We decided to look at the safety of electrical goods following their identification as the cause of several high-profile fires recently, such as Grenfell and Shepherd's Bush Green.
The inquiry looked at the current regimes of product safety and recall within the UK, what progress has been made since the Lynn Faulds Wood Review and what impact Brexit will have on these areas.
Between 2010 and 2016, there were 1,598 fires in England caused by fridge/freezers alone.
There appears to be a significant risk associated with plastic-backedfridge freezers, based on the number of fires associated with them.
We agree with the London Fire Brigade that products such as fridges and freezers should be properly marked so that they can be identified following a fire.
Progress on improving the safety of electrical goods has been painfully slow.
The Lynn Faulds Wood Review was published nearly two years ago, and made a number of sensible suggestions to improve product safety which are widely supported.
It is disappointing that her recommendations have still not been implemented.
We recommend that the Government publish a full response to the Faulds-Wood Review, not subsequent iterations, by the end of February 2018 at the latest.
In 2015/16, 676 fires in England were caused by tumble dryers, leading to a total of 46 injuries and fatalities.
Customers who contact Whirlpool who have a defective machine should expect resolution with two weeks of contacting the company.
Whirlpool and other manufacturers should make available such risk assessments as soon as a defect is apparent.
Whirlpool should explain how it will deal with remaining defective and potentially dangerous machines.
We found the limitations of the existing system to be exposed by the manufacturer Whirlpool's response to a defect in its tumble dryers. As a result of its slow response, there are still a million potentially dangerous appliances in people's homes.
Given the number of fires caused by tumble dryers, we consider it unacceptable that there are still a million defective machines in people's homes.
Between 2009 and 2016 total spending on local Trading Standards fell from £213m to £123m.
A national product safety agency could help improve the coordination of information and address gaps in data which is hampering the tracking of trends and analysis which would help prioritise actions
We recommend that the Government carries out and publishes a cost benefit analysis of the options for reallocating and concentrating existing resources, both centrally and locally, with a view to combining into a single national product safety agency.
It is deeply worrying that our current product safety regime allows millions of potentially dangerous products to remain in circulation.
The Government should also explore introducing automatic registration of white goods at point of sale.
We delivered these recommendations to the Government's Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy on Tuesday 16 January 2018. They have two months to respond.
Read our full report on The safety of electrical goods in the UK and find out more about our inquiry on our website.
You can read all of the evidence we received on the safety of electrical goods on our website.
