WHY THE FURNITURE REGULATIONS DO NOT WORK
Introduction:
Below is a link to a paper I wrote at Jo Swinson's request in late 2014. She was the minister at BIS (now BEIS) responsible for the Furniture Regulations and was sorely conflicted by the differing advice she had been receiving from me as the Department's expert and my senior managers who kept telling her more work needed to be done. Exasperated, she asked me to write a short paper, without my managers interfering with it, to answer two questions:
I wrote the paper and showed it to my managers, Bridget Micklem and Phil Earl. Micklem did not alter it but she did insist on adding another 60 pages to it! This was not as random as it might seem. I have no doubt that Micklem was apprehensive that the minister would read my paper and finally decide that we should go ahead with the new test; therefore, she did her best to sabotage it by making it so long that Swinson would reject it out of hand (she'd been furious at an earlier paper on the Furniture Regs that was just 11 pages long – also thanks to Micklem and Earl).
However, I phoned the minister's officer after the paper went up and suggested they cut all but the first 7 pages, which they sensibly did.
The feedback from Swinson was that the paper was "excellent" and she now understood the issues. She came back with some follow-up questions which I also answered and that's when things got a little weird. I heard nothing by way of feed-back and when I chased Swinson's office they said she hadn't been given the paper because it wasn't "in the right form". Which of course was nonsense. Soon after this, Swinson allowed herself to be persuaded by two senior Tory MPs, Mathew Hancock and Oliver Letwin, to delay implementing the new match test. You can draw your own conclusions about what actually happened with my follow-up paper.
Finally: me and colleagues who've been working hard for some years now to get flame retardants out of UK furniture no longer believe there is a need for any match test. You can find out why elsewhere on this website.
You can access the paper that went to Jo Swinson here: Proposed changes to the Furniture Regulations. Please note a couple of things: you'll see references to numbered Annexes - these were some of the additions Micklem made which as said were removed. If anyone is interested in seeing them, let me know and I'll include them on the site. Also, note that I refer to the Regulations as being "highly successful" - we now know this is not true. They were at the time seen by most to be highly successful, and with the new match test in place they would have been so, at least in providing safety against the ignition of covers. But over time, it became clearer that the failure of the current match test meant, for example, that there is no evidence at all that the Regulations are successful or ever have been.
Introduction:
Below is a link to a paper I wrote at Jo Swinson's request in late 2014. She was the minister at BIS (now BEIS) responsible for the Furniture Regulations and was sorely conflicted by the differing advice she had been receiving from me as the Department's expert and my senior managers who kept telling her more work needed to be done. Exasperated, she asked me to write a short paper, without my managers interfering with it, to answer two questions:
- Why does the current match test not work?
- Will the new proposed one work?
I wrote the paper and showed it to my managers, Bridget Micklem and Phil Earl. Micklem did not alter it but she did insist on adding another 60 pages to it! This was not as random as it might seem. I have no doubt that Micklem was apprehensive that the minister would read my paper and finally decide that we should go ahead with the new test; therefore, she did her best to sabotage it by making it so long that Swinson would reject it out of hand (she'd been furious at an earlier paper on the Furniture Regs that was just 11 pages long – also thanks to Micklem and Earl).
However, I phoned the minister's officer after the paper went up and suggested they cut all but the first 7 pages, which they sensibly did.
The feedback from Swinson was that the paper was "excellent" and she now understood the issues. She came back with some follow-up questions which I also answered and that's when things got a little weird. I heard nothing by way of feed-back and when I chased Swinson's office they said she hadn't been given the paper because it wasn't "in the right form". Which of course was nonsense. Soon after this, Swinson allowed herself to be persuaded by two senior Tory MPs, Mathew Hancock and Oliver Letwin, to delay implementing the new match test. You can draw your own conclusions about what actually happened with my follow-up paper.
Finally: me and colleagues who've been working hard for some years now to get flame retardants out of UK furniture no longer believe there is a need for any match test. You can find out why elsewhere on this website.
You can access the paper that went to Jo Swinson here: Proposed changes to the Furniture Regulations. Please note a couple of things: you'll see references to numbered Annexes - these were some of the additions Micklem made which as said were removed. If anyone is interested in seeing them, let me know and I'll include them on the site. Also, note that I refer to the Regulations as being "highly successful" - we now know this is not true. They were at the time seen by most to be highly successful, and with the new match test in place they would have been so, at least in providing safety against the ignition of covers. But over time, it became clearer that the failure of the current match test meant, for example, that there is no evidence at all that the Regulations are successful or ever have been.