My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, for her support for this amendment.
The Minister’s response will be deeply disappointing to the fire officers and Electrical Safety First, who worked on this and who have earned this amendment. They are the stakeholders who are referred to, and they do not feel that what the Government are doing is
enough, which is why they have called for this amendment. The Minister said that the legislation is robust, but it is not working. We are having a death a week because of faulty appliances, so that is not working. I do not ask for the information now, but it would be helpful if she could write and say how many prosecutions there were in the last five years of companies for not having reported and taken necessary action.
However, my noble friend Lady Crawley raised an extraordinarily important point. It is also a surprise to find that this Government are saying that on this issue they want the public sector—that is, trading standards—to deal with it, rather than the people who done wrong—the manufacturers—who acted unwittingly to begin with, but who made a faulty product that is leading to carbon monoxide poisoning, electrocution, or death by fire. It is interesting that the Minister wants not to absolve them of that but to say that the major responsibility is to tell trading standards—that is, the public sector—which will do something about it. Other things that come from the Government are all about the public sector doing less and all of us, whether it is the big society or manufacturers, doing more. Therefore I am surprised but also disappointed that the Minister does not want to put more of an obligation on to the manufacturers who have made these fire traps. However, she will understand from what I am saying that we feel very strongly about this, and we will come back to it. It certainly does not seem to be good consumer protection when once a week somebody dies when they do not have to. However, for the moment I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.