 Order, order. We now move to our second panel where we have representatives from Repair Advocates Restart Project, the manufacturer's BodyTech UK, and campaigners from Electrical Safety First. So welcome to Martin Allen, Suzanne Baker. Perhaps I went silent. You did. I'm just going to ask our witnesses for the second panel to introduce themselves, starting with Martin. Martin Allen from Electrical Safety First, and we are a consumer safety charity for aims to reduce death and injury caused by electricity in people's homes. Thank you, Martin, and Suzanne Baker. Hi, yes, I'm Suzanne Baker, and I'm Associate Director for Climate, Environment and Sustainability at Tech UK, with the Trade Association for Companies in the Digital Economy. Thank you, and Ugo Valori. Good afternoon. My name is Ugo Valori, Co-Founder and Policy Lead at the Restart Project. We are a charity and a people-powered social enterprise aiming to fix our friendship with electronics. Thank you very much indeed. So as my technology is not good, I'm going to ask some quick questions and then pass over to those who've got a better signal. First to Suzanne, can you explain why it is that the collection and recycling targets that the UK government has set are not being met? Okay, so this is obviously a big question, and I think one of the things that we haven't really dug into in much detail during the kind of discussion so far is that there's actually a lot of variability in performance across the different targets, or different product categories. So for display, we're recycling well over 60%. For IT and telecoms, for example, over 77% is being recycled, and the similar figures for consumer equipment where we have issues and challenges is actually around small mixed wheat. And these are the products that are easily hoardable in homes. And I think Libby mentioned the material focus research, which indicated there are hundreds of millions of products hoarded away in people's homes. And equally, they're things that can be easily disposed of. They can go into people's bins. And I think the situation isn't really helped by the kind of model that we have at the moment in how we operate EPR. So I think in the previous evidence or the previous sessions that you ran, there was a lot of discussion about predictability within the system and certainty for actors within it. And one thing for sure is that the competitive PCS system means that schemes aren't investing sufficiently in measures. For example, curbside collections and communications, because they lack the long-term visibility of the market share, they will be representing a future. And yeah, so one thing that we would certainly like to see is a rethink about how we organize collections. And one approach which is pretty popular in certain countries in Europe, so for example Germany, Denmark, Italy, Ireland, is what's called an allocation system. Yeah, so the allocation system essentially allocates local authority regions or rather regions of the countries to particular compliance schemes. And it allows them to have confidence to invest in particular areas. It also allows them to streamline the collections as well so they don't need so many lorries on the road. So I think it's a kind of combination of the competitive PCS environment, a lack of investment in hard to reach ways to the hoarded way and smaller items which are probably not going to be household is not going to be so compelled to take to the civic community sites. A lack of sufficient collection network and we're very pleased to see that retailers from next year, large retailers will be required to take back we at the end of life. This is very common in pretty much all European countries and for some reason we didn't do it in the UK. So I think we are moving in the right direction but we just got to make it easy for people to recycle these products. Hi, it's Alex over here. I think Philip's having some problems with his Zoom that I'm taking, I've literally just arrived back from London and turned my computer on. So I understand we've asked question 6A and has everybody wants to answer six, the first part of question six answered it in terms of the witnesses or and shall we move on or is there somebody else who wants to respond to this question? I'm sorry I've literally 30 seconds ago joined the call. So Suzanne are you the first person to answer this question or somebody else already? Yeah, I was the first one. Just do any of the others who would actually help me, actually if one of you wanted to respond to this as well, Martyn or Hugo, either you want to respond to this? I would just add to say that we recognise the important role that local authorities play in helping to recycle e-waste and they've done a great job in driving those figures up but our concern is actually the selling on of those acts as many of the local authorities have got selling mechanisms in place and it's very inconsistent in its approach and that raises safety concerns certainly for or selling some standard unsafe products and recalled products as well and I'm sure we'll go into the safety aspects of the conversation as we go on. Thanks for that, thanks for adding that. So I've now up to speed so and thanks to the committee staff for bringing up speed. So Suzanne the joint trade association is involved with setting the compliance fee so this fee does not incentivise collection of hard-to-reach or expensive cycle e-waste, we've heard that in previous sessions, nor does it promote better product design. Could the compliance fee system be reformed act to bear incentive and actually resolve these problems that we've heard from the sector and from producers? Yeah okay so yeah we are, I chair a group called the JTA which is basically a group of trade associations that represent producers of electricals and electronic equipment. For the past five years we've been one of the actors that put forward a proposal for the compliance fee, in fact anyone can put forward a proposal that is then subject to consultation and scrutiny by DEFRA and what we have to do is we have to design the proposal to be compliant with guidelines that DEFRA have produced. One of those is that they are based on actual costs so we are limited in being able to only frame the compliance fee based on the costs that are being faced by schemes at present. So I think it's complicated but I think it's important going back to the previous pointer around the target setting, I think one benefit of the compliance fee is that the funds can be put to really good use and be invested in activity which schemes themselves are unable to do because of their competitive nature. So for example there was a bit of long discussion in the previous section around rominative flame retardants and actually one of the first studies that were funded by the compliance fee was to actually assess rominative flame retardants in legacy wee plastics and that is what has prompted the Environment Agency to revise its guidelines and there are controls now in place to make sure that plastics that are contaminated with those chemicals are being dealt with in the right way and those that are found to be contaminated are being sent to high temperature incineration in sites that are permitted to do that and the Environment Agency has been following this extremely closely and even to the point that they were involved in the design of the methodology of the actual study itself. There's a lot of investment also in communications and curbside collections and other collection points too so I think there is some good that can come out the compliance fee but whether it will affect design I don't think so so one of the things that the government's considering at the moment and looking at is the introduction of eco-modulated fees so we've seen in the industrial strategy the clean growth strategy the 25 year environment plan the resources and waste strategy this commitment from government that it would try and encourage producers to design better products. The idea behind the eco-modulation is that producers who put on the market good products pay less than the producers of bad products. How you define that I think is still up for debate and DEFRA is certainly considering what criteria it might be used but we think that might be a sensible way to reward good design. The initial kind of framing for the criteria is DEFRA is looking at durability, repairability, hazardous substances and recycle content so I think it's definitely coming but I still believe that some eco-design legislation itself is going to be the most effective means to encourage design change. That's really helpful to know that it's insufficient and we need further reforms. Ugo do you want to come in on this point as well I think to add? Yes I wanted to add that we see two problems from our perspective in the compliance fee as it is managed at the moment. On the one hand evidently as the law requires that the fee set at a level that actually encourage compliance by collection clearly this is not working and it should be very clear evidently the fee is not giving that incentive but the second problem and referring to what Suzanne was saying is actually the fund itself because of the way it's currently managed it represents the views only of the manufacturers and that probably has an impact in how it doesn't necessarily contribute to assessing projects that could contribute to the whole waste hierarchy for example we have seen that there are strong incentives for recycling but perhaps some of these funds could actually be more directly aiming and increasing reuse for instance. A lot more than happens now. Great so thanks for that I think Philip's back online now but I'm going to hand over to Ian for his questions and then I think Philip will then take over subsequently but thanks very much for that and hopefully I won't be called upon again but Ian over to you. Thanks Alex thanks and that's the perfect time when you joined the meeting there couldn't have been done better. Hugo I often get asked what motivated me to become a politician and that's a completely different story we could talk all day about that but if you wouldn't mind in your own words what motivated you to start the restart project if you wouldn't mind just in your own word another snapshot. Yeah well thanks for the question so we've been all into progressively losing our right to tinker and repair the products that we already own and this has happened in a way silently we haven't really been fully aware that we were losing progressively all of this and we started restart with the intention of bringing repair back into our communities and when it was becoming harder and harder to even find commercial options and this country has wonderful tradition of engineering and repair was of the heart of the UK and it wasn't the case anymore we were losing our skills and true ownership of the things we own. In London running our first community repair event we called them restart parties on a summery afternoon in June exactly eight years ago and at the time we helped participants our wonderful volunteers to give a second lease of life to things that people thought were going to be lost I'll always remember the person that cycled for six miles to come to our first event carrying a printer on her bike and went back home happy and we shouldn't really underestimate how people's frustration for not really being fully in control of products that they have bought and it's been lost and now we're part of a much bigger global community which is resisting the throwaway economy and trying to promote alternative better ways. Repair is about care it links people it creates value and it's an essential part of being human. Polling in the UK as well as in Europe and the United States shows the people overwhelmingly want to repair and they want the barriers to repair to be removed. The wildly popular agenda that unites people across the whole political spectrum and repair jobs that can be created through repair are excellent and the skills and the future of repair jobs are however under serious threat looking beyond repair. Repair is creative problem-solving mentality is crucial to many of the jobs of the future and that's why while we started deeply rooted in community activity we actually are promoting and aiming for a universal right to repair so that independent repair businesses as well as people in communities can repair and just very waste. Thank you so kind of following on from that our family are farmers and Robert was talking earlier about a gear selector on a on a tractor and a moisture meter for the grain that that he was able to get repaired in the end and just last weekend we have a one of these battery powered hoovers you know these vacuum cleaners you hang on the wall I'm not saying the name but they're very powerful and it went off so I took took it apart myself and fiddled with it and every part in there was metal apart from the main gearbox cog which was plastic and one ran against the other and obviously just ground the plastic away until the main the main sort of like um beta bar on the front of the vacuum cleaner didn't turn anymore so it had to be thrown away it couldn't be repaired and to me that was actually built so that it couldn't be repaired because it was an almost a sealed unit so I'm wondering what products do you think are generally safe to repair or sure I mean I tinkered with that and I'm sure Robert tinkers as well with some of the stuff that he's got on the farm but I'm wondering is there certain products that you would say should be more specifically allocated to a to a qualified repairer or is it something that could be done in in the home by a bit of an odd job man we're thinking that everyone should repair everything themselves if they do not have the skills and the experience and the volunteers that power all the community repair movement activities at repair cafes and parties across the UK and the world are very experienced and talented and extremely careful about the safety that said we there was a time where everyone was able to at least rewire a plug and we've lost touch with all of this and it is indeed true that there is increasingly not so much like a planned obsolescence the way people think that products are designed so the day after the warranty expires the stop of working but there are deliberate choices made by manufacturers to make it hard for people to replace a component you know it could be a piece of like a glue preventing you to from repairing the battery on your smartphone for example and so while most of our events actually focus on primarily battery powered devices it is entirely possible if the person is skilled and experienced and not what they're doing to actually repair at these events also means devices obviously safety comes first with everyone yeah absolutely absolutely and I think Martin wanted to come in there yeah I was just going to build on what I was saying that you know the draw the line in terms of risk you know if you're replacing a battery in a smoke detector that I only had to do the other day it started bleeping so I replaced it was quite easy to do you used to be able to replace batteries in phones but you can no longer do that so you either go to the manufacturer or you take it to a third party provider who may be able to do cheaper and even more efficient more quickly but you know the other extreme is would you feel comfortable confident in repairing a tumble dryer fridge freezer you know white good fires we see in the news for all the wrong reasons on a daily basis you know electricity that causes fires in the homes year on year so it's where you draw the line in terms of risk you're placing a positive part yes that should be achievable and that shouldn't be you know ultimate result in the products having to be sort of destroyed but when it gets into electrical safety it's a very different matter so for me the conversation's all around safety with Hugo made that point quite nice. Suzanne maybe you might be able to help me a little bit with this one because as we as we leave the the COVID pandemic period we're obviously going to be entering a period of quite high unemployment and I'm wondering if bear in mind what Hugo and Martin have said do you think that maybe we could use the the facilities in maybe schools colleges night schools to to to bring in maybe maybe lessons to encourage people to to get a basic understanding I mean Martin talked about repairing you know changing a plug it's something with my kids I've made a point of showing them how to do it so that you know we can all do it but I think some of those skills get a little bit lost as well so I'm just wondering what the panel think really are and Suzanne maybe if you want to go first what you what you think about the the the ability to train people up so they can do some basic repairs it's an interesting point and so I think we're we're lacking in the UK in skills across a whole range of fields it protect UK's perspective digital skills is a massive issue and we'd love to see more training on that I think engineering skills goes in the same bucket one of the things that material focus is planning to do is to test a schools program with the charity global action plan so I think that should definitely be something they consider as part of that trial with with schools yeah and any any of the panel want to come in on that as well so for me would be a case of not just the skills to do the job it's actually what parts are you going to to use you know we see on if you google anything and you go to one of the online marketplaces whether it's ebay or amazon if you google an iphone battery there'll be hundreds and hundreds of replacements available to you almost all of them will not be approved by the brand themselves but you can install them someone will come with instructions how to replace it so it's control of the the online marketplace which is really fundamental this issue as well it's not just the skills of the person it's actually the quality and safety of those components that are available you know and I'm sure people buy them because they're cheaper than those that are available from the manufacturer but the online marketplace is certainly an area to explore yeah so good do you want to yes this is a brilliant point and actually I'd like to to mention what are the three pillars of a true right to repair that we would like to happen in legislation in the UK as well as the rest of the world and they are first access to spare parts affordable spare parts for all products to everyone exactly so that Martin's point actually is taken care of because often people are not able to choose and they cannot access even the parts from the manufacturers themselves it often happens and so this is an opportunity to change this by requiring by legislation that all manufacturers provide for the whole lifetime of a product a access to spare parts for everyone the second thing which actually ensures safe repairs done by everyone is access to the official repair manuals so that products can be repaired using the best knowledge available which obviously will be the one that's provided by the manufacturer and the third point which is a crucial pillar is that products should be designed to be repairable to begin with and Martin made gave the example of the smartphones that previously didn't well we could have in the past we could swap back it was the choice to make products and smaller actually some manufacturers are making products that are marginally thicker but perfectly with perfectly user repressible batteries and so this can change but there aren't sufficient incentives unless we require all manufacturers minimum standards yeah and I think your point there that you had about the repair manual uh to even have a repair manual online would be fantastic um Suzanne yeah so under the eco design regulations that were discussed in the last session some of the resource efficiency measures that were brought in for the products the first week of products being considered in the in that package we saw the introduction of requirements for manufacturers to hold spare parts for seven to ten years to provide repair information to professional repairers and to ensure that products can be repaired using commonly available tools um so we are starting to see legislation uh being brought in that that address many of the points that Ugo mentioned there that's lovely yep Ugo sir I would only add that unfortunately this legislation will not be automatically adopted by the UK and so we still do not know whether the UK will adopt similar legislation and this covers only an initial set of products so it's encouraging it's uh it's been a globally recovered the first the crucial precedent for right to repair to to gain traction worldwide but there is one third problem which is that the focus on who can access and so there is a third aspect which is who can access repair manuals as well as spare parts and that's why we are campaigning for a universal right to repair so that it's not just professional repairs but everyone that could actually increase everyone's safety by not using third party not necessarily as accurate sources of information and I'll give you one example which is very relevant about three years ago we ran one of our restart parties at Perkullis house and we took approximately two hours to take apart Dan Blender on Bell and Hayes MP and had only access being able to access the official manufacturer run repair manuals it would have taken us five minutes and when you think about this and the global aspects of what this means is actually an increase in the cost of repair if you're in it at a professional level and but for everyone a lot of time wasted an opportunity that are not taking maximum advantage of I mean on a light I know I took that vacuum cleaner apart I found out what the problem was but even if I've been able to get the part I couldn't have put it back together so thank you thank you thank you thank you very much Ian I think that takes us nicely on to the whole issue of intellectual property rights which I think Nadia Wittem is going to cover in other questions Nadia can you unmute thanks thanks I've got a few questions firstly for for you Suzanne then a couple of follow-ups and research shows that consumers want products to be more durable in your understanding are electronic producers taking action to make their projects more durable and more reliable or are you finding that they're inherently reluctant to promote initiatives if this means that their sales might be reduced yeah it's a good question so what we have seen is for products like smartphones for example the whole life of them of a smartphone has extended slightly in the last decade and that's partly because of design changes because a lot of the initial failures with smartphones were because of water or dust ingress and so some of the concerns that Ugo mentioned around the kind of units being sealed have been introduced to really look at and try and improve the durability of the product so there is a little bit of a trade-off you can design for durability but that has actually impacted design for repairability as in turn I think the other kind of really interesting trend that we're starting to see and it goes to some of the discussions that we heard yesterday or rather this morning around leasing models so some quite large manufacturers for example HPE have said that they're going to move entirely to a product as a service model by 2022 so all their products and services will be available as a service rather than buying it directly and we know that that in itself will be a strong incentive for product durability because the product remains within the control of the manufacturer throughout the kind of entire life cycle so there have been some moves and I think we can see some more to come so over the last three years manufacturers and NGOs and industry experts have been working on a whole suite of new standards that will have basically set out a methodology for measuring durability of a product it's we've also got standards for repairability and for upgradeability ability to remanufacture so the first for the first time we'll have actual methodologies to assess these characteristics in products and I think in turn once these are all complete we can start to see them being much much more embedded into future eco design regulation in turn that's really helpful for thank you Suzanne and then that brings me on to the next question for Ugo about big tech companies to what extent do you find that these companies have been supportive or obstructive when it comes to the right to repair yeah industry clearly feels by all of the three pillars of repair for repair access to repair documentation and access to spare parts they have actually fought tooth and nail every step of the way teams of lobbies in the United States for example go from state to state with a course of fear uncertainty and doubt trying to prevent state legislation to be passed the similar arguments happened in in Europe and we know that in the US people have been threatened with localized job losses I mean lawmakers have been threatened with localized job losses in case a right to repair legislation would happen in in Europe they tried the death by a thousand cut strategy in relation to regulation there are big companies with pioneering projects in this area but they're not at the heart of the business strategy they're they're they're really at the heart of what they're working on and industry unfortunately is also using the covid crisis at the moment as an opportunity to attempt to delay and block all forms of progressive regulation even in relation to pollution to recycling let alone right to repair and we're also seeing a growing threat that actually comes from the role that software can play in all of this so how software can further limit product repairability depending on some software locks applied thank you ugo um this is primarily for susanne but um if you're the witnesses have anything to say on this then please feel free to to chip in um on intellectual property rights how do you think tech companies could maintain their intellectual property rights whilst at the same time making repair more accessible for consumers um so I can point to some developments that we've seen recently where manufacturers have tried to do just that so for example samsung now offers a service where you can book a repairer to come to your home um at a convenient time um they're increasingly using things like um iot the internet of things so they can remotely diagnose problems with uh with mobiles smartphones um and uh we are seeing uh more um manufacturers and I suppose the other kind of um kind of important point in the chain for things like smartphones is the kind of mobile the telecom providers as well so um people like vodafone for example you can pop into their store and get things repaired so I think we are seeing more innovation in the ability to offer repair um sony for example they they can offer they basically can offer they have a repair facility in wales um and they have a commitment to return repair and return products within 48 hours which is quite astonishing so um I think we are seeing uh manufacturers respond to um some of the barriers um that others have mentioned around repair thank you thanks susan um just lastly for ugo then but as always if anyone else wants to chip in please do I know that apple is trying to make its products more sustainable and offer repairs in its own apple repair center why is it a problem if companies reserve the right to do their own repairs and don't make their products generally repairable yeah so apple let's not forget has made over two billion iphone from the beginning of the iphone product line uh even if you add of its authorized repair centers it simply cannot repair all of them uh for example imagine being somewhere in rural scotland of wales and it will take quite a bit of time to get your phone sent and received back what they're also doing uh by providing the services they currently do is basically bringing us at risk of creating a monopoly and I'll give you a specific example if you look at their website the only repairs that they list are screens and batteries and for all other repairs they quote the cost of half the price of a brand new device in case you have to have the repair done and additionally they are putting software locks that are already printing non-authorized repair businesses from performing the repairs that some of the same repairs so we've seen up a lot of progress some of the low-hanging fruit sustainability initiatives data centers that the use of recycled aluminum in some of their products as the waste in assembly facility but the elephant in the room the overall carbon and material footprint in manufacturing manufacturing in has locked in very very long-term goals related to all of this but all of them are linked to this delusion that they will control and close all of the lips around repair and ultimately they are under severe ordinary pressure from their shareholders apple clearly sees controlling repair as an opportunity to make money of services and promote consumption of news in primary markets some of the issues that were raised earlier by martin around the lack of availability well about the type of unofficial spare parts are also partly on the market are partly due to what happens at the moment where non-authorized apple repairs do not have access to the same diagnostics and same parts and that sure in the United States there is now an independent repair program but this is risking causing a full monopoly based on the price that apple gives to act for access to all of these parts so i don't want in a situation where potentially having to replace a microphone in a phone according to the manufacturer it would require replacing the whole phone potential and paying for half of the original price i don't think this is in the interest of consumers and the planet thank you susan did you want to pitch in yeah i just wanted to mention a possible policy incoherence which i think is worth flagging at the moment legislation requires manufacturers to conduct risk assessments for their products for all of its use for all of its life and there is a directive the product liability directive which essentially gives recourse to consumers if anything goes wrong equally um you know if anything does go wrong if there is a component for example that um is found later to be not safe um there is um you know a kind of parallel debate about how you get those products back and how we can have an effective product recall system if i go back to the product liability directive the the commission reviewed um the directive in in 2018 um and in its own review it said that it would need it needs to be looked at in the context of a more sustainable economy in which products are refurbished patched and reused who will be the manufacturer of such products e.g in the case of repair reuse and refurbishment at the moment when manufacturers have liability for the product for its entire life you know you're always going to have a situation where they are going to be protective of um that product to minimize safety risks and i think it'll be well worth looking at if we want to encourage a circular economy in the UK too thank you Nadia i mean just on that point Suzanne that feeds back into the point being made about uh having a leasing model products as a service because they are the manufacturer would retain responsibility it would be you mentioned uh HPE um it'd be very helpful if you could write to the committee with some examples of British companies that are going down this route in particular sort of innovative companies as well as the established ones i'm very happy to yeah thank you thank you very much uh Nadia and now uh claudia web has some questions on safety thank you thank you philip um indeed i do i maybe this question would be for martin but martin i wonder if you can outline your safety concerns about the current system of e-waste management in the UK but we it's it's two sides really if once from local authorities we mentioned before doing a great job in driving up recycling numbers but we carried out some work last year using freedom of information and wrote to all the local authorities who are carrying out uh sort of reselling of of electrical products and it was about 24 that are actually into that sort of process trying to proactively sort of sell e-waste sort of get them back into the the communities which is an admirable thing however there's only four of them who actually had any sort of system in place for checking safety that's even basic electrical safety checks and even as far as to see to check whether a product had been subject to a product recall so they were sort of you know facilitating putting recall products back into the community which is clearly not a great thing to do so you know we we believe firmly believe that but they need if they're going to be into that market which is an admirable thing to do but there needs to be a lots of transparency and consistency there needs to be best practice guidance developed and we are actually engaged with the local government association and they were not forthcoming in sort of getting involved to develop best practice so we'd like to you know help give them a nudge to to get to engage and actually develop that guidance for local authorities as well as providing guidance for consumers so that they know what they can and can't recycle in their particular area and also understand what happens to their items once they have disposed of them or thinking that they've handed them over to the to the site thank you I don't know if anybody else wants to come in on that um but let me I've got a further question um to that um you've highlighted the problem of electrical um or electric electronics being resold um after they've been deposited at household waste and recycling centers without safety checks what changes would you actually like to see to prevent this happening that we we want to see and that that one put that one probably still with with Martin yeah it's to develop a sort of transparent process that's you know to deliver consistency across all local authorities at the moment that just does not exist so we believe that there needs to be guidance that all local authorities can sort of understand and actually implement in their processes so it's a consistent uh system to get uh recycle products back into the community that have been safety checked and certainly if they've been recalled then they need to be taken out of circulation and hand me back to the to the manufacturer okay but at the moment we've tried to engage with the local government association and they've not been so forthcoming so any help that the committee can give to help that along its way then would be greatly appreciated and and and I mean I think that that's a good point actually perhaps this committee um could um write to the local government association and raise this as an issue um but I also wondered um whether or not in terms of the management of those household waste and recycling centers whether or not um the the the regional waste authorities um are also organizations that we ought to also raise this issue with as well because they're obviously managing those recycling centers with local authorities I don't know what your engagement with with with the with those bodies have been um primarily it's been with the with the LGA but we've been looking at regional engagement as well because it's been difficult to engage with the with the LGA uh the recycling centers as well I should make the point that they do a great job in preventing uh consumers from just selling them on online marketplaces you know getting rid of their unwanted items through the online marketplaces so again you know it's in everybody's interest to have a centralized system that can control recycling of of the of the waste rather than just allowing consumers to do their own thing and sell them through online marketplaces because again we we see time and time again second hand products being sold that are you know unsafe and subject to a product recall you know that has to change okay um Philip that that ends my question but I with just with a reference that perhaps this committee um seeks that evidence from local government association and indeed the waste authorities that manage some of these recycling um household waste and recycling centers with local authorities thank you Claudia I see Hugo indicating but I'm good perhaps uh Shailesh could bring Hugo in and his questions which are good follow up Shailesh Farah certainly thank you very much chairman uh continuing on the theme of safety but narrowing it down to the actual suppliers what we have at the moment is precinctly spare parts are available on Amazon and other online marketplaces um clearly there's a safety issue here with non-authorized parts so what would you suggest can be done to regulate the actual supply uh in the first place uh from these sources that are selling to the public uh perhaps Martin could answer first and then perhaps Hugo could come in afterwards yeah I mean we everything we ever see that that seem to be sort of substandard or counterfeit or even recall we find them time and time again on online marketplaces and increasingly so in particular during the current situation where you know until recently all the shops have been closed and almost all of our retail has been done online now we believe that that uh the sale and control of electrical products ought to be included in the online harms bill uh the marketplaces see themselves as outside of the product safety regulatory system they don't concern themselves to be retailers they just facilitators of that trade and I think you know that that needs to end they need to sort of be brought into that process and be accountable for some of the products that they're allowing to be sold by their third party sellers uh you know they've been taking you know money from consumers for many many years very very profitable it's a business that's continuing to grow but they need to be brought into the product regulatory system and we think one step towards doing that is that having them an extension on the online harms bill that's been so again through at the moment to to include the sale of electrical goods as well but wouldn't the suppliers come back to you and say but you know they are supplying online spare parts as we've discussed but they're also supplying furniture and a whole lot of other items so they couldn't possibly be uh responsible for regulation for every single item that amazon or other marketplace has flank i'm just being devil's advocate here in terms of what they are likely to say so coming back to the specifics of the subject that we're discussing is there anything else you might be able to do um perhaps even at the level before amazon gets its products uh just to sell them i mean for to give an example that we actually tested uh ourselves uh we were able to set ourselves up as a seller of electrical products called dangerous electrical without any question whatsoever we were able to uh report to be selling a record item a serial number and model number that was on a large manufacturer's website without any trouble whatsoever uh so that that's the current situation we would like to see that if those types of products are not even allowed to be sold so again there's online marketplaces put measures in place to acquire model serial number even put up a pop up alert if you put it you had a hot point tumble jire that we've seen in the press for all the all the wrong reasons and again there's no alert mechanisms in place and that can be done quite quickly you know another one is using uh algorithms or image recognition that they use for other systems like like uh like knives and weapons and so on you could do that for some of the the record items by putting choice words and have it as a filter that had a pop up we see plugs that are clearly substandard you don't need to be genius to see a plug that's got uh it's undersized or it's got no fuse that could be picked up by technology quite easily without the consumer having to buy those products and then you know be forced for the non-safe item in the in the house so there's a lot of technology as the winner here and the on my marketplaces need to make better use of it right uh ugo i see ugo want to come in so please over to you yeah wanted to um add to this point because martin is absolutely right that uh unsafe parts or products should not be sold or reason um we should however be careful and uh avoid the cases where potential reuse of refurbished spare parts for example or products could fall under under this as well so uh i think people should be able to know when they're buying a part whether it's a genuine part from the manufacturer or a compatible part or if it's refurbished meaning that it uses previously used uh well components but it's also a matter of making repair affordable and so uh we should avoid a situation where a manufacturer has full control over the supply chain setting up prices for spare parts that are actually not uh that might be making the difference between a product being theoretically repairable and actually being repaired and at the same time uh in the previous session it was mentioned uh that the the best thing to do with a product is to reuse before we recycle and so at times when a full product is no longer reusable but some of the parts it could be and and so let's let's keep that in mind in finding transparent and open ways to take care of this um i see that susan wants to come in before i um go to susan could i ask a second question and suggest that susan also picks that one up as well as well as the first one for a simple reason that i think we've got about five minutes left and i know that there's one other question so susan could you come in on the second one and and the first one as well um how how would you suggest that uh moves towards a circular economy be made compatible with strict health and safety measures for electrical and electronic equipment i mean that's another issue in terms of circular economy so uh if i go over to susan first and then perhaps martin could take over as well uh but very briefly please because i know somebody else wants to come in i'll be very quick so um firstly on the the point around the cost of spare parts um there was actually a report published this week by the commission to inform its thinking for eco design for a smart smartphones and laptops um and what it found was that um it's the biggest differentiator for the cost um of repair was actually the cost of labor so it goes back i think to the points that liby and others said in the previous session that if we could introduce the cut for labor we could make repair much more affordable um and in terms of making repair safe i think we would like to see a level playing field in the um level of safety that's required of repairs as well as um um manufacturers so um why would repair operations have weaker standards than the uh the standards that manufacturers have to work towards so i think we're looking for a more regulated repair industry which might actually address some of the trust issues that that were mentioned in um by liby in her report okay martin do you want to come back quickly before i hand over to philip again for the last question or you don't have to come back if it's been covered so i would say this is on that the regulated system uh we need for for repairs at the moment it's it's the wild west in many cases uh so you know these people have certain jobs that need lower level skills but there are certain complex examples that we mentioned at the very start that need specialist skills and so we need to find a way of having a an extended process where things can be prepared but the people carrying out those repairs need to be competent for the task in hand and also have accessible uh access to uh for to the components so that their repairs are done safely thank you very much thank you thank you thank you shilish uh thank you for keeping that um commendably concise our last set of questions are from uh gerome mayhew and i think that just a quick word from duncan baker after gerome gerome i'm going to be very quick because we've we're running very short of time so the new environment bill it enables the government to introduce an extended producer responsibility system that charges different fees depending on the impact of different products and we're kicking off with uh one and with packaging but what would you like to see included in the design of uh any future epr or ee i should point that towards susanne to begin with and then perhaps you go you might want to come in um so i think earlier i mentioned that um some of the criteria that were being considered for eco modulation for um e i think what we would really push for is for the criteria to be internationally aligned we risk a situation where different countries pick different criteria and you'll be pulling the manufacturer in all sorts of different directions so international alignment on those criteria is absolutely vital we'd also like to see stronger incentives and some recognition for those manufacturers who are actually deploying circular economy business models um because that isn't a reflected um at all in in the current we system um so we're thinking through options but we think more can be done there too and here we go have you got a quick comment on that yes um so while obviously the design uh regulations uh that liby was referring to are the heart of pushing for products that are more longer lasting and for epr and with modulated we can tribute to show uh also in at the moment when people are purchasing a product whether a product is more or less um repairable for example so we think that the ease of repairability as well as the ease of disassembly of a product should be a part of this and the modulation should be sufficiently wide as to actually this more visible actually an extra point that depends from the experience of of France which is now moving towards having a percentage a five percent of the epr to be contributing to a fund that can reduce the cost of repair of products and is a very interesting approach uh Suzanne earlier mentioned that the vast part of repair cost have to do with labor cost it would depend on the parts um but certainly uh reduction via either a vat reduction or um specifically uh tax breaks could help let's not forget the many small scale independent repairs is might be below the vat threshold so it doesn't necessarily contribute to everyone so i'm going to pick up on the incentives and leave uh modulated fees for my colleague mr baker but it's really whether you like carrots or sticks uh do you believe that uh a system of incentives is the most effective way to drive improvements into product design should we be getting the big stick out and relying on regulations uh that would require designs for circularity but experience showed oh you start okay well experience shows that uh the incentives uh the market doesn't seem to come with sufficiently uh ambitious uh steps forward and as an example i could mention the uh voluntary agreements that exist that european for for example game console and uh imaging and printers manufacturers that have not really been particularly ambitious in and so availability of uh regulations that set minimum standards but isn't that sorry you go for interrupting isn't that a question of the size of the incentive not the concept of incentives working so the an is there there would always be some manufacturers that choose shortcuts if they can and they might not be the ones represented by tech uk but there might be others that actually try to enter a market with substandard products and regulations role is to prevent the lowest performing products to even on the market and their additional incentives uh set for example a reparability score index as france has just adopted that can help uh consumers towards more with the product for example martin do you have anything to add on that i was just going to make the point before about there's more and more products become uh internet enabled not just necessarily the product itself that needs to be considered in this conversation but it's the the longevity of the software that supports the operation of those products as well so that's another part and it's more products become connected answers and the final word on this question yeah i just wanted to add in something that hasn't been mentioned so far and that's the role of public procurement definitely is currently reviewing its sustainable ict strategy to help guide government's own purchasing of ict and we've seen in in in europe they're currently reviewing their green public procurement criteria for a for example for laptops um and in in the us they have a system called epit which basically ranks a whole range of electronics on a gold silver or bronze scaling depending on its ability to meet a whole host of criteria sustainability criteria i think we could do more of that in the uk okay and i think you've got a quick just a quick mention if you would yeah just a quick follow up to martin's point uh software is indeed a huge problem going forward for all kinds of connected devices which is becoming every device and dcms is actually an interesting proposed law to require manufacturers in the uk well to enter the uk market to make very clear what is the minimum amount of support software for software and security updates we'd like to make sure that that is extended to all products including smartphones which are the de facto connected product to begin right lovely thank you very much i'm going to hand straight over to mr baker thank you thank you i'd rather use the big stick that mr mayhew mentioned because i think time is of the essence here and it's not uh things do not necessarily get expiliated with an incentive an industry seems to always find a way to work around stipulations rather than having regulations but as the final question to susanne how important will it be to harmonize modulated fees across different countries and how would you like to see the uk approach this remembering that of course we will no longer be part of the european union yeah i think it's a really good and important question i think if modulated fees are going to have any impact on the design of electronics they have to be harmonized internationally so we would recommend defra put off making a decision until the european commission publishes its guidelines for member states in december and equally we are also very supportive of continuing to align with europe on eco design standards as well thank you for that thank you duncan for that quick question i think it was susanne who mentioned the the new french scale of repairability introduced recently if if you've got information about that that you could provide to the committee that would be very helpful if not i'm sure our clerks can dig it out so that concludes our second panel today i'd like to thank our witnesses susanne martin and ugo very much for your insightful contributions to apologize to the committee and our witnesses for yet another technical failure of my broadband provider and to thank alex sobel in particular for picking up the baton on the run as it were thank you colleagues for an excellent session and to nick davis and the other clerks who helped put together the briefing for this session order order the proceeding has ended the proceeding has ended the proceeding has ended