Faulty Tumble Dryers (Fire Risk) — House of Commons, 2016-09-13
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Andrew Francis Slaughter (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend has hit the nail on the head; the two companies are adopting completely opposite strategies. No doubt they both have commercial motivations, but one has been benevolent and one has not. Samsung thinks, "Right, we will take the hit now, because we believe in the long-term reputation of our company." Whirlpool is trying to go below the radar. There will have been many reports of these many hundreds of fires in local newspapers and, occasionally, in the national press, but there is not an understanding across the general population that millions of people may have these dryers in their homes and that they pose a risk. Many of these dryers are not even registered. I wish to make just two more points, as I want a little time for not just the Minister, but other hon. Members to speak. The first goes back to the Lynn Faulds Wood review, which was an independent review set up and supported by government. The review reported, making a number of serious and well-thought-out recommendations about how a product recall system could work in this country. I am afraid to say that it has been dealt with in a very cynical fashion. Almost all the recommendations have either been ignored or pooh-poohed in some way. The only thing that has happened since it reported is that a steering group has been set up. All of us who watched "Yes Minister" will know that setting up a steering group is what you do when you do not want to do anything. This is a particularly ineffective steering group. It was given six months to meet, and they will end on 4 November. I do not how many times it has met, because it has not published any reports or minutes. I do know the membership of it, so I know that it has more representatives of manufacturers and retailers than of safety experts, from the fire service and elsewhere. I know very little else about it, so perhaps one other thing the Minister can clarify today is: what is happening with the recommendations of Lynn Faulds Wood’s report? Will the Minister look at them again? That was a serious piece of work, so will she seriously think about whether a new system of product recall should be established in this country? In the meantime, will she tell us what this steering group is doing and what happens when it allegedly finishes its work on 4 November There are many, many defects in this. Most of my constituents, and most constituents of other Members, will be living in a world of false security, in that they will believe that in the UK in 2016 there is a system of product recall. They will not realise that in many cases manufacturers have no idea where their products go. Part of the reason for that is that there is no compulsory registration, and there is not even an incentive to register products when they are bought because usually in the process of registering a product people are also asked to sign up to all the marketing and other guff that comes out of that. Rather than being bothered and pestered to buy all sorts of warranties that they do not want, people will say, "No, I am not going to register this product." Consequently, between 1 million and 2 million of the Whirlpool machines have just disappeared; we do not know where they are. Before we can do a product recall, we must know where the machines are.