Rachel Reeves
MP for Leeds West and Pudsey · Labour · United Kingdom
“I thank my hon. Friend for his question and his work on the Treasury Committee. On pensions reform, through the Mansion House accord and Sterling 20, we have got pension funds to commit to investing more in British businesses, both through British venture schemes and in British infrastructure.”
“I thank my hon. Friend for her question. As Members will know, this Government are working on plans with our NATO allies for a multilateral defence mechanism. We have already signed a treaty agreement with Finland and the Netherlands, and we are working closely with Scandinavian, Baltic and eastern European countries.”
“At a time of great global uncertainty, it is more important than ever that we deepen ties with our closest allies and biggest trading partners, whose values we share, and whose interests are bound to ours.”
“Today the Government have responded to the covid counter-fraud commissioner’s recommendations in a report that I commissioned, which confirms that the Conservative Government left the door open to more than £10 billion of pandemic fraud.”
“As I just said, the DIP will be published before the summit. It will involve more money spent more effectively, and it will meet the scale of the challenges we face. Frankly, I will take no lectures from the Conservatives, who left our armed forces, in the words of their former Defence Secretary, “hollowed out”.”
“I thank my hon. Friend for bringing the story of Darren and Nicole to this House. I hope that they and their children will benefit from the change I made to the two-child limit for universal credit, as well as from the rolling out of free breakfast clubs to all primary schools, and the introduction of free school meals for all children wh…”
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“It was the second largest construction company in the UK, having grown through large and frequent acquisitions and Government outsourcing. Carillion’s directors, and those who know the construction industry, told us that it was a low-margin industry, and part of a highly competitive market with inherent risks. Businesses do collapse every day, and the process of business creation and failure is part of any well-functioning modern economy, but warning lights should have been flashing when such a big business was on the brink. We should demand the highest standards of corporate governance to help to ensure that British businesses are well run, but that did not happen with Carillion.”
“Along with the Work and Pensions Committee, my Committee—the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee—has considered the causes of the collapse. The debate is also timely because this morning our Committees published a special joint report containing 24 responses to our original report. It gave those criticised in the report, and those with a significant interest, a chance to respond ahead of the Government’s formal response to our findings. In the time that I have this afternoon, I shall set out what my Committee found, and what needs to change. I thank fellow members of the Joint Committee, some of whom are in the Chamber today, for their work to uncover the lessons from Carillion. When it collapsed, Carillion had been in existence for 19 years.”
“I beg to move, That this House has considered lessons from the collapse of Carillion. I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for scheduling the debate for today, which is timely. This Sunday it will be six months since Carillion entered liquidation. When it collapsed, it employed 42,000 people, more than 19,000 of them working in the United Kingdom. It held liabilities of £7 billion, including a £2 billion liability to 30,000 suppliers and subcontractors, and it held just £29 million in cash to meet those liabilities. In the past six months, nearly 2,500 Carillion workers have been made redundant and more than 1,000 have voluntarily left what remains of the business. Projects have been mothballed and suppliers have faced ruin. Since the collapse of Carillion, five Committees have looked into the issues surrounding its collapse.”
“Looking at the poor treatment of suppliers when the company was solvent and the trail of destruction the management of the company has caused, I cannot see how Carillion’s directors can make any claim that they had anything other than their own personal interests at heart. In the latest responses that we have published today, Carillion’s directors continue to refuse to demonstrate any culpability for the state the company was in. They have denied that our report is accurate, but have given no evidence whatsoever to support their case. Let me be clear: the directors of Carillion are culpable for the company’s collapse. They should be ashamed of their performance and they should not be allowed to take the helm of a company ever again.”
“I absolutely agree. The directors of the business were not invested in the business. They were not part of the pension fund that collapsed and, as the hon. Gentleman said, Richard Adam, the finance director who oversaw the accounting practices that helped to contribute to the collapse of the company, sold his shares as soon as he could because he knew what we all now know: this business was a failing business that would not be around for much longer. What we found in Carillion was a board focused on short-term fixes and growing payouts, with no plan for what would happen when the illusion was shattered.”
“The status quo is simply not sustainable, and the big audit firms must understand that and respond to it. Competition in industry is supposed to drive up quality and bring down costs. It is not working in the audit market, where a cosy club of four hoover up huge fees before, during and after any corporate failure, yet their audits and accounts, as one investor put it to our Committee, read like a mystery novel—a fiction, with the reader searching for scant clues on what is really happening. The big four firms audit all the FTSE 100 businesses and all but a handful of the FTSE 350 top businesses, as well as providing them with advice on a range of services. There are conflicts of interest at every turn, and it was left to the least conflicted, PwC, to clear up the mess during the liquidation process.”
“When corporate governance is failing, there should be checks and balances, but our inquiry found a regime that was not up to the job of doing that. The first line of defence should have been those who were auditing and advising the company. KPMG, Carillion’s auditors for 19 years, continued to give a clean bill of health to the business, even just a few months before the July 2017 announcements that heralded its swift but painful decline. In the report we have published today, KPMG’s chairman, Bill Michael, denies any issues with the clean bill of health that his company gave to Carillion just months before it began to publicly collapse. Mr Michael is burying his head in the sand, which reflects badly on his understanding of the impact of Carillion on the reputation of his company, and of the future of audit as an industry.”
“I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. Bad behaviour was being rewarded at Carillion, but the people being rewarded were not the people investing in the business, or the people working for it and saving for their pensions with the business; the people being rewarded were those making the decisions about where the money went—making the decisions about whether to plug the pensions deficit or pay dividends to shareholders. Those are the people who should be paying the price, but under the system we have today, they walk away with their bonuses and their dividends intact. It is other people—the people who are not responsible and did not make the decisions but who did the work—who are paying the price, and that is what needs to be reformed.”
“Instead, we keep hearing timid bodies apologising for letting consumers down. That needs to change, and the change should be led from the top.”
“While plugging the £2.6 billion hole in the pension fund would not have saved the company, it could have reduced the largest ever burden on the Pension Protection Fund, which will see pension holders receive less than they have been promised by their company’s scheme. It is telling that none of Carillion’s directors was in the collapsed scheme. The Committees found serious concerns about the performance of both regulators, including their powers, remit and leadership. If regulators are not working well, employees, investors, suppliers and customers can have little confidence in the businesses in which they are invested. Statutory regulators need to be doing more. Across the work of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, we rarely find ourselves criticising regulators for being too bold.”
“It accepted extra disclosures being made by KPMG and Carillion the following year without any further follow-up action and, although it found repeat issues with KPMG’s wider audit work across other companies, it seemingly took no firm action there either. Carillion’s huge pension debt was a matter of concern to its pension trustees and the Pensions Regulator, the other regulator involved, but the regulator’s response, again, was feeble. It threatened to impose a contributions schedule and then left the power unused. It sought to negotiate a payment agreement and then agreed precisely with what the company wanted. It launched action only once the company collapsed and then it was too late. Again and again, the Pensions Regulator barked but did not bite.”
“Behind the company and its auditors and advisers, there are statutory regulators who should have been expected to step in when the business and the audits were seen to be failing. Carillion’s finance directors and auditors were subject to scrutiny by the Financial Reporting Council. Now that the company has collapsed, two former CFOs are under investigation for the preparation of financial statements, and Carillion’s auditors are subject to further scrutiny. During our inquiry, we heard that the FRC had already taken an interest in the situation at Carillion, and that it had concerns about the quality of previous audits by KPMG. However, the regulator had been far too passive.”
“The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales has recognised this as a watershed moment, and it is leading a review of the audit profession. I hope that that review will propose some radical solutions. We have now referred the audit market for investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority. The new chair of the CMA, Lord Tyrie, was endorsed in his role by the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, and he should now demonstrate the same determination he showed in this place leading the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards when he looks at the future of the audit market. I am convinced that we have to find a way of making the audit market more competitive and audits themselves more trusted, and of ending the conflicts of interest that can damage the reputation of some of our economy’s major firms.”
“My hon. Friend makes an important point. The people who rely on audit are the shareholders, and also the small businesses that supply the company, the people who work there and the pensioners who have saved for their pensions with that business. But they are not the people who employ the auditor, and they are not the people the auditors are accountable to. The auditor is accountable to the audit committee of the business, and it is often appointed by that committee on the advice of the chief financial officer. So, as my hon. Friend says, the incentives are all wrong. I am pleased to see that our report has prompted some long-overdue soul searching in parts of the audit profession. While the written reactions of the big four accountancy firms to our report differed, they all seem to recognise that there were issues to be addressed.”
“We would all like to think that this is a case of one horrendously badly run company—Carillion was horrendously badly run—but with Interserve, Capita and Mitie all facing difficulties, we would have to be pretty brave to conclude that this is a one-off. We need to restore integrity to British business and the firms that audit them. Six months on, we have regulators reviewing and reviews of the regulators, but we need firmer action on corporate governance, on breaking up cosy cartels and on toughening up sanctions for misconduct. To secure our public services, for jobs, for small business, for contractors and for pensioners, that action is needed and it is needed now.”
“The announcement of the Kingman review into the FRC is a welcome start, but the Government must confirm that they are willing to see radical change, including giving regulators more powers if needed and holding them better to account for not using the powers they already have. The Government, the audit profession and the regulators need to take urgent action. They owe it to the tens of thousands of people affected by Carillion’s collapse and to the untold number of people who could be affected if this is ever allowed to happen again. There are some clear lessons. In contracts, best value is not the same as the lowest price. Outsourcing is not always better than doing things in-house. Privatisation does not mean that the risk or the cost of failure when things go catastrophically wrong are contracted out.”
“The hon. Gentleman, who sits on the Work and Pensions Committee, is absolutely right. When Carillion took over companies such as Mowlem, McAlpine and Eaga, it was taking on businesses, yes, but it was also taking on huge pension deficits, which contributed to the problems. However, the business could have decided to address that pension deficit. It was not that nothing could be done. It could have decided to pay money into the pension fund instead of paying out to shareholders and to directors in the form of bonuses, but it decided to do the exact opposite. It made the wrong choices and prioritised the wrong people. It prioritised itself.”
“We need those changes, and we need them urgently, if we are to ensure that we learn the lessons of the collapse of Carillion, get justice for those affected and ensure that we see more of the best of British business and less of the worst. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered lessons from the collapse of Carillion.”
“It has been a real privilege to have this debate in the Chamber today, and I welcome the contributions from all hon. Members, including the Front-Bench spokespeople and the Minister. As Chair of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, I get to see the best of British business, but sadly also the worst, and Carillion was the very worst of business. We now need to learn the lessons, because we saw the impact on small businesses, pensioners, workers and investors. I urge the Government, when they respond to the Committee’s report—the response is due on Monday 16 July—to respond in detail to the points on corporate governance, regulation, audit market reform and outsourcing.”
“One way to reduce unemployment is to encourage self-employment, and 4.8 million people are now self-employed. While that is welcome, there is a real problem of bogus self-employment, which is costing workers their rights and depriving the Treasury of tax revenue. Next week it will be a whole year since Matthew Taylor published his review “Good work” for the Government. When will they finally implement his recommendations and crack down on bogus self-employment?”
“Following the answers to my hon. Friends the Members for Batley and Spen (Tracy Brabin) and for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell), can the Minister confirm that it is no longer the Government’s commitment to fully electrify the route between Manchester and Leeds, and will he tell us where the Secretary of State is today—has he missed his train?”
“I have to say that I am slightly surprised by the Secretary of State’s tone. In answer to the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry), he said that this project was “so out of kilter” with other ways of producing energy and that the costs are much higher. In that case, can I gently ask why on earth it has taken five years to come to this decision? What lessons has the Secretary of State learned from the decision-making process around the tidal lagoon project? Frankly, a lot of effort has been put into this project by business, the Welsh Government and others, and I think that many people have lost confidence in the Government’s programme for renewables because of this.”
“Up to 200,000 customers do not benefit from the warm homes discount because they get their energy from smaller energy suppliers. Is it not time to extend the warm homes discount, especially since energy bills are going up and we are trying to crack down on rip-off tariffs?”
“Last week 49 trains were cancelled in my constituency, particularly at Bramley train station, meaning that passengers were late for work, for college and for other appointments. Frankly, passengers have lost faith in the Secretary of State. Is it not about time he stepped aside and allowed someone who can fix this problem to do the job?”
“A thriving nuclear sector depends on the ability to move nuclear materials around safely and securely. At the moment, we do that via our membership of Euratom. What assurances has the Secretary of State been able to give Hitachi about our future relationship with Euratom, about nuclear co-operation agreements with other nuclear states and about the ability of the Office for Nuclear Regulation to recruit the safety inspectors we need?”
“Virgin-Stagecoach has let down passengers, as well as the taxpayer. Does my hon. Friend agree that Virgin-Stagecoach should not be allowed to bid for any other train routes? If it were, that would make a mockery of the whole system of privatisation and outsourcing, with absolutely no responsibility or accountability?”
“On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. At 10 minutes past 3 this afternoon, just after the Secretary of State for Transport left the Chamber, he issued a press release on plans to tackle poor performance at Northern Rail. I wonder whether the Secretary of State, who is almost back in his place, has indicated any intention to make a statement to the House allowing right hon. and hon. Members to question the Government on those plans, which are of huge significance to many of our constituents.”
“The cap on charges on payday loans legislated for by Parliament has made a huge difference in bringing down the costs, but it is now more expensive for a person to go into an unarranged overdraft at their own bank. Will the Government look to extend that legislation to cap also the rip-off fees and charges put on customers by our banks?”
“I hope that I have shown the impact of Brexit on pharmaceuticals: customs delays, potential new tariffs, and, in particular, the risks of regulatory barriers to trade. Perhaps there are benefits from leaving the European Union, but we have seen no evidence of what they may be, at least in the sectors that we have considered.”
“In the responses that we have received so far to our reports on aerospace and automotives, the Government did not dispute our conclusion on the lack of opportunity or the need for close alignment. For the sectors we considered, we have found specific challenges and risks that Brexit will incur. For civil nuclear, leaving Euratom means leaving an effective nuclear safeguards regime and going it alone. For automotives, “just in time” manufacturing processes are threatened by increased costs and delays at the borders. For aerospace, divergence from European standards would risk our chance of accessing the substantial growth that that sector is experiencing. For processed food and drink, there is a risk that border delays will make products unusable, and costly border delays may cause food prices to rise.”
“We welcome the positive words from the Prime Minister, as well as from the Business Secretary and the Health Secretary in their article in the Financial Times last year. However, as with all the sectors of our economy, the Government now need to turn those words into deeds to secure the best possible deal for the United Kingdom in the interests of business and primarily, of patients. Throughout our inquiries into sectors, we have sought to find benefits and opportunities from Brexit for those industries, but we have heard no evidence of any real opportunities for any of the sectors we have considered. In already globalised parts of our economy, large untapped markets yearning for British goods are a fantasy.”
“Our Committee heard that any regulatory divergence, and any tariffs or barriers at the border, will see the cost of medicines go up. The American Pharmaceutical Group told us that it “firmly believes” that a no-deal scenario will “threaten…the position of the NHS as a world-leading health service”, because it will struggle to access drugs as quickly and cheaply as it does today. For the vast majority of medicines that are supplied to the NHS, the cost will either be borne by the taxpayer or trigger a reduction in the range of medicines available to patients. The Government must secure a deal that does not see that happen. I give credit to the Government: they have set out a pragmatic approach.”
“For the EU, the loss of our expertise will put pressure on regulators in the remaining states. For the UK, there is a risk that the MHRA will not have the capacity to work alone, even just for the UK market. It is not too late to save some of these jobs and this expertise for our country, and avoid the duplication of work. Given the mutual benefits of the UK working with the EMA, and the challenges for the organisation in relocating from London to its new home in Amsterdam, our Committee has recommended that the Government seek a continued presence for some EMA staff and facilities in the UK, as well as a continued relationship after we leave. It is in the best interests of patients and consumers across Europe, including in the UK, to do so.”
“The Government need to provide urgent certainty, otherwise businesses will have no choice but to focus on the rest of Europe, and again, this is something we must avoid. The EMA, the regulatory body that oversees the rules governing what pharmaceuticals can be sold in the EU, has of course been based here in the UK since 1995. It is currently in Canary Wharf, but as right hon. and hon. Members know, last autumn, the EU announced that the EMA would move to Amsterdam. As a consequence, more than 1,000 jobs and a prestigious body will be leaving the UK and going overseas. The UK has been an influential part of the EMA since its creation, with the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency being responsible for a disproportionate share of the work on the authorisation of new medicines for use in the EU.”
“Without certainty on the future regulatory relationships, companies will either have to invest further in contingency planning or risk losing access to key markets. However, the majority of pharmaceutical companies are not big multinationals, but small and micro-businesses that are unable to afford these contingency measures. A huge and important market is at risk of being closed off to them. We cannot allow that to happen. The Prime Minister has indicated that the Government recognise the benefit of association with the European Medicines Agency—the regulatory body—but that is not enough. Brexit is already seeing investment flow out of the UK, without a guarantee that it will come back even if a deal is reached.”
“We agree with industry that regulatory alignment must ensure that companies do not need to build new facilities, duplicate testing regimes or recruit vast numbers of qualified staff, of which there is already a desperate shortage. Johnson & Johnson estimated that if there is no mutual recognition of batch testing between the UK and the EU, it would lead to an additional 50,000 tests a year just for Johnson & Johnson, with a cost of almost £1 million a year. Successful British companies such as GlaxoSmithKline have confirmed that they are already spending tens of millions of pounds on setting up sites in the EU to ensure that they can still release products there, in the event of divergence or a lack of recognition of standards.”
“The UK represents only 2.3% of the global pharmaceuticals market, compared with more than 22% for the rest of the EU. It is purely a bigger market than the UK alone. Beyond the issue of customs and tariffs, there is a further, but related, issue about the regulatory regime that underpins the trade and recognition of products across the European Union. Pharmaceuticals is rightly a highly regulated industry—it has to be—but the prospect of divergence is of key concern to industry. The Confederation of British Industry estimates that each new product—as many as 100 a year—would cost £50,000 each for marketing authorisation in the United Kingdom.”
“The industry confirmed to us that trading on WTO terms would mean an increase in the cost of medicines. Merck estimated additional costs to its business alone of £1.6 million a year for import tariffs. The Office of Health Economics estimated a typical pharmaceutical company could expect costs of more than £23 million a year in supply chain, tariff and non-tariff costs and fees. We can expect those costs to be passed on to consumers either in pharmacies or to the national health service, the biggest buyer of pharmaceuticals in our country. A relationship that is as close as possible, with as close to frictionless trade as possible, would therefore benefit both our country and the rest of the European Union, but the United Kingdom has the most to lose if we do not get a deal.”
“Specifically for pharmaceuticals, delays at borders risk time and temperature-sensitive products expiring, becoming useless to patients and therefore putting lives at risk, while new rules and paperwork mean extra costs to each shipment of medicine or ingredients. The Government must do everything they can to avoid these outcomes for patients. For pharmaceutical products, many medicines and ingredients are tariff-free under World Trade Organisation rules. That is welcome, but the list of tariff-free medicines is not regularly updated with new medicines. The failure to reach agreements in multinational trade negotiations is stark. It has been over eight years since a deal on adding new products has been reached, meaning tariffs will apply for recent and new medicines, jeopardising cheap access to them.”
“As Members know, the UK pharmaceutical sector is among the most productive and innovative industries in the United Kingdom, employing over 110,000 people, and it is part of a global industry in which the UK is a world leader, but Brexit puts that at risk. Pharmaceuticals contribute around 10% of our goods exports, worth almost £25 billion a year, and we import almost as much, with as much as 73% of our imports coming from the European Union. A number of issues were raised when we took evidence, but the first issue that businesses and trade bodies raised with us were the barriers to trade after we leave the European Union, particularly around customs checks and tariffs.”
“I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for giving time for this statement. This is the fifth and final report in a series of inquiries that the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee has held on the impact of Brexit on key sectors of our economy, covering the civil nuclear sector, automotives, aerospace, and food and drink, and today, we publish our report on the impact of Brexit on the pharmaceutical sector. Our Committee has made a number of recommendations to the Government on how to get the best deal for the UK as we leave the European Union. We have received over 100 pieces of written evidence, including more than 20 specifically on pharmaceuticals, including from AstraZeneca, Merck, Johnson & Johnson and the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry.”
“We already export to countries outside the European Union. We are a success in that sector. We took huge amounts of evidence in the UK and in Brussels from small and big businesses, and not a single one pointed to any benefits of leaving the EU, or any opportunities we could seize that we do not have today.”
“I can say to my hon. Friend—who sat in on the evidence sessions with me—that there are a number of issues, which I hope I put across in my statement. Some medicines lose their benefit quickly, and if there are big delays at the border, they will not have the effect that they would have had if they had reached patients quickly. That is one risk. Another is tariffs, which could also be a huge issue. Although WTO rules specify that medicines are tariff-free, they have not been updated for eight years, so many medicines are not included. Currently, medicines that are tested in any country in the European Union can then be accessed in the UK, but that may not be the case after we leave the European Union. For those three reasons, I think that there is a risk to patients from a hard Brexit, at least, or from a no-deal scenario.”
“I can sense my hon. Friend’s frustration that jobs will be lost in her constituency because of the risks of Brexit. GSK has made it very clear that Brexit will cost it a lot of money. If it is testing its drugs in the UK, it may no longer have access to European markets, because those drugs will not be recognised unless they are tested in mainland Europe. That is creating new costs, as GSK is having to set up new testing facilities in the rest of Europe. If there are cost increases, it will seek to cut costs elsewhere, and the consequences of that will be borne by my hon. Friend’s constituents in Bishop Auckland and also by patients in the UK as a whole who may not have access to the drugs. As far as I can see, leaving the European Union will have no benefits for the pharmaceutical sector, or—but most important—for patients.”
“The hon. Lady has made an important point about clarity, which I do not think I put across sufficiently in my statement. The industry representatives who gave evidence to our Committee said that they would need two to five years to prepare for any changes in the regime and the trading arrangements with the rest of the European Union, and of course we do not have those two to five years: we have just over a year and a half until the end of the transition period. That is of great concern to the hon. Lady’s constituents, and to patients and businesses across the UK.”
“I am worried about those issues. My hon. Friend knows full well that we have benefited disproportionately from Horizon 2020: 13% of the funds have come to this country, reflecting our fantastic research base in Cardiff, in Leeds and across the UK. It is welcome that the Government have guaranteed those funds until 2020, but there have been no guarantees beyond that. As my hon. Friend knows, research does not work on two or three-year horizons; it works on 10 or 20-year horizons. We need clarity, and the certainty that we will receive that investment in key research on matters such as the HIV vaccine that my hon. Friend mentioned.”
“The idea that leaving the European Union is about cutting red tape is absolutely ridiculous. In fact, red tape protects us, and in pharmaceuticals that is absolutely crucial. As for the EMA and the MHRA, we will be replicating something that worked incredibly well. Why create a load of new regulators when we had a set of regulators based here in the UK doing a fantastic job? No one doubts that the EMA was doing a good job, so why replicate it now? It makes no sense.”
“I absolutely agree. The Government need to get on with negotiating with the European Union, rather than negotiating with their Back Benchers and even within the Cabinet. We need certainty. We need certainty on our access to the single market, we need certainty on our membership of the customs union, and we need certainty on the regulatory framework that will apply after we leave the European Union. Without that, it is incredibly difficult for businesses to plan for the future, to secure the jobs and investment that we need in this country, and, in the case of medicines and pharmaceuticals, to ensure that patients have access—timely access—to the best drugs, and new drugs.”
“I congratulate my hon. Friend on all the work she has done to identify these serious issues. She mentions trading standards. The National Audit Office has identified the funding gap there, but I think there is another issue. Local trading standards are responsible for businesses in their area. In Peterborough, where Whirlpool is based, the local trading standards office is responsible for the quality of goods for Whirlpool nationwide. There is a conflict of interest and it does not work, because the local trading standards office does not have the resources to police a multinational company such as Whirlpool.”
“I thank the hon. Gentleman for his work on our Select Committee in probing Whirlpool and Ian Moverley, who gave evidence—or at least answered a few of our questions, but not all of them. On the 1 million faulty tumble dryers that Whirlpool knows about, is the hon. Gentleman also concerned that Which? said that it had found as recently as last month through its mystery shopping that customers with these faulty tumble dryers were still being given the wrong advice? That means there are potentially still 1 million tumble dryers in our homes that could catch fire, like the ones we in the Committee heard about and the ones other hon. Members have given evidence on.”