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Agenda item

Update on the National Audit Officer Report: Protecting Consumers from Unsafe Products

Report of the Service Director, Economy, Innovation and Growth

Minutes:

The Committee received a report to update on he publication on 16 June 2021 of the National Audit Office report “Protecting Consumers from Unsafe Products”.

 

Whilst most consumer goods consumers buy are likely to be physically safe, unsafe products can cause injury, financial costs and even fatalities.  Harm to health and safety can be visible, such as an estimated 3000 UK house fires caused by faulty appliances and nearly 5000 admissions to hospital with injuries from fireworks each year.  But harm can also be less obvious, such as toxic or carcinogenic chemicals in cosmetics.  There is no data available on the overall scale of harm caused by consumer products or how this has changed over time.

 

In the UK, general regulations require businesses that make or sell products to ensure they are safe when used normally or in a way that could be reasonably foreseen, but do not require this to be proven to regulators before selling to consumers.  Some product types with more risk of safety problems, such as electricals, toys, cosmetics or upholstered furniture, have specific regulations with additional safety requirements or processes.

 

Until 2018, consumer product safety regulations were enforced entirely by local Trading Standards services (or by environmental health teams in Northern Ireland).  These services, which in England spent £143m in 2019-20, sit within local authorities and are locally accountable.  They include several regulatory responsibilities, of which product safety is only one.  During the 2010s, it was widely considered that this local system was not well-equipped to deal with increasingly complex, national and international product markets.  This was highlighted by high-profile problems with Whirlpool tumble dryers identified in 2015, and the fire at Grenfell Tower in 2017 that originated from a fridge freezer.

 

In January 2018 the Government established the Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS), a new office within the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), to bring national capacity and leadership to product safety issues.  The OPSS’s produce safety operations budget has grown from £10million in its first year to £14m in 2020-21.  Its national role includes identifying and assessing product risks and intervening directly on nationally significant, novel or contentious issues.  The OPSS works alongside Trading Standards services, which still regulate at local level and undertake most enforcement.

 

In 2018 the government reformed the product safety regime to strengthen it, including establishing the OPSS as a national regulator.  The NAO believes that OPSS has made a good start in addressing the immediate issues it faced:  it has made impactful interventions on national issues, including strengthening high-profile recall processes for household appliances, provided new forms of support for local regulators, and developed new databases to prepare for EU Exit.

 

However, the NAO recognises that the product safety regime faces major challenges to keep pace with changes in the market.  There are gaps in regulators’ powers over products sold online, local and national regulation is not well coordinated despite improvements and the OPSS does not yet have adequate data and intelligence.  The OPSS is currently consulting on how to ensure the regulatory framework is fit for the future.  Until it establishes a clear vision and plan for how to overcome the challenges facing product safety regulation and the tools and data needed to facilitate this, it will not be able to ensure the regime is sustainable and effective at protecting consumers from harm.

 

RESOLVED -  That the information contained within the report be noted.

Supporting documents:

 

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