Firstly, I would like to thank Dawn Bowden for giving me a minute in this debate. I want to cover two things: hair straighteners and chargers. Examples of fires from hair straighteners are: a woman had to be rescued from her burning home after a pair of hair straighteners were left switched on on her wooden floor and started a blaze. She had to be rescued by firefighters. Two young boys were rescued from a bedroom in a house in Pinner, north London, by firefighters after a fire was started by hair straighteners. Many people use hair straighteners. I don’t, by the way, but many people do. I don’t think the Cabinet Secretary does either, but I may be wrong. [Laughter.] Many people do. They get up to very high temperatures and they are potentially dangerous. Although neither of those led to death, if we don’t deal with it, they will eventually.

And chargers. The availability of cheap generic options online, according to fire safety experts, is highly dangerous. Chargers on auction sites can cost less than £1 and the proper ones by the manufacturer over £15. Is it any surprise people buy the cheaper ones? But what a charger does, effectively, is bring the amount of electricity—the voltage—down to the voltage needed to charge the batteries. What happens is that, if they’re generic, they may not actually work effectively, and they can lead to heat being generated. The charity Electrical Safety First found that half had been wired in a substandard component, and none met the safety requirements of the Electrical Equipment (Safety) Regulations 1994. Unless something is done, we’re going to have fires and people are going to die.