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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, whether the recall of washing machines by Whirlpool on Tuesday 17 December 2019 is being carried out at the request of the Office for Product Safety and Standards.

The Government is committed to protecting consumers from unsafe products. Legislation is in place to ensure that manufacturers only place safe products on the market and take action where they identify a safety issue with products already on the market.

Therefore Whirlpool is responsible for the safety of the products it supplies and for taking effective action when unsafe products are discovered. The Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS) is the national regulator for product safety. It assessed the company’s proposal for a recall against regulatory standards and best practice to ensure the proposed action was sufficient to address the risk and provided timely notification of consumers as to the action they need to take.

OPSS is now monitoring the recall closely and will hold the company to account if the recall is not effective.