000 this year to Local Authorities for product safety testing, trained over 700 trading standards staff from 211 Local Authorities and provided scientific and technical support to increase Trading Standards capability on product safety regulation.