If your local authority believe that a product contravenes safety standards and decides to take enforcement action they have more powers than superman - some of it because of EU legilsation that harmonises product safety in the EU, but mostly under the UK Consumer Protection Act.

It is the importer to the EU that is responsible for keeping all the safety documentation and affixing the CE mark to the product. The documentation must comply with EU legislation, but is produced by the manufacturer as a sales aid. The importer within the EU is responsible for getting the goods tested, not the Chinese manufacturer.

Forgery happens everywhere in everything. Products can still be assessed for safety by enforcers here by sending them to a UKAS acreditted assessment centre.

This all comes back to the arguments about excessive regulation. All of the excessive regulation they need to turn us into a Stalinist dictatorship is already there from my point of view, just how much do you enforce it?

Personally I would like to see much of it repealed. The 1987 Consumer Protection Act removed the need to for the claimant to prove negligence over damages cause by unsafe products. The prospect of being sued for a few hundred thousand or million Euros is a bigger deterent for honest business than a

The difference is of course the USA can do something about it, meanwhile, the UK which is subject to the facile European Union self certification by foreign manufacturers including those in China, cannot.

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/families/article2284323.ece

Reply: I daresay some of the problems are genuine, and do need to be sorted out, but I am sure people are now looking for Chinese safety issues because it is the story and the US is waking up to just how dependent they are on the Chinese suppliers.

The Chinese talk openly about ‘Smashing western pre-eminence’ in Africa and the wider world markets. In fact China has increased trade with Africa from 1billion dollars to 40billion dollars in just six years and their share of trade in percentage tears has trippled from 2% to 6% in just four years. China are deadly serious about exploiting the worlds export markets and are quite open about the fact that they prefer to eventually see
trade as a one-way street, out of China and not into China. People have too readily embraced Chinas desire to supply the world in the name of free-trade. However free-trade itself is not a dogma to be adhered to at all times. There are times when free-trade, under cetain conditions, can be self-defeating.