Safety must come before profit.. it is a matter of life & death
Report sets out action plan on dangers of faulty white goods
It is impossible to imagine the panic that engulfs a person waking to find their home on fire and the lives of loved ones in peril. Harder still to accept this nightmare scenario has been a reality for many, triggered by a faulty washing machine or tumble dryer.
In the year to April 2016, tumble dryers caused 676 fires in England, leading to 46 injuries and fatalities
And between 2010 and 2016, there were 1,598 fires caused by fridge-freezers.
In a modern economy like ours with an apparently high bar when it comes to rules and regulations, these kind of terrible incidents should not be happening.
The Daily Mirror has led the way on highlighting this scandal and campaigned hard for answers.
As chair of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, I conducted an inquiry into the safety of electrical goods. Our findings were published yesterday and make depressing but important reading. We concluded the Government has been “painfully slow” in improving the safety regime.
The system is fragmented and does not have the funding to carry out its vital work. Local Trading Standards officers do not have the budgets to take on multinationals and hold them to account.
Our committee found it unacceptable that there are still a million defective Whirlpool tumble dryers in homes more than two years after the identification of a defect that has led to at least 750 fires since 2004.
We demanded Whirlpool appear before our committee to explain its lack of action. The inadequate response from this America-based firm further highlighted the flaws in the UK’s safety regime which urgently need fixing.
Whirlpool failed to provide an appropriate representative. The employee they sent seemed to have little grasp of the detail we required. The firm gave incomplete answers to questions and was ordered to provide clarifications and reassurance regarding its actions. That did not strike me as the actions of a firm seeking to repair trust after the serious safety failures with its products.
The slow response in fixing or replacing its faulty machines also needlessly alarmed and upset people. Whirlpool did take some steps to address the problem with a modification programme. But the firm failed its customers.
Apart from its decision to repair rather than recall machines and long delays before modifications were made, Whirlpool’s initial advice that tumblers were safe to continue using under supervision must have put people at risk. In our report, we called on the Government to stop dithering and respond by the end of February to the recommendations of an independent review on product safety by consumer champion Lynn Faulds Wood nearly two years ago.
I’m glad Business Secretary Greg Clark’s department is considering those recommendations. They now need to get a move on with publishing their response.
But there is much more that needs to be done, as we outline.
When it comes to Whirlpool, we have told them they must explain how they will deal with the remaining defective machines.
We have said they must resolve problems for all customers within two weeks of them contacting the company. They are claiming they will do this within one week. We will keep them to this.
We recommended that all manufacturers should make available risk assessments as soon as any defects are identified.
We also said the Government should explore the establishment of a single national product safety agency.
We called on the makers of plastic-backed fridge-freezers to use safer materials to cut risk of fire. But, despite our focus on Whirlpool, it is important to remember these problems go deeper than just one company.
Whirlpool did fail on a number of fronts. But, as we have seen with the collapse of Carillion, badly run businesses are far from unique.
It is now down to the Government to act before there is another tragedy blamed on these faulty machines.
Ministers should take forward our recommendations and show the public that they are taking their safety seriously. It really is a matter of life and death.