Oral evidence: Vauxhall Zafira B fires, HC 318Tuesday 19 July 2016
Oral evidence, 19 July 2016.
Witnesses
Gareth Llewellyn, Chief Executive, Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency, Peter Hearn, Acting Operations Director, Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency, and Andy King, Head of Customer and Business Operations, Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency, gave evidence.
Chair
Good afternoon and welcome to the Transport Select Committee. Could you give your name and organisation, please?
Andy King
My name is Andy King. I am the head of customer and business operations in the DVSA.
Gareth Llewellyn
I am Gareth Llewellyn. I am the new chief executive of DVSA.
Peter Hearn
I am Peter Hearn, acting operations director.
Chair
What process does the DVSA have to monitor potential safety risks in vehicles?
Gareth Llewellyn
As you probably know, under the general product safety regulations we operate a non-statutory voluntary code of practice. That practice is set out in the public domain for people to understand. Our role is to have general market intelligence of safety defects in the market and to feed those through to manufacturers, which we have done on a number of occasions in this particular incident, and then to ensure that the manufacturer takes up its responsibility to investigate those incidents. All the way along that line, we monitor the progress made by the manufacturers, both in terms of the investigation and the follow-up when they launch safety recalls.
Chair
Is there any requirement for manufacturers to alert you to any problems they find?
Gareth Llewellyn
Yes, indeed. In fact, about 80% of all the safety defects we find come in from manufacturers; 20% come in from other sources such as social media, owners and the media more generally. We welcome all of that information, because the more we have coming in from all sources, the better able we are to start the conversation with the manufacturers in the first place.
Chair
Were you aware of the Zafira fires before you received the report from Vauxhall in October 2015?
Gareth Llewellyn
The first time we knew about the fires was on 20 August. We had a number of emails from the Zafira owners club at that point. There were no details as to what the fires involved, where they were, and so on. We passed those emails on to Vauxhall on 21 August and then we responded on 25 August, having being given information from Vauxhall, to the people who had sent us emails at that point. Those were the fires that we did not have many details on. We had safety defect forms though, returned by various members of the public on 12, 13 and 14 October, and we fed those defect forms through to Vauxhall, looking for their views at that time.
Chair
Are consumers who are concerned about something they have bought aware that they can approach you about safety concerns?
Gareth Llewellyn
They are. That is part of our remit.
Chair
Do you think they know enough about that? It does not seem to have happened in this case, does it?
Gareth Llewellyn
I think it is true to say that we have not been as visible to the public in some areas as we could be, not just in this area but more generally. We are obviously heavily reliant on gov.uk. We do not have our own website, so the visibility of what we do is embedded within the overall Government mechanism, but I accept that we could do more in that space.
Chair
Are you planning to do more?
Gareth Llewellyn
Yes, indeed. We are looking at the moment at the feasibility of including recall information when you apply for your car tax. That is important because the vast majority of recalls take place in the first three years, before you get to MOT. When you are checking up your MOT status, we can include recall information at that point too, and we are looking at a variety of other mechanisms at the moment.
Robert Flello
What about protocols around engagement with the fire service and insurance companies? If they are reporting to you regularly or annually to say, “We have had 100 Zafira Bs that have gone up in flames and as an insurance company we have paid out,” is that information coming to you, or is that something you think should be coming to you?
Gareth Llewellyn
As I say, it is part of the 20% that comes in outside the manufacturers. To be honest, you never really know whether you are getting all the information, and more information in that space would be extremely helpful for us.
Robert Flello
There is no formal protocol in place to get that information.
Gareth Llewellyn
Not at the moment.
Robert Flello
Would you welcome that sort of formal protocol?
Gareth Llewellyn
I would welcome information from all sources, whether it is formal or informal, to be honest. The entire role of the DVSA is to secure the safety of the travelling public, so any information we get that helps us do that is to be valued.
Robert Flello
On that particular point about the safety of the public, it has been suggested to us—I am sure you listened to some of the responses earlier—that potentially somebody is getting their car serviced by somebody who really should not be doing the servicing, either because they do not know what they are doing or because they are taking short cuts. What role do you have at the moment—I think I know the answer to this question—and what role do you think you should have in terms of protecting the travelling public in relation to what is happening on servicing those vehicles?
Gareth Llewellyn
As you know, we run the MOT system across more than 22,000 garages. We have vehicle examiners out checking that the quality of MOT work done in those garages is of the standard we expect. Last week, we launched a new qualification scheme to upskill people who undertake maintenance on vehicles through an MOT garage. You never ever know whether all 22,000 of those garages are maintaining vehicles to exactly the same standard.
Robert Flello
And if they do not do MOTs at a particular garage.
Gareth Llewellyn
That is a good question. The general knowledge of our vehicle examiners going into those garages would be good, but we would not necessarily get that back in a formal sense.
Robert Flello
In other words, if you have your car serviced by a garage that does MOTs, you have some chance of an overall view of the safety or otherwise of what is being done, but if you get your car serviced somewhere that does not do MOTs, it is pot luck.
Gareth Llewellyn
It is; we would not know the quality of that garage.
Peter Hearn
We would have to look to work with the trade and the trade associations to see if we could access a much wider market than the DVSA has surveillance on at the moment.
Robert Flello
In terms of surveillance—this was a question that Vauxhall could not answer—if you have a vehicle that has caught fire and it turns out that the vehicle was serviced in a way that perhaps led to the cause of that fire, there is no tracing back to the garage or person that did the servicing. At the moment, there is no oversight of that at all.
Peter Hearn
There is no way of tracing that back at the moment, no.
Robert Flello
Well, there is a way but it is not happening.
Peter Hearn
There is nothing in place at the moment.
Chair
Your remit is seeking to co-operate with manufacturers. Does that stop you challenging manufacturers when you should, particularly in relation to their explanation of why something is wrong?
Gareth Llewellyn
We do indeed challenge. If we go back to this particular incident, the results of the non-code action, which was launched on 5 November, were reported back to us on 4 December. There was quite a good and robust conversation with Vauxhall about whether we had got to the true root cause and whether there was a single failure mode or not. We encouraged them to continue looking. At that point there was a discussion about whether it should continue as a non-code action or be elevated to a safety recall. The safety recall notice that came through about five days later on 9 December had a very clear line in it: “At the request of DVSA this has now been elevated to a safety recall.” It is a voluntary code of practice but we try to exercise as much influence as we can to make sure things get done properly.
Chair
There is still some dispute about the cause of the problem. You accepted Vauxhall’s conclusions rather than GBB’s conclusions. Why is that?
Andy King
At the time we met with Vauxhall to discuss the necessity for a safety recall in December, the weight of the evidence that they presented before us at that stage indicated that they had established the root cause. Therefore, as Gareth mentioned, it was appropriate and necessary to move to a full safety recall. We welcomed the GBB report, in so far as it gave us another third-party view of the issue. The evidence that GBB considered included fires in vehicles that had been rectified under the first activity—the first safety recall—so clearly that was different from our decision making in December.
Chair
Do you think there needs to be a change in the codes of practice or resources you have to enable you to challenge manufacturers more robustly?
Gareth Llewellyn
We are a pretty effective enforcement agency in other areas. We put 46 people in prison last year and gave out 26,000 fixed penalties, so where we have the powers we exercise them extremely well.
Chair
But do you have sufficient powers in matters like this one?
Gareth Llewellyn
In this area we do not have the ability under the GPSR to prosecute. There is no doubt that processes like this, particularly across the scale of issues that we are dealing with—we handled 330 safety recalls last year, and we had another three this morning, covering 2.4 million vehicles—are a big issue for us. We rely on good co-operation with the industry, but you can only rely on the carrot so often. There is no stick for us.
Chair
What powers would you like to have for situations like this one, so that you could be more effective?
Gareth Llewellyn
There are a few things. Within the code of practice there are no prescribed timescales. There are some areas within the process that should be speeded up. Equally, there are some that should be slowed down. My experience of working in investigations on safety issues in other safety critical industries is that the last thing you want to do is rush to a conclusion about the root cause. If you get that wrong, you could end up going down a number of rabbit holes. There are some areas where it is better to take your time and understand exactly what the root cause is, and indeed whether there are two, which is certainly true in this case. If you look through the entire code of practice though, there is no recourse for an organisation such as ourselves if we believe that the pace is too slow in remediating the safety issue. The connection between the code of practice and the regulations is a little opaque for us. Clearly, as a result of that, we have to rely on good co-operation with the industry.
Chair
You would like some changes there.
Gareth Llewellyn
Yes, we would.
Chair
Do you think it is acceptable that owners have to wait until August before their cars are going to be called back for repairs?
Gareth Llewellyn
I have spent most of my life in the private sector, and it is amazing what you can do with your supply chain when there is enough impetus. I am a little surprised that that time lag is in there.
Chair
Do you have powers to do anything about that?
Gareth Llewellyn
We do not under the code of practice. As I said, most of this is around working with the industry constructively and trying to persuade them to make sure that the risk to the safety of the public is mitigated.
Chair
Do you think you have enough staffing and other resources to be able to monitor safety defects and recalls?
Gareth Llewellyn
That is a very interesting question. The DVSA is a trading fund, so in general we are independent from funding from Government, with the exception of enforcement. This is the area that is funded by the strategic[1] enforcement budget. We are reliant on DFT for funding that budget. It is decreasing over the next few years. Having come new into this organisation, I think that enforcement is a poor cousin of our organisation and I need to do more to strengthen that part of our business.
Chair
Is that something that you are going to be addressing?
Gareth Llewellyn
Absolutely.
Chair
Looking at your involvement with the Zafiras and what is happening there, is there anything you think should have been done differently by the agency?
Gareth Llewellyn
If we go back to the December discussion with Vauxhall, where we expressed some concerns that we might not have necessarily got all the information on the root cause, we could have pushed more strongly to ensure that we identified whether there were other root causes of that particular problem. Clearly, by the time we understood what was in the Fraunhofer Institute report, we knew that there were actually two separate failure modes. The repairs need to tackle both of them because you never know across the fleet where those particular issues might manifest themselves. There are areas where we could have done more. There is also more around communication, which we discussed earlier.
Robert Flello
Just to pick up on that last point before I ask my main question, what ability do you have to push back? If a manufacturer comes forward and says, “It is a problem caused by improper repairs,” do you have any ability at all, any powers or any resources to go back and say, “Actually we do not think that is the case and we think it might be this or this”?
Peter Hearn
We would challenge that information if we did not feel it was valid and if it was not validated by, in this case, third-party advice. We would continue to challenge that, and continue to ask the manufacturer to reinvestigate if necessary.
Robert Flello
But, ultimately, there is a stand-off between yourselves and the manufacturer. If the manufacturer says, “No, no, it is definitely this problem,” you are in a stand-off and there is nothing more you can do.
Peter Hearn
Ultimately, there are some powers that we would like, and probably could have in future, which might give us that further leverage.
Robert Flello
There is definitely a request there for some ability to push back. The main question I wanted to ask was this. Anecdotally, I am hearing different responses from different manufacturers. A manufacturer, particularly a high-profile and well-known German manufacturer for example, might have the approach that, “We don’t want to tell the public that we’ve got a problem, but when a vehicle comes in for servicing or when we have a special deal saying, ‘Come and have your vehicle serviced for 20 quid,’ we will make sure that the proper repair is done or replacement part is fitted.” How privy are you to those sorts of things, and what ability do you have to say, “Now listen, major manufacturer, you really cannot do that and you need to tell your customers that there is a problem that you are putting right”?
Peter Hearn
Social media and other things are changing that environment.
Robert Flello
Absolutely. They are starting to.
Peter Hearn
There is an opportunity there. At the moment only 20% of recalls come from that direction, so there is an opportunity to look at that and enhance it to try to get a better feed of information. In a lot of cases this will be happening in an environment we are not in and we may not be aware of some of these things.
Robert Flello
The manufacturer or manufacturers in question would not necessarily have to tell you that there was a safety feature, or would they have to tell you but they do not necessarily do so?
Andy King
Under the code there is a duty for the manufacturer to tell us as soon as they know that there is a safety defect. Obviously, we are reliant on the manufacturer doing that.
Gareth Llewellyn
Just to clarify, it is also in the regulations. They have a legal obligation to tell us.
Robert Flello
The high-profile German manufacturer does this 20 quid deal and replaces the safety feature. You know about it, but you have no power necessarily to make it public to the buying public, who would be buying one of those vehicles, that that is how that particular company deals with its safety issues.
Gareth Llewellyn
If we go back to the code of practice, we have no powers to force a manufacturer into a safety recall. The advantage of the safety recall, which may answer one of your questions in the previous session, is that that information goes on to Rapex, which is the European system that disseminates the reasons for a safety recall to all manufacturers and all component suppliers, so that information is in the public domain.
Robert Flello
From your answer, would I be right or wrong in assuming that it might be quite helpful if every time a manufacturer had to make a safety change, even if not at a level that needed to be a formal recall, that information was on the Rapex system so that it could be widely known? If a small garage tucked away somewhere in a quiet corner of Westminster was doing non-MOT servicing and repairs, they would perhaps get the chance to know that there was a particular safety feature that needed to be changed.
Peter Hearn
More publicising of that information to as wide an audience as possible has to be encouraged. The other thing that is probably an important feature is the fact that DVSA closes the recall process. That is not the manufacturer’s decision; that will be the DVSA’s decision. We would have to be satisfied at the end of the whole process that it had concluded itself and that as many vehicles as were still in service and operating had been recalled and corrected.
Martin Vickers
Speaking generally, would you say that the manufacturers are open, honest and transparent in their dealings with you?
Gareth Llewellyn
Absolutely. As I said, we handled over 330 safety recalls last year. We are not in front of this Committee for 330 of them, so we have very good working relationships; the process generally seems to work. The carrot is always important if you have a stick at the end of it for the people who do not want to make it work.
Martin Vickers
But you do not have the stick.
Gareth Llewellyn
We do not, but we have managed to make the process work rather well. We have one of the safest road networks in the world, so the system works, but clearly there will be occasions when it does not.
Martin Vickers
Don’t you think it would be helpful to the public if they knew your views on individual manufacturers—that so-and-so had five stars and someone else only had two stars, or whatever?
Gareth Llewellyn
We would probably need to take legal advice on how we would do that.
Chair
Thank you very much. Oral evidence: Vauxhall Zafira B fires, HC 318 23 [1] Witness misspoke and intended to say “single” instead of “strategic”