Consumer protection professionals in the UK often cite the same frustrations and obstacles in their working lives — at the top of the list being political inertia, lack of joined-up thinking and, of course, restricted resources. So how do their international counterparts tackle these issues — and what lessons can we learn from them?
Dr Catherine Niven’s background is in law and international business. She has previously worked in policy and legal roles at Queensland’s state regulator, before completing a PhD in child product safety in 2020. In the course of her research, she has examined how regulators in the US and Australia respond to product safety issues, identifying similarities, gaps, and opportunities for improvement.
Niven is now a Research Fellow at the Queensland University of Technology, where she works to develop injury surveillance methods and identify evidence that can be used to support regulatory responses, education programmes and safer product design.
Familiar story
In Australia, the hurdles to better product safety will likely sound familiar to many here in the UK. “We had some proposed reform that went out for consultation back in 2019, looking at ways to improve the effectiveness of our product safety regime,” Niven says. “Unfortunately, the consultation results haven’t been reported — maybe because of a change of government — and the reforms haven’t advanced. That’s a real missed opportunity to arm our regulators with the tools they need to respond to some of the developing issues, particularly around e-commerce, and identify who’s responsible for putting unsafe products into consumers’ hands.”
Among the key concerns raised by Niven and her colleagues at that time were potentially harmful chemicals in children’s products. “That’s an area where the US has more regulation than we have in Australia,” she says. “The US has also put in place a number of mandatory standards for infant products. We have some gaps there, but our government says this
is now a priority and they’re starting to look at those issues.”
The UK’s own Product Safety Review was published in consultation form in August last year, after years of delay due in large part to continued political turmoil (the outcome of that consultation is still being awaited). The new Labour Government has announced the upcoming Product Safety and Metrology Bill, but its details are at present somewhat unclear.
It isn’t just in the political sphere that the UK and Australia have similar problems. With online marketplaces, Niven says, “we have very similar issues to what you’re seeing in the UK. There are five signatories to our Product Safety Pledge, which is seeing some good progress, but there are many more players entering the online market now.”
Australia’s Product Safety Pledge is a voluntary initiative under which signatories — currently AliExpress, Amazon Australia, Catch.com.au, eBay Australia and MyDeal.com.au — commit to actively improve the safety of products sold online. They are also required to report annually to the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) on their performance.
“We’ve been quite interested to look at how the EU is dealing with online marketplaces through the General Product Safety Directive, and how they’re trying to ensure its applicability to online marketplaces and encourage more accountability,” Niven adds.
Greater accountability for online marketplaces is also addressed by the UK’s new Digital Markets, Competition and Consumer (DMCC) Act — although the fast-moving, often opaque nature of the sector means there is still much room for improvement.
Emerging issues
In 2022 Niven and her colleagues conducted a survey of international experts about emerging product safety risks. “We asked what products they were concerned about, and there was a lot of consensus — 76% of respondents mentioned electrical connection and distribution products, particularly lithium-ion and button batteries — these are issues that we can see in the US, Europe and the UK.
“The other issue that came through quite clearly in the survey results was concern with infant sleep products. Our regulators take a broad view of this product category — it includes inclined products like a rocker or a bouncer, non-inclined products like cots or bassinets, as well as sleep-related products like sleep positioners and comforters.
“The ACCC is looking at whether a broad mandatory standard needs to be introduced for all of these sorts of products. In the meantime, they’ve issued some guidance to suppliers which talks about making sure the marketing of products follows public health guidance — so not having a pillow in a cot for example.”
At the other end of the generation spectrum, Niven adds, “our research program is currently focused on evaluating product safety risks for older people — an area where we have identified a significant knowledge gap”.
The appliance of science
When it comes to sharing data and intelligence about high-risk products or product categories, how does Australia measure up? “The ACCC seems very active on the OECD Working Party for Consumer Product Safety,” Niven says. “They also have good liaison with overseas regulators.
“To communicate at the state level, we have very active collaborative groups. We’ve got one here in Queensland which has been operating for over 10 years. We meet every two months for a couple of hours to discuss emerging issues, share evidence and discuss product safety issues in depth.
“These groups include regulators, representatives from the Health Department and the Children’s Commissioner, as well as academics and charities. It’s amazing how much you can pull out from a data-sharing point of view when issues arise and we need to respond quickly.”
The ACCC also convenes a Consultative Committee at the national level which, Niven says, “has been really good for information sharing. But I’m not sure how far that extends to the international level.”
The UK has the OPSS National Product Safety Group, as well as initiatives such as the BSI’s Consumer & Public Interest Network (CPIN) and committees run by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents and Electrical Safety First. However, the recording and analysis of data remains a problem for many on the Trading Standards front line.
That chimes with the experiences of Niven and her colleagues: “The need for accessible injury surveillance data is a shared priority for all stakeholders to inform regulatory responses, standards, product designs and public safety awareness campaigns,” she says.
In addition, Niven says that because of the global nature of modern supply chains, there is a growing need for a more international approach to product safety. “The OECD Working Party on Consumer Product Safety had a project a couple of years ago that was going to develop a uniform system for injury surveillance and a global injury data portal — unfortunately that project seems to have stagnated.
“The way we describe products in Australia is different from the US and the UK, for example; even if we just had uniform ways of product identification, as well as standardised data collection, that would be really useful to enhance international information exchange.”
