Consumer Rights Act 2015 (Enforcement) (Amendment) Order 2019 Debate

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Department: Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy

Consumer Rights Act 2015 (Enforcement) (Amendment) Order 2019

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts
Tuesday 25th June 2019

(4 years, 9 months ago)

Lords Chamber
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We need to know that incidents like those with Whirlpool tumble driers, and tragedies like Grenfell Tower—although we hope that nothing like that, on that scale, could ever happen again—can be dealt with rapidly and effectively.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Portrait Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
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My Lords, like others, we welcome the draft order, the objectives of which we support. Anything that prioritises and increases consumer protection and safety is naturally welcome. It is just a shame that the way the Government are seeking to take us out of the EU will have exactly the opposite effect and risks reducing consumer protection. Indeed, it is notable how little involvement consumer bodies have been offered in the whole exit process—an issue we have raised repeatedly in this House, though sadly to nil effect.

We support the SI, but our concern is about the environment in which it will land, about which I shall make four points. The first is about the OPSS itself, which is, rightly, the key target for these new powers. Our worry is that, on its effective first outing, it has failed to convince. The Minister is well aware of the serious criticisms that Which? and others have of the OPSS Whirlpool review, which judged, inexplicably, that the modified machines posed only a low risk, as noted by the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe. Which? described this early test of the OPSS’s intelligence and research abilities, and of its independence, or “bottle”, as “fundamentally flawed”. I do not know whether it was its research that let it down—it is interesting that it failed to interview any consumers. Indeed, had the OPSS sought some consumer input, it might have heard from my noble and learned friend Lord Goldsmith, whose grandchildren played in the kitchen completely unaware that immediately below them the tumble dryer had caught fire. Luckily, no one was hurt, but the family was out of the house for some months while the damage was repaired.

Was it its research that let it down, or was it the OPSS’s lack of bottle? It appeared, in the words of Which?,

“to favour business interests over people’s safety”.

It seems that the OPSS somehow had not grasped that it needed to look at Whirlpool’s miserable failure to deal with fire risk in its products, and therefore the resultant lack of public awareness of the risks posed in their own homes. I hope that by the time the order is activated we might see a more robust OPSS. Meanwhile, perhaps the OPSS could publish the list of affected Whirlpool machines, which we know it has and which Whirlpool refuses to release. It expects consumers to know about the potential problem, to know that their unit might be at risk, to be able to locate the serial number on their machine and then be able to type it into a very poorly advertised website.

Secondly, of course, there is the issue raised by the noble Baronesses, Lady Neville-Rolfe and Lady Burt, of the dire condition of trading standards departments, thanks to the Government’s cuts to local government funding. This reduction in funding has a direct influence on what trading standards can do. It is simply no good the Government boasting, quite rightly, that they have created powers, if they then starve the relevant authorities of the staff to employ those powers. Cuts in resources and staff of 50% mean that consumer protection that exists on paper simply cannot be effected in practice. Will the Minister assure the House that none of the powers in this order will lie dormant for lack of resources?

Thirdly, while we have strongly supported a number of the Government’s initiatives in consumer protection—particularly, I say in the presence of the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, the 2015 Act itself, but also progress on legislation on letting agents and other things—the problem is that it has all been a bit scattergun and without a coherent framework. Of course, it was much undermined by the Government’s abolition of the much-needed National Consumer Council, leaving a very patchy consumer representation landscape. As the Minister knows, we are delighted that the CMA seems to have picked up the cudgels on behalf of consumers, but we await a proper government response to this and across the patch. Will the Minister tell the House when we might expect the promised consumer White Paper? I offer him a range of responses—those pre-drafted ones that tend to come his way: “shortly”, “in due course”, “before long”, “in the fullness of time”, “very soon”, “imminently” or “before the summer”. We hope it might be the last of these, but it would be good to know.

Finally, my fourth point returns to Brexit. Which? warns that we could be flooded by a rising tide of unsafe toys, cars and white goods if the Government fail to reform consumer enforcement, because of our potential exit from Safety Gate, the rapid warning system through which European countries alert each other to products with serious safety problems. It flagged more than 2,000 non-food products last year. Not only do the Government need to negotiate the UK’s continuing participation in Safety Gate, they must ensure that the OPSS and other regulators have the tools to act on incoming alerts.

To repeat the thrust of our comments, we support this order. We need the powers, but also the intelligence and the enforcement if UK consumers are to be properly protected, so I hope the Minister will be able to offer some reassurance on that point.

Lord Henley Portrait Lord Henley
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My Lords, I am grateful for the general support for the order from my noble friend and the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayter and Lady Burt, and for the questions they have asked.

I am also grateful, as always, to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, for offering me drafting advice, with a number of different options as to which word I could use for when a consumer White Paper might come out. I think I have used all those words at one time or another in the past; I even tried to tell the House many years ago that something would be published later that spring—I have to admit, in July it was quite difficult to argue that it was still spring. On this occasion I will try to be even more helpful to the noble Baroness. It will be published later this year; that gives her a final cut-off point. It will be there during 2019. If it is not there, she will have to come back to me and tell me that I have misled the House. If so, I will make the appropriate apology, but here is an assurance that it will be there.

I also assure my noble friend and the two noble Baronesses—I am grateful for everything that they have said—how important we think this is. This order is obviously essential as part of the process that the Government maintain as a priority to ensure that people across the United Kingdom continue to have confidence in the safety of all products that they buy and use every day. I assure the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, that without this order the Secretary of State would not be able to fulfil as effectively his lead role in managing national product safety incidents through the Office for Product Safety & Standards. He would not be able to assist the investigations of local authority trading standards in Great Britain, and district councils in Northern Ireland, that require the specialist expertise and capacity that the office can provide.

A number of questions have been raised, and I will deal with them in turn. I will start by giving an update on Whirlpool, which my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe asked about. As she knows, we made a Statement which was repeated in this House only a week or so ago. I assure her that the investigation into Whirlpool is ongoing. We will need to write further to her and others on the specifics of the case, but the statutory instrument adds to the enforcement regime of the OPSS and allows it to offer further support on that to local authorities.

However, as my noble friend will be aware, I can confirm that Whirlpool responded to the notification of intent from the Office for Product Safety & Standards to issue a recall notice on unmodified dryers. It is currently reviewing the information provided in detail, and we continue to urge anyone with an unmodified machine to unplug it and contact Whirlpool. Again, as I made clear to the House when I repeated the Statement, those who have a modified machine can be assured that it, as far as possible, will be safe—in so far as anything can be safe. It would probably be better if I wrote in further detail to my noble friend on the process and copied it to others, because obviously that process is ongoing.

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Portrait Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
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Before the Minister moves on, I asked a specific question about Whirlpool. The people who do not have modified machines still do not always know that they have a Whirlpool machine, because they were sold under a lot of different names—perhaps 14 of them. You, the Government, know the list of the machines that they were marketed under; some are Hotpoint—I cannot remember all the names. Not everyone knows them. The Government know them, as do Whirlpool, but neither of you will publish that list. You will not give them to the electrical safety consumer bodies so that they can get them out, or put them on a website, and you are expecting people to know that their machine is one of them. If the Minister cannot give me the undertaking now that the Government or the OPSS will publish that, will he explain to the House why that vital piece of information is not being put in the public domain?