Science, Innovation and Technology Committee

Oral evidence: The Science and Regulation of Hair and Beauty Products and Treatments, HC 59

Wednesday 3 June 2026

Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 3 June 2026.

Watch the meeting

Members present: Dame Chi Onwurah (Chair); Kit Malthouse; Samantha Niblett; Martin Wrigley.

Questions 79-182

Witnesses

I: Richard Knight, Lead Officer for Cosmetics and Beauty, Chartered Trading Standards Institute (CTSI), Victor Ktorakis, Senior Environmental Health Officer, Environment and Communities Directorate, Enfield Council, Chartered Institute of Environmental Health (CIEH) and Andrew Rankin, Acting Co-Chair and Registrar, Joint Council for Cosmetic Practitioners (JCCP).

II: Karin Smyth MP, Minister of State for Health (Secondary Care), Department of Health and Social Care, Kate Dearden MP, Minister for Employment Rights and Consumer Protection, Department for Business and Trade, Phil Harper, Deputy Director, Professional Regulation, Department of Health and Social Care and Sarah Smith OBE, Head of Regulatory Operations, Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS), Department for Business and Trade.

Examination of witnesses

Witnesses: Richard Knight, Victor Ktorakis and Andrew Rankin.

Chair: Welcome to today’s session of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee on the science and regulation of hair and beauty products and treatments. Hair and beauty is a major industry, and one that provides income to many female entrepreneurs. However, the chemicals used can be powerful and even toxic, so it is important that their use is properly regulated and enforced. Back in 2013, the Keogh review concluded that existing regulation of the sector had not kept pace with the rapidly expanding industry and that non-surgical procedures in particular were almost entirely unregulated, despite their risks. In our first session, the Committee heard powerful evidence, including from a witness with experience of harm from a beauty treatment.

Today we will be hearing from two panels of witnesses to see how effectively beauty products and non-surgical cosmetic treatments are overseen by professional associations, regulators and Governments. From our first panel of witnesses, we will hear about the current frameworks for regulation and enforcement, and views on proposed reform. I am very pleased to welcome our witnesses, who represent trading standards, environmental health and a self-regulated body for the non-surgical aesthetics sector. I will ask Samantha to put the first question to the panel. As you answer, can you first introduce yourselves and your organisations?

Q79        Samantha Niblett: What are the gaps or weaknesses in the current regulatory framework for cosmetic products and treatments in the UK?

Andrew Rankin: My name is Andrew Rankin. I am the acting chair of the Joint Council for Cosmetic Practitioners, a charity that was introduced as an outcome of the Health Education England cosmetic qualifications framework. We were tasked to take that qualifications framework forward and to implement a Professional Standards Authority register to provide some professional standards to the sector. We also work to provide guidance widely across the sector about what safe and legal practice should look like. We work through memoranda of understanding with a wide range of professional regulators and competent authorities. That enables us to provide robust guidance. I believe that we are very effective at doing that with the medical products where we have clear regulation and the support of the MHRA to achieve that.

As we see it, the gap is with the cosmetic products where the regulatory frameworks are either not clear, not sufficient or non-existent. We therefore do not have the competence to provide advice to our members and the sector more widely. Where we can suggest best practice guidance in a sector that is led largely by commercial interest, the sort of guidance that we offer can often be ignored.

Q80        Samantha Niblett: To expand on that quickly, you mention robust guidance, but guidance is just that, isn’t it? What would be the implications of somebody who is perhaps affiliated with your organisation not heeding that guidance?

Andrew Rankin: There are two parts to that. As a Professional Standards Authority-accredited register, the guidance that we offer to our registrants is critical, because they can be sanctioned if they do not meet it. Our efforts more widely, though, are to provide guidance that is recognised as a benchmark more widely across the sector. Therefore, the guidance is based on regulations and legislation. “You must not prescribe in this way”, is founded in legislation, which we can suggest would be enforced. On that same token, we therefore work not only with our registrants and practitioners more widely, but with enforcement authorities, including people like Victor from environmental health, to give them the sort of information that allows them to determine risk and what is and is not safe.

Q81        Samantha Niblett: How easy is that to do with the pace at which new products and treatments are emerging?

Andrew Rankin: It is increasingly difficult. It is complex, and it takes an awful lot of work to try to pin down exactly what the problems are and how they should be regulated and enforced.

Q82        Samantha Niblett: Richard, I will come to you with the same question on the gaps and weaknesses in the current regulatory framework.

Richard Knight: My name is Richard Knight. I work for Essex county council trading standards service. I have worked in a trading standards role for 39 years, but my presence here today is as the Chartered Trading Standards Institute’s lead officer for cosmetics and beauty. I have had a lead role in that area helping trading standards officers and liaising with Government and industry since 2012 when the new cosmetics regulation came out from the EU. I also lead our small team of officers who do imports work at the border in Essex, which is where we see a lot of illegal cosmetics and injectables. From my point of view, that is the best place to control some of the problems.

There are a few gaps, but to prioritise, let me deal with one that is less related to trading standards, which I hope Victor will come on to: the service or treatment provision. People assume that it is regulated, and that if you are injecting people with dermal fillers, for example, you must have to be a medical professional. The fact is that you do not. We are still awaiting Department of Health and Social Care consultation legislation on that licensing system—that two-tier system that was announced in a press release last August.

Trading standards has no real powers to regulate the service provision. We do have some powers with regard to descriptions and claims that are made about qualifications and that kind of thing, but they are limited, and they do not get to the heart of the competence and the training. Straw polls that have been done suggest that consumers assume training pathways are mandatory, but they are not.

From the product point of view, which is more where our powers in trading standards are, there are two things. I will make the more minor point first, which is becoming increasingly less minor: cosmetics regulation, which is EU retained law and covers the majority of products we might want to talk about today, is a little bit old school. Like most EU product law that we have in UK law, it is based on traditional supply chains. None of the detailed requirements apply, such as having a safety assessment, having notification to the OPSS portal, and having proper labelling and consumer information. None of those very detailed rules apply unless you place a product on the market. I will not bore you with the detail, but essentially the new business model, which we see increasingly, of people self-importing products for use in their own salon does not trigger the rules at all, because the products are not being placed on the market; they are just using it themselves.

To that extent, I think the legislation is a bit out of date—that is, if you want to control those products. For example, we see at the border lots of salon-imported UV nail gels with very strong ingredients that have the potential to cause allergenic reactions and so on. If the salons are importing them for their own use, there is nothing in law that we can do to control the use of those products from a cosmetics regulation point of view, because they are not being placed on the market. People can import from China, the USA or wherever through manufacturers and agents on Alibaba, and that was not really conceived of when the cosmetics regulation was negotiated prior to 2009 during our membership. E-commerce has just exploded.

The biggest thing I want to say about gaps is that people talk in the industry—I understand why; not everybody is a lawyer—about cosmetic products and treatments, and they describe, for example, dermal fillers, fat-dissolving injections, mesotherapy, skin brightening, microneedling or injections as cosmetic treatments and cosmetic products. From a legal point of view, in terms of our ability or anyone else’s ability—MHRA, HSE, CIEH—we cannot do a thing about most of those injectable products, because they do not fall anywhere near the definition of a cosmetic product in the regulation.

Q83        Samantha Niblett: What is the definition of a cosmetic product?

Richard Knight: It is three pronged. First, it is the application site—epidermis, the skin, the teeth, the hair, the nails; they are the main ones. Then, the product must be supposed, mainly or exclusively, to do a certain number of things—cleaning, perfuming, changing appearance, preventing body odours and that kind of thing. The third one, which I forgot to mention, is that the product has to be a substance or mixture—effectively, a chemical mixture. Articles and 3D things are not cosmetic products.

Q84        Samantha Niblett: Sorry, just for clarity—what would not be a thing?

Richard Knight: Any liquid, paste or powder is a substance or mixture. A set of tweezers would not be covered by the definition, although that is a bad example. The definition is very specific. Again, we have the EU definition. Anything that is injected below the skin can never be a cosmetic product. A lot of the problems that are reported to us are problems with injectable products, and, ultimately, we look at our legislation and decide there is very little or nothing we can do. Again, at the border we see a lot of direct importation from Korea and China of unapproved injectables.

In the main, there is no agency that can do anything because once you inject something below the skin, it is not a cosmetic product. You ask yourself, “What other legislation is there—surely the MHRA?” No, because in Great Britain, injectables that do not have a medical function are not caught by the medical devices regulations or the human medicines regulations. What else could be used? You might think HSE. HSE can deal with machinery and equipment like, let’s say, a laser machine or a liposuction machine. They can deal with supply chains and placing those machines on the market from business to business.

What about other legislation? I was asked to give evidence to the Keogh review in 2012, and the Department of Health had a misconception about the General Product Safety Regulations 2005, which are our catch-all product regulations. If there are no sector-specific rules like there are for toys, electrical equipment, cosmetics, machinery or PPE, the GPSR—as we call it—will hoover those up and there will be a basic level of protection.

However, there are definitions about anything where there is no use by the consumer in the course of a service, and that is what we are talking about in the salon world. There has to be use, and the law has been clarified that use must mean an appreciable degree of control. A sunbed is a good example of a product that is caught by those catch-all regulations in the course of a service, because the consumer has the ability to turn the sunbed on and off and maybe control the ventilation. In a salon context, you might be lying back and being injected with something. I am imagining this because I have never had it done, but apart from closing my eyes, I would be thinking, “I hope they know what they are doing.” Essentially, as the consumer you have no control whatsoever. Because there is no control, there is no use, so the General Product Safety Regulations do not apply.

I went through this exercise in 2012 and I have been through it again, and legislation has not changed in that time. There is currently a big product safety framework review going on, led by the Office for Product Safety and Standards, and one of the things they are looking at is changing the definition of “product” in the General Product Safety Regulations. We do not have legal drafts so I cannot say more. They are talking about including business products, but they would need to include the concept of use by the consumer. Unless and until that changes, my conclusion, in 2012 and now, is that almost all injectables are not covered by any product law whatsoever.

Q85        Samantha Niblett: These may be two rhetorical questions. What are the risks from products or treatments falling between cosmetic and medical regulatory regimes? You mentioned 2012, which was obviously 14 years ago. Are the Government moving fast enough to improve cosmetic safety following previous consultations?

Richard Knight: Obviously. The issue with products that are not regulated by any legislation, like dermal fillers, fat-dissolving injections and so on, is that in a way it is everyone’s problem, but also it is nobody’s. I have experienced this and colleagues have been a bit frustrated about it when we have spoken to Government. We have been at national product safety group meetings with the OPSS to talk about these borderline products and others, and we have said, “Look, something needs to be done. They are not currently a trading standards problem, but they need to be somebody’s problem. Would you please take it forward in government, and maybe try to set up a cross-departmental taskforce involving MHRA and so on?”

We are not asking you to be the legislator—the co-regulator. We are not asking you to do the legislation, but somebody in government needs to look at it, and do something and close the gap. People in government do not seem keen to do that. I know, like us, they probably have too much work to do as it is, but nobody wants to put up their hand and advocate for this necessary change in the law and change in scope. It has drifted, in my opinion, since 2012.

Q86        Samantha Niblett: I will come to you in a second, Victor. Andrew, are there any benefits of a voluntary regulatory model for practitioners? You mentioned that you can give this robust guidance, which I suppose is a benefit in itself for decent practitioners who want to make sure they are getting things right, but are there any other benefits?

Andrew Rankin: One of the things that is now beyond question is that the voluntary regulatory framework is ineffective. It appeared to be ineffective at the point of Keogh, and we have now proved that beyond doubt. As we move forward, if we have a regulatory framework that includes questions of competence oversight from local authorities and an understanding of what we mean by a legitimate product, once all that is in place, a voluntary PSA-accredited register would have significant value in terms of practice standards.

Q87        Samantha Niblett: Victor, do you have anything to add about gaps and weaknesses?

Victor Ktorakis: Good morning. My name is Victor Ktorakis. I am here today on behalf of the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health, the professional body that represents environmental health practitioners across the UK. I am a chartered environmental health practitioner myself, with over 22 years in local government as an enforcement officer. I lead on health and safety and special treatments licensing for a London local authority. I am also a co-chair of the London Special Treatments Working Group.

In order to really understand the gaps, we have to very briefly look at the current regulatory landscape and the history of it. Historically, local authorities and environmental health practitioners have played an important role in protecting the public from risks associated with beauty treatments. Back in 1982, the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act was introduced to regulate activities such as body piercing, electrolysis, acupuncture and tattooing—anything with a needle, basically. That ensured that practitioners were working from safe premises and that they were following basic infection control standards.

Moving forward nine years to 1991, that landscape changed completely. The number of treatments available on the local high street changed. That led to the introduction of the London Local Authorities Act 1991, which I think introduced the term “special treatment” and allowed the licensing of special treatments, including massage, manicure, pedicure, electrical treatments, light treatments, vapour treatments and treatments of a like kind. That gave us the scope to encapsulate loads of different treatments that we could continue to regulate and enforce.

Nothing has changed regulation-wise 35 years on, and the marketplace has changed completely. Now we have treatments on the high street that we would never have imagined being available in back in 1991. Because we do not have the means to license or register those treatments, we cannot enforce. We are having to step in retrospectively when we get reports that something has gone very wrong—where people have suffered injury—and then we are using health and safety powers to deal with those issues retrospectively. It is not really fit for purpose. We need direct powers.

Q88        Chair: Why can’t you deal with them as special treatments? That seems like a vague and wide term.

Victor Ktorakis: They do not fall within the definition of what can be a special treatment. Then it says treatments “of a like kind”, and it includes light treatments, so laser would be of a like kind to light. Nowhere in there does it introduce any toxins, fillers, peels—

Q89        Chair: Nail gels?

Victor Ktorakis: Nail gels are of a like kind to a manicure or pedicure, but all the really high-risk invasive treatments are not covered.

Q90        Samantha Niblett: How do the licensing regimes that you have vary across different local authority areas? Are they different, and does that cause any challenges?

Victor Ktorakis: They are very different and it causes a lot of challenges. Predominantly outside of London we have the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act. Some authorities have their own local byelaws, so they do not use the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act; they have their own. As I said, that is very restrictive; it is basically just for treatments that pierce the skin. Under that Act, there is no mechanism of refusing a registration. You just check to make sure that the premises are safe and, as I said, that the basic standards are in place. There are no conditions as such.

Within London, all London local authorities under the Act have the ability to create their own conditions, and there are inconsistencies from borough to borough. For example, you have one set of conditions in Enfield and a different set of conditions in a neighbouring borough like Barnet. If you have a salon in two different boroughs, you are dealing with two sets of conditions and different standards. That is across the whole of London.

Q91        Samantha Niblett: Are there any that are weaker? Is there a direct correlation? Do people set up businesses in a certain borough because they know something is slightly slack?

Victor Ktorakis: Most definitely. Taking qualification standards into account, some local authorities will insist on Ofqual-regulated qualifications as a minimum. Other local authorities might not have a minimum qualification standard. You might have a three-day CPD course in laser, and that might suffice for licensing in that borough. There are huge issues with inconsistency.

Q92        Samantha Niblett: Again, it feels like a rhetorical question, but should the current licensing regimes be streamlined?

Victor Ktorakis: Very much so.

Q93        Chair: We were aware that there were gaps in the licensing and regulatory regime, but I do not think we were aware that the gaps were quite so wide. Does the London licensing Act only apply to London?

Victor Ktorakis: Yes, to London boroughs.

Q94        Chair: What is the situation outside of London—in Newcastle, for example?

Victor Ktorakis: They have the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, which is a registration and not a licence. Those have to be granted—if you apply, you get it—whereas in London, it is tighter; it is a licence. If you do not comply with the standards—

Q95        Chair: Why are my constituents not getting the same level of protection that London residents are?

Victor Ktorakis: In London, we cover far more treatments than outside of London.

Chair: That is an example of regional inequalities again. Thank you very much for that. We spent some time on the existing licensing and registration and regulatory environment, but I think it has been very worthwhile. It has certainly opened my eyes.

Q96        Kit Malthouse: Chair, can I clarify your point about inequalities? What legislation are you talking about? Is it local byelaws or is it a national Act that only covers London?

Victor Ktorakis: It is a national Act. The London Local Authorities Act 1991 just covers London.

Chair: Then the Miscellaneous Provisions Act is for the rest of the country.

Q97        Kit Malthouse: Okay. Where did the London Local Authorities Act come from? Was it a public Bill or a private Bill? I am just trying to understand the problem. It may be one of those Bills that was proposed by the Greater London Council all those years ago and put through Parliament effectively as a private Bill.

Victor Ktorakis: I will be honest: I am not 100% sure.

Chair: Maybe we can ask.

Kit Malthouse: We do get legislation sponsored by local authorities, which can put legislation in. It may be one of those things where London felt that it had a problem, rather than a national Government saying, “We’re not bothered about the rest of the country. It’s a London thing.”

Q98        Chair: That is a good point, Kit, and we will seek clarification on that and come back to the Committee.

We have established that there are huge gaps in the existing framework, but let us move on to an area of emerging concern. I will address this question to Richard and Andrew in particular. The Committee has seen evidence of concerns raised in the United States of possible links between endocrine-disrupting chemicals—EDCs—in hair relaxers and carcinogens in synthetic hair extensions, and adverse health outcomes. There has been a number of studies, though those studies have been limited. I declare an interest that I have used hair relaxers, though I no longer do. How do regulators respond when there is evidence of potential harms, but causality has not yet been established? Is there a process or a threshold of concern for further investigation and so on?

Richard Knight: I am not a scientist, which does not help—I know you are, Chair. Since I took on a lead role in 2012, I have had an incredibly steep learning curve. In trading standards, you are a bit of a jack of all trades—like some barristers, you pick up a brief and then immerse yourself. That is what we have to do.

On the regulatory framework, I have read what the CTPA has said, and I broadly agree. The framework in the UK is based on the EU framework for identifying chemical ingredients of concern in cosmetics, in particular what are called CMRs—carcinogens, mutagens and substances toxic for reproduction. One concern, as a non-scientist, is that because for obvious political reasons we do not currently have dynamic alignment with the EU, there is presently quite a gap between scientific evidence in the EU being taken forward to restrict or ban certain chemicals, and us in the UK with our parallel new system of scientific evaluation under the SAG-CS committee and getting a mandate from Government to look into the same problems. You have to wait for a mandate, then they have to go through seeking evidence from industry, and then the scientific committee has to evaluate it.

We are behind others, notably the EU, when evidence comes to light. That should not stop the UK doing what we think is fit, and I know, for example, that a call for evidence has been out from the OPSS on various endocrine disruptors, as you said. But these things do take a long time, and I suppose that is because your committee of scientists consists of volunteers, and they have other jobs. You are also relying on dossiers and submissions, and sometimes defence submissions from industry, if they say there is no real evidence or whatever. I know you have something particular in mind with regard to hair products. Generally, I think there is a good system, but from my perspective it is quite slow.

When there is not an established set of rules about a substance of concern, because the science has not caught up and there has been no scientific recommendation to restrict or ban it, the legislation then has to come, of course, because in cosmetic products, you cannot just have a scientific opinion; the Minister has to approve the statutory instrument that, in laborious detail, sets out whether you are going to ban it or restrict it, or any point in between. Before we get to that point, we must not forget about legitimate cosmetic products. In trading standards, particularly at the border—funded by the OPSS, I should say—we see an awful lot of illegal products, which have not been through the robust safety assessment process. That is the point I wish to make, and in agreement with the CPTA.

The association is right—we have strict, EU-derived rules, and all legitimate cosmetics must be safety assessed. Even if there is not a ban on a suspected endocrine-disrupting substance, before that product goes on the market, a qualified safety assessor must make a toxicological decision. That is key in the legislation. Responsible persons—the brand owner, if you like—must update their safety assessments. That is a mandatory thing. They must update them given new knowledge.

Q99        Chair: I am unclear about how that new knowledge is established. To give the specific example of endocrine disruptors in hair relaxers, there are concerns that there is no monitoring of their usage. While some research may have been done in the general population, women of colour, and particularly children—black girls—are being targeted for hair relaxers, but we have no well-designed studies of the impact, the intergenerational impact, of mothers and girls using hair relaxers over generations. Who should be doing that research? How can we have confidence that that research is happening?

Richard Knight: It is difficult for me to say, because I am probably not deeply enough embedded in the scientific community, but I think you have hit the nail on the head. We rely on studies by other people—notably Europe, to be honest, because of the precautionary principle—and then we follow up on them. In terms of real lived experience, we have the so-called cosmetovigilance system, which I know the CTPA wrote about briefly, but that is more about reporting adverse and serious adverse reactions to cosmetics—for example, allergies, skin rashes and serious inflammation. It could be anything through to a coma, perhaps, for certain hair dyes. But those are more—

Chair: Immediate.

Richard Knight: Exactly. Immediate.

Chair: Not long-term population effects.

Richard Knight: You ask a question that I struggle to answer. As a non-scientist, I am not entirely confident that we have anything in place that covers that adequately.

Q100   Chair: That is helpful in itself. You may not be a scientist, but you obviously have significant experience in trading standards. Andrew, do you have anything to add?

Andrew Rankin: The JCCP has no experience with hair relaxant products, but, as an analogy, we have a lot of experience with skin-whitening products. The topical use of hydroquinone and the use of injectable glutathione are the sorts of things that concern us.

We have a group that is committed to taking a horizon-scanning approach to identify problems in the sector. These are the sorts of things that have been picked up, where in some instances we are not clear about the longer-term effects of the products and more research is needed. Implicit in all that is the messaging and, as you quite rightly say, the intergenerational passing down of information—“Why would you need to have a skin-lightening intravenous infusion?”—from mother to daughter.

Q101   Chair: When I say intergenerational, I actually mean the intergenerational effects—what happens if girls are using hair relaxers and then having babies who also use hair relaxers, and equally with skin lightening. But I take the point about passing on information as well.

I want to move on, but you made a point about skin-lightening creams and the presence in this country of products that are illegal to use, such as those containing mercury. That is an illegal substance. There was a point made earlier about importing substances into this country for use in salons, and that not being properly regulated—but that would be regulated. Am I right in thinking that a skin-lightening cream containing an illegal substance is illegal regardless of how it comes into this country?

Richard Knight: Not really. The problem we have—and Victor alluded to it—is that we would then have to ask our environmental health colleagues to find a workaround under the Health and Safety at Work Act. The Environment Agency has just done a survey. It sampled 13 skin-lightening products, and nine of them—it must have known what it was targeting—contained mercury, which has been banned since the ’70s, I think. So it is still a thing.

There is no question but that hydroquinone and certain corticosteroids are completely and utterly prohibited in cosmetics that are placed on the market in the normal way, including on online platforms, but if you import it—though I am not sure this is a thing—and use it in a salon, there is no trading standards or product law to ban that. It would be down to health and safety.

Q102   Chair: So it would be down to health and safety raiding the premises and, by coincidence, finding that there is a product containing mercury there.

Richard Knight: We do talk to each other, thankfully.

Q103   Chair: Right, if you identified it. I find that very concerning. I wanted to raise the fact that in 2018, a BBC undercover investigation found illegal skin lightening products on sale in 13 of the 17 shops visited. I think you have talked about a more recent survey?

Richard Knight: That was the Environment Agency, which comes at it from a different point of view, in terms of products being washed off, going into watercourses and affecting the marine. It is looking at that, so no—

Q104   Chair: When was that survey?

Richard Knight: I think they have released it in the last month.

Q105   Chair: So things have not changed?

Richard Knight: Things have not changed, but more broadly, colleagues in the London trading standards group for the London boroughs—perhaps because they have more shops and retailers of the type that sell these products than we do in Essex, for example—are always detaining and seizing illegal skin lightening products. On the London trading standards website, there is a really helpful PDF document that lists all the illegal skin lightening products that they have ever identified, with pictures and what is illegal about them. It is a constant battle. It is the same old things: hydroquinone, mercury, and illegal steroids that should not be there but have a whitening effect.

Q106   Chair: You have spoken about the work of trading standards, which is critical here. The Chartered Trading Standards Institute reported that trading standards funding had fallen by more than 50% in the 10 years to June 2024, which significantly reduces your capacity. The report also found that 19 councils had not conducted any routine business inspections in 2023-24. When you talk about identifying products in businesses, it is not a consistent picture across the country.

Richard Knight: No, it is not. I think that London are to be applauded for the amount of work they do. There have been cuts to trading standards, as you identify. In my own authority, Essex, we have perhaps been worse off. Between 2010 and 2018, we had a 66% cut in our budget, from £3 million to £1 million, which essentially meant that we had to lose two thirds of our staff, because our budget is our people. But the average is between 39% and 50% since 2010, and that bottom line will directly affect people. Trading standards across the board has to deal with 300 pieces of legislation or whatever it is, which is growing by the year—the Renters’ Rights Act and so on—and we have additional duties. We have to be intelligence-led.

We do have good connections. We have systems and databases, some of which are provided by the OPSS. We are intelligence-led, and we do talk to each other and to other agencies, but I think you have hit the nail on the head, in the sense that when I started the job all those years ago, we used to do routine retail visits and find problems—the known unknowns. We used to find them, because we were out there in the field. Now, I am afraid we have to prioritise, and we tend to try to deal with things at source with our importers and manufacturers.

Of course, when I say we are intelligence-led, if we find that we have a problem with a retailer or a particular supply chain, we will address it, particularly if it is a product safety issue, which is one of our highest priorities. But as the National Audit Office has highlighted in the past, there are so-called trading standards deserts. It is a bit of a postcode lottery in terms of whether the local authority has voluntarily ringfenced the money that it gets from MHCLG, or whether it adds some additional funds to support that. Some authorities are better resourced than others, and some are able to do more proactive inspection work than others.

Chair: We will have to leave it there. I do not want to go into the details of local government funding, but I take very seriously the point about a postcode lottery, which impacts the safety and health of our constituents. We are running a bit behind time, but I want to come to Kit.

Q107   Kit Malthouse: I want to ask some questions about enforcement, but what you have told us is very alarming. From a retail point of view, are there products currently available that you would snatch out of the hands of your own family if you saw them using them? If so, what are the top three?

Richard Knight: Any UV nail gel imported directly from China and sold on well-known online platforms has great potential to cause harm. Many of them are for professional use only. Skin lighteners are another one. But in general terms, I would avoid what I call snake oil-type products.

Q108   Kit Malthouse: Are any of those branded?

Richard Knight: Often not.

Kit Malthouse: They are all called strange names.

Richard Knight: Yes, they are all called strange names. Some are American, and people assume that American things, because of America’s highly litigious nature, must be safe, but they have completely different rules. They allow ingredients that we would not dream of.

Q109   Kit Malthouse: Are these nail gels, skin whitening—what is the third?

Richard Knight: The third one is—what is the latest cosmeceutical snake oil cure-all?

Q110   Kit Malthouse: What is the latest?

Richard Knight: I think it is Kambo, which is a skin cream based on secretions from Amazonian tree frogs.

Kit Malthouse: Oh, I’ve seen this online. There are frog poison treatments.

Richard Knight: Yes. I don’t think it’s good for the frogs. That is an example where there will not be a ban on that ingredient until we know more about it, but a safety assessor must do a proper assessment. It must be microbiologically controlled.

Kit Malthouse: So you would snatch those three out of the hands of your own family.

Richard Knight: Absolutely.

Q111   Kit Malthouse: Andrew, you were nodding. Did you want to add anything to that list?

Andrew Rankin: I come from a slightly different place from Richard, although I must support everything that he has said. In addition, we understand the problem with imported botulism toxin—botox—products as a significant and potentially fatal problem. That has to be stopped. To add to Richard’s list, one of the products that we come across is the nasal tanning solutions.

Kit Malthouse: What, tanning inside your nose?

Andrew Rankin: It is a solution that you inhale.

Kit Malthouse: And it makes you go brown?

Andrew Rankin: Yes. On the one hand, we have people wanting to lighten their skin, and on the other hand we have people wanting to tan.

Kit Malthouse: Nasal tanning is a first for me.

Chair: Does it tan just your nose?

Andrew Rankin: No, there are injectable forms as well—Melanotan.

Kit Malthouse: So you would snatch that and snap it in half.

Andrew Rankin: Absolutely.

Q112   Kit Malthouse: Victor, would you add anything to the list?

Victor Ktorakis: With regard to tanning accelerants and stuff like that, some local authorities have a condition such that they are prohibited. When we are actively inspecting these premises, we would seize, if we had to.

Q113   Kit Malthouse: This is injectable. What about tanning creams?

Victor Ktorakis: In some local authorities, it is any accelerants. Some have this condition, and some do not.

Kit Malthouse: There are some major cosmetic brands that sell tanning accelerants. You would say that you would snatch those out of the hands of your family.

Victor Ktorakis: If it was a licensed premises, it would not be allowed to have them in certain boroughs in London.

Kit Malthouse: You are not really answering the question.

Victor Ktorakis: Would I take them off them? Yes, I would.

Kit Malthouse: You would snatch any tanning accelerant out of the hands of your family.

Victor Ktorakis: I would, yes.

Q114   Kit Malthouse: Okay. I want to ask about enforcement. In this unregulated wild west, there are areas where you can enforce. Is it adequate? Is it working? As far as we can see, only one person has gone to prison for selling lightening creams, I presume on a repeated basis. There is lots of evidence that people do get caught, get fined and carry on. We can have the regulatory environment, but if the consequences have no deterrent effect, then effectively the whole thing is falling apart. What is your view? Are we all wasting our time?

Victor Ktorakis: No, we are definitely not wasting our time. At the moment, like I said, we are using health and safety powers to enforce, particularly where we might find unlicensed or unregulated dermal fillers, for example. That is quite common. We see those when we are out on inspections.

Q115   Kit Malthouse: What kind of fine are we talking?

Victor Ktorakis: Initially, we would be looking at the risk and serving notices—prohibiting notices that stop them carrying this out.

Kit Malthouse: They do not get a fine for a first offence.

Victor Ktorakis: No. It would have to be a prosecution, but you would be prosecuting under health and safety.

Q116   Kit Malthouse: Have there been many prosecutions?

Victor Ktorakis: I am not too sure.

Kit Malthouse: To me, that would imply no.

Richard Knight: All local authorities have to have an enforcement policy, and it has to be proportionate and graduated. For decent traders, if they get it wrong once, they get advised, and you might take their product away from them. If they do it again, they might get prosecuted, but prosecution is incredibly expensive and very time consuming for local authorities. It can take frontline officers like me away from doing the job for quite a period of time.

Kit Malthouse: So actually the deterrent is on enforcers.

Richard Knight: Yes, it is. You can now have an unlimited fine for our offences in a magistrates court, which is good. We have had a £200,000 fine for illegal gym supplements and that kind of thing, but magistrates have their own sentencing guidelines, don’t they? They do not like to lock people up, for obvious reasons.

Q117   Kit Malthouse: When it goes to prosecution, you say £200,000—

Richard Knight: That is exceptional.

Kit Malthouse: So what are we normally talking?

Richard Knight: Quite often, it is a non-custodial sentence—a community service order; that type of thing—or a fine. Fines are ramping up a little bit, but you are only talking about—

Kit Malthouse: A few hundred quid?

Richard Knight: No, maybe a few thousand—and costs; we would obviously hammer costs. There are opportunities for local authorities to use the Proceeds of Crime Act. It is not just the police that can use that; we use that if we can demonstrate a lifestyle crime, and then you can basically go for the individual.

Q118   Kit Malthouse: Given the prevalence of this stuff, is every local authority involved in numerous prosecutions, or are they rare?

Richard Knight: I think they are rare for cosmetic-type products, because there are so many duties on us, including dealing with rogue traders who rip off old people at the doorstep, for example. As I say, it takes people out of line for a long time to prepare a prosecution, so we try to use alternative enforcement methods like depriving people of their product and seeking closure orders.

Q119   Kit Malthouse: I understand. Effectively, you have both told us that enforcement is patchy and not really acting as much of a deterrent. Would you agree with that, Andrew?

Andrew Rankin: I would agree with that. I have personally found it enlightening to understand the amount of time, energy and cost in bringing around any sort of enforcement action under the Health and Safety at Work Act. The JCCP works with environmental health officers to advise how best to meet that end, and we have had a number of notable successes, but a lot of work is involved. Many of the procedures being offered are highly profitable.

Kit Malthouse: So it is worth the risk.

Andrew Rankin: It is the cost of doing business.

Kit Malthouse: Okay, I understand. They see it as exactly that: a part of the cost of it.

Andrew Rankin: Indeed.

Q120   Kit Malthouse: My final question is about labelling. If I go into a nail salon to get my nails done, or if I am buying something online or whatever, is there anything on the packet that I could look for for reassurance? Is there a mark that I do not understand? Half of us do not know what that C and that E is, or what the ISO things are that come on products. Is there anything that means I can tell my kids, “Don’t put it on your skin or stick it in your arm or whatever unless it’s got this on the box”?

Richard Knight: It is a difficult one, because you start off with where you are buying it from. If you are buying it from an online platform, are you buying it from that seller or are you buying it from a third party?

Kit Malthouse: You don’t know, right? If I go into a nail bar, and somebody is putting it on my hand, I don’t know if it is one of these gels or not. What do I ask?

Richard Knight: It is really difficult. I would say you should pick up the bottle. If it does not have a UK name and address on it, that is fundamentally what the cosmetic regulation requires: somebody in this country who is responsible for the problems and dealing with us. A lot of those products have no one in the UK; they are being sold by Chinese sellers online. Is there a UK address? You cannot do this in a nail salon, but is it a virtual office or PO box, which a lot of overseas sellers use to try to get around the law? Does it look like a credible brand entity, or is it an overseas knock-off?

Q121   Kit Malthouse: Thank you. Finally, is there one major retail platform that is funnelling this stuff in from overseas? If there is, is it doing anything about it?

Richard Knight: Amazon would be the biggest by miles. It has so many overseas sellers that it is not holding to account or vetting, and there is the whack-a-mole of us finding a problem and getting them to take it down, and it then cropping up somewhere else.

Chair: That is very helpful. Thank you, Kit. We are behind, but I will go to Martin for the final question to this panel.

Q122   Martin Wrigley: These gaps between regulation, and what you were describing earlier about this is falling between the different people, are very disturbing. Are there any international examples of what we should be doing better, or is this a global problem?

Richard Knight: I can offer one small piece of possible hope. The injectables are the biggest area of gap; for cosmetics, the law is broadly capable of dealing with new and emerging products, but for the injectables, which are completely unregulated, the EU—sorry to mention that.

Martin Wrigley: It is fine; we could do an awful lot with that.

Richard Knight: Their medical devices regulation has something called annex XVI, which, because of the Windsor framework, is applicable now in Northern Ireland—so in another part of this United Kingdom. In a nutshell, that basically says that if a product is administered in the same way as a bona fide medical device but does not have a medical end point or function—instead it has an aesthetic function—it will be treated legally as if it is a medical device if it is on annex XVI.

If the MHRA were to implement annex XVI in Great Britain, that would catch pretty much all dermal fillers, for example, which would be a big help. I cannot offer a great deal of other insight—it would require research—but that is a ready-made partial solution to a lot of injectables. It is already the case in annex XVI in the EU and Northern Ireland, which we do not have.

Q123   Martin Wrigley: You say a lot of injectables. That makes me worry it is not all of them. Would that include things like Botox?

Richard Knight: Botox is already covered in theory because it is a medicine, but we see at Stansted airport people importing botulinum and Clostridium direct from China and Korea. It is not authorised and has not been approved by any official body such as the MHRA.

Botox is already covered and dermal fillers would be by annex XVI. But as far as my interpretation is concerned, things that will not be covered include IV drip-administered glutathione, which as Andrew mentioned is used for skin whitening, and lipolysis injections—the fat dissolving injectables, not the drugs that come in pen form. I will mention a trade name so that people might understand: Lemon Bottle is one of the leading brands. That would not be caught by annex XVI.

Q124   Chair: Why not?

Richard Knight: Because annex XVI has a list of types of products that are covered and it mentions subcutaneous dermal fillers specifically. We could, post-Brexit, have the freedom to tweak it as we wish, but at present we do not do anything like that. That would be a partial solution that is almost ready made.

Q125   Martin Wrigley: What difference could unannounced inspections have on maintaining standards, and would that work at scale for some of the things that you are talking about?

Richard Knight: It certainly could. You would need to put a lot of resources in because, from my experience, you need to educate a lot of your salons. The importers know exactly what they are doing, which is why at the border we work with the MHRA and we detain these products.

I am confusing things now because when I say we work with the MHRA, I mean on the things we can do something about at the border. That is dermal fillers that are in single-shot syringes—those that are ready to go and not in a vial. They will sometimes contain lidocaine as a local anaesthetic, which is already in there for the needle prick. If that is the case, that is classified as an unauthorised medicine, and we can hand it over to the MHRA.

We do what we can at the border, but at the retail salon level, for all the work that we have done on teeth whitening and sunbeds, there is so much misinformation. You have got to put in a lot of hard yards to do the education. That would be a very large piece of work to do, but it would bring benefits.

Q126   Chair: Thank you very much to our panel. We have run over time, but it has been fascinating and, as I think was said, very alarming. We are grateful to you for spending the time educating us on the myriad gaps that clearly exist in our regulatory system.

Examination of witnesses

Witnesses: Karin Smyth, Kate Dearden, Phil Harper, Sarah Smith.

Q127   Chair: Welcome back to our session on the science and regulation of hair and beauty products and treatments. For our second panel, I am pleased to welcome Ministers and officials from the Department of Health and Social Care and the Department for Business and Trade.

I will get stuck in. We overran slightly on the last panel, which gave you the opportunity to hear about some of the alarming gaps and problems that were identified in the regulation of non-surgical cosmetic procedures. I will start with the Health Minister. It is a mess, isn’t it? Why is it still such a mess more than a decade after the Keogh review, which identified some of these failings?

Karin Smyth: Thank you, Chair, and thank you to the Committee for this opportunity. Some of the evidence we heard is alarming, and that is why, when this Government came into post, one of the many things I was presented with was ongoing work under the previous Government. In credit to them, they started to take action from 2023 by consulting around the licensing of non-surgical cosmetic products. When that was brought to me, it was one of the areas that I and the then Secretary of State agreed that we would pursue by carrying on with that work and the consultation. We responded to it last year and said that we would regulate. Colleagues here will understand that politicians have different views about regulations and how much the state should regulate. We could have a long philosophical discussion about that, which I suspect we do not want to do—

Chair: No, thank you very much.

Karin Smyth: But we should regulate in this space. I announced that last August, which I think was well-received for many of the reasons that this Committee and others have identified. I am happy to talk through the process that we have been involved in since then to get to where we are now, if that would be helpful.

Q128   Chair: You are saying that it was a good decision to make and that it was right to regulate, but back in 2012, after the Keogh review, it was also the agreement that it was right to regulate. Why is the cosmetics and beauty industry being left to self-regulate? We are two years into this Labour Government, and we have not seen any regulation.

Karin Smyth: I am not sure that I can answer for Governments since 2012, but I am happy to pick out—

Chair: No, but you have had two years.

Karin Smyth: Which is why we agreed, in the response to the consultation last year, that we would regulate.

Q129   Chair: Why are we still consulting when there are clear harms?

Karin Smyth: I am happy to go through the process from there, which is to work through, with the industry and experts, exactly what you regulate and to what level. We have had working groups of experts to work through the idea of a red, amber and green list, with red being the issues of most serious harm, including things like Brazilian butt lifts, which people have heard about. We would then need to bring that back to public consultation before we go forward with issuing regulations and legislation as the parliamentary timetable allows. As a Government, we have committed to making sure that we bring that and licensing forward during this parliamentary term.

One of the issues that you have already heard about is the complexity around definitions. We can talk about this, because I think it is important. It is a fast-moving industry. As soon as one product comes along—I have certainly learned a lot about things that people take and do to themselves, and I personally think it is quite astonishing—the names and procedures change, and new things come on the market. It is about making that regulation right so that we are open-ended and flexible for the future

Crucially, as I know Minister Dearden will talk about, this is a large and important industry that is run mainly by women, for women. We want to make sure that we support and work with the industry. The industry has largely welcomed our approach in order to protect, as ever, the good people, good traders and good businesses, as people want to enjoy the experience of good cosmetics and so on. Working with them to get that right is also important.

Q130   Chair: I accept that it is a complex industry, but in this country, unlike in Denmark, the US or Germany, it is legal to be paid to inject a man’s penis with filler. Unsurprisingly, that has led to significant harms, which have cost not only the individuals concerned but the NHS dearly. Do you think it is acceptable that it is legal in this country for anyone to inject a man’s penis with filler?

Karin Smyth: No, I do not. I will bring Phil in on some of the details. We can all agree that personally, we may or may not want some of these procedures and things that people do or want to do to themselves. The issue for the Government is to find the right level of proportionality to make sure that any legislation captures the right thing at the right time, and is not then subject to a new name, a new chemical product inside something or something else making it more complex that is not captured by the legislation.

Q131   Chair: It seems to me that, in order to deal with the more complex and marginal issues, you are ignoring the harms of clearly unacceptable and currently unregulated issues, such as Brazilian butt lifts. Our sister Committee, the Women and Equalities Committee, identified a number of those back in February. When are you going to take action? You have said that you will do so during this Parliament. The Health Bill is currently going through Parliament. Does it take the action that we require?

Karin Smyth: I have also given evidence to the Women and the Health Committees. The work that these Committees do—and highlight, because a lot of this is about influencing behaviour and making people aware of the dangers—is really helpful in this space. Having gone through the expert committees and engagement committees, some of which I joined personally, over the last few months, we hope to issue a response to that and do public engagement imminently—in the summer—in order to have a response to that by the end of the year. We will also introduce regulations through an SI, certainly by the end of this year or the beginning of next year, to change the law, subject to the normal parliamentary process.

Q132   Chair: So you are promising us an SI by the end of the year.

Karin Smyth: As you will appreciate, Chair, parliamentary scheduling is beyond my pay grade. Our intention is to get that right: to have the legislation ready by the end of the year so that the SI can come into force next year. That is on the red list, on which the things that you are rightly concerned about are clear, but—I will bring in Phil on the details—even the red list is subject to discussion around the edges. The things you have highlighted look, to put it in lay terms, barn-door obvious.

Chair: Yes, but—

Karin Smyth: But not everything is. That is why you need to work closely to capture everything on the red list before going through to the amber and green list, which are again subject to an awful lot of discussion. Do you want to add something on that point, Phil?

Phil Harper: I am happy to. I am Phil Harper, deputy director for professional standards and international workforce in the Department of Health and Social Care. Over recent months, I have been chairing an expert group, with industry leaders, clinicians and regulatory bodies, where we have debated the ins and outs of what should be captured by the red list regime. It will be subject to CQC regulation and will require that only specified healthcare professionals provide some of the procedures that you have highlighted, as well as some others—even among that group, there is debate around what should be included.

The real challenge with this area is that, as has been covered this morning, it is incredibly fast moving. You could pick a procedure or a number of procedures and ban them, and then people would find a workaround—a different way of performing something similar. You would really struggle to keep the legislation up with the fast-moving industry. The approach that we are taking will enable types of procedures to be categorised in legislation, and then we will be able to keep the specific set of treatments outside legislation up to date, so that we can move with the times, informed by industry and clinical experts.

Q133   Chair: I appreciate that it is a complex area, but once again, the rate of progress since 2012—I appreciate that you cannot speak for the previous Government—and the fact that we are continuing with consultations and not bringing forward regulation is disturbing. Can you confirm that we are not waiting to define what will be in the amber and green lists before we bring forward legislation to deal with the red list—the most harmful products and treatments?

Phil Harper: We are prioritising the red list treatments. At the moment, we have legislation being drafted that we will consult upon in the coming weeks. That will enable us to move on to the green and amber.

Q134   Chair: So the legislation will be before Parliament, not to be consulted on, before we define the green and amber?

Phil Harper: We will continue to work in the background on the green and amber lists, but they will be subject to a completely different regime, with a whole range of different complexities that need to be worked through, including considering how the local authorities will run that scheme, enforce it and be funded, and what powers they will have to issue penalties and so on if someone contravenes those requirements.

Q135   Chair: To be clear, this will supersede the patchwork that we have heard about, where London and the rest of the country have different rules and regulations.

Phil Harper: It will bring national consistency and standardisation to education and training requirements as well.

Q136   Samantha Niblett: I am keen to understand why we do not yet have a national licensing scheme, as provided for in the Health and Social Care Act 2022.

Phil Harper: We have been prioritising the work on the high-risk procedures in the first instance, because of the risks and dangers that they pose. That will be a separate regime from the licensing one. There is no desire to delay work on the green and amber lists, which will be subject to the local authority licensing.

Q137   Samantha Niblett: How long is it likely to take them, bearing in mind we are four years on from 2022?

Karin Smyth: The 2022 Act, under the last Government, basically laid the groundwork for being able to bring forward regulations and this process. The last Government then started the consultation on regulating—we can talk a bit more about that, if that is helpful. That work was then presented to the new Government as having been done. It was, “Minister, this work was done by the previous Government. Read through it. What do you now want to do as a new Government?” Every time there is a new Government or new Secretary of State, this all starts again to confirm that the new regime wants to proceed. That is what I agreed to do. The fact that the Government put that into the 2022 Act is helpful, because it allowed us to do this next process and bring forward an SI as part of the regulations, because the Act gave permission to bring forward regulations.

Q138   Samantha Niblett: You mentioned change of Secretary of State. Is the recent change in Secretary of State likely to impact this in any way?

Karin Smyth: No, we are committed to this.

Q139   Samantha Niblett: That is really good to hear. What assessment has been made of the resource implications for environmental health teams and licensing authorities to implement the new scheme? In the previous panel, we heard that between different councils inside and outside London, and different boroughs and wards within London, there were different rules for what those licensing teams could do.

Karin Smyth: This is for the amber and green lists—the licensing of local authorities?

Samantha Niblett: Yes.

Karin Smyth: As part of the settlement in the spending review, we have committed to some funding to start the process to support some of that with local authorities. The fee, as opposed to the licence, will in turn fund that, but as Phil alluded to, we will need to talk very carefully about rolling out the scheme. One of the complexities is how that is done with local authority colleagues because, as you have heard, they will be responsible for monitoring that.

Phil Harper: What we heard this morning endorsed what we had already heard anecdotally, which is that there is appetite for new powers for local authorities to run this scheme and to take action where it needs to be taken. As the Minister says, we have some set-up funding identified, and the scheme will ultimately become self-funding, but there is that desire locally for these powers.

Q140   Samantha Niblett: It is slightly concerning, because on the previous panel, we heard that one of the key challenges with austerity and the stripping of resource is that a headcount of 39 had been lost—I may have got my stats wrong, but it was not an insignificant number—and that was stopping these enforcement officers carrying out their job to help keep people safe.

              Karin Smyth: That is why we put that provision in the spending review. To my earlier point, these are largely well-run, important businesses that provide a service, that are largely run by and for women and that we want to support. That is why we are very pleased to be here together, and Minister Dearden and I have been working together on this.

This is an important local growth industry in all our constituencies and on our high streets, and they want to do a good job. These are also really good jobs for people from our communities, and we want to support them in training. People want to do a good job, provide a good service and have an enjoyable experience, so we want to get it right. That is why there is such a good appetite from local authority colleagues to essentially get it done right and make sure there are no dodgy practices on our high streets.

Samantha Niblett: That answered my next question about this disproportionately affecting women and what we will do for SMEs.

Chair: I am going to come to Kit now, because he has to leave, and then I will come back to you, Martin.

Q141   Kit Malthouse: Thanks very much, Chair, and apologies that I have to go at 11. I just have a couple of questions. First, we heard in the earlier session that, notwithstanding the fact that you are bringing in a licensing regime, a lot of this stuff flows in unregulated through international marketplaces. Is there any plan to do anything about Amazon selling this stuff?

Kate Dearden: I would start from the premise that all our product safety laws are really clear here. Consumer and cosmetic products have to be safe, of course, before being placed on the market. As a Department, we are responsible for enforcing that and for working with businesses, and the OPSS does brilliant work on that. That applies to importers, too, or those acting on their behalf. There is lots of work being done, but there is a problem. Products that might be legal in other countries are only permitted to be supplied in the UK if they comply with those strict obligations too. Where we have seen that happen, we have taken a lot of action at the border, which we can touch on and give you a run-through of those statistics. We are really clear that all products have to be registered with a UK-based responsible person, and there are some really interesting stats to back that up for those non-compliant products where we can take action.

There is a secondary point around online marketplaces, which I can touch on too. Obviously, as the market changes and as e-commerce has changed, that creates new problems for our wider regulatory environment.

Q142   Kit Malthouse: In theory, if they are selling this stuff, you can whack Amazon for doing so—they will be fineable, and they accept their responsibility. They are not like internet companies that say they are not publishers.

Chair: I thought we heard on the last panel that they could not do that because the products were not officially placed on the market.

Kit Malthouse: That is the point I was raising. We were told at the last panel that Amazon were not responsible.

Sarah Smith: Hi, I am Sarah Smith, and I am the deputy chief executive at the Office for Product Safety and Standards. I can absolutely confirm that the person placing any products on the market is held responsible, whether that is an online marketplace, a high street business importing them itself or a major manufacturer.

Q143   Kit Malthouse: Are you aware of whether Amazon has been fined for anything so far?

Sarah Smith: We take very seriously the availability of products online. We have a comprehensive programme.

Kit Malthouse: It is a yes or no—have they been fined?

Sarah Smith: We have not prosecuted Amazon for selling—

Kit Malthouse: But you do know, as we heard earlier, that they are importing harmful stuff.

Sarah Smith: We take action everyday with online marketplaces about identifying products that they have available. They have mechanisms that we can trigger to make sure those products are no longer available to UK consumers. We obviously need them to implement their AI and their human resources to do the things we need them to do to deal with unsafe products.

Q144   Kit Malthouse: But we know—we were just told by the previous panel, and I think you heard it—that they are far and away the biggest funnel of this stuff into the UK.

Sarah Smith: That is not what I recognise.

Kit Malthouse: So you think they are wrong?

Sarah Smith: We are the regulator of the online marketplaces. There are 44 online marketplaces operating in the UK through different models and they are all at different sizes and scales—

Q145   Kit Malthouse: Do you have some stats or ideas of volume?

Sarah Smith: We do controls in the online environment, where we actively work every day to make sure that they have the information they need to do proper controls, because that is their responsibility, not ours as the regulator. We also have a programme of work at the border. We have local government officers working, and they do targeted checks every day.

Kit Malthouse: I have been to Langley. There are a million small parcels a day coming through that warehouse. They have two small scanners that catch a very small number, and that is just looking for cannabis and cigarettes, so the idea that they are going to catch a tube of something at significant levels with the resource that is available is just not feasible, I’m afraid. I do not know whether either of you have ever been to the warehouse at Langley, which is where all the Royal Mail small parcels come through, but it is worth going and seeing it just to realise the scale of the problem—not just on your stuff, but on contraband generally.

Moving on, it does not feel to me like this is an area where we are going to have any kind of certainty that the online marketplaces will not be big funnels, but I want to move on—

Chair: Can I interrupt for a moment? We have a clear contradiction between the evidence you are giving us and the evidence we heard from the last panel, particularly in regard to the powers of enforcement for products that were imported through online marketplaces, as well as on the regulation of those marketplaces and the role of Amazon in particular. We want clarity on that, so our Clerks will follow up with your officials to ensure we get that.

Q146   Kit Malthouse: That will help us to work out what is going on.

I want to ask about another, vaguely related subject: product licensing. One of the things we discussed with the last panel was that there are a number of products that might, at first glance, appear to be harmless for use, but when you use them for many years the effect may accumulate. I revealed to the Committee last time, to some amusement, that I have been using the same moisturiser for 30 years. I specifically chose it because its recipe did not change. But I have often wondered as I look in the mirror in the morning, “Is this stuff building up in my skin? Are these otherwise trace chemicals—a bit like mercury builds up in the liver of fish over the years—building up?”

In particular, we are very concerned about hair relaxers, which the Chair has already raised. The chemicals are pretty harmful, although perhaps less so at a low level or with a single use. But does it have the ability to accumulate in the skin and affect the keratin of the hair—or whatever it is—and all the rest of it? Are there any plans to do studies into the longitudinal use of any of these products and then take that into account in licensing?

Kate Dearden: We are aware of the concerns that have been raised by the Committee and previous witnesses regarding ingredients in certain hair products. Of course, restrictions on substances do exist, with limits on permitted quantities. Any cosmetics for consumers that are found to be above that level are obviously not permitted to be placed on the UK market, and we have the power to remove them if necessary. Again, it is about that expectation of businesses.

Q147   Kit Malthouse: Sorry, Minister; the point I am making is that while the chemicals in the cosmetic itself may below the limit, repeated use may accumulate in me to a level that is dangerous. Are there any plans to look at that, at that level of research?

Kate Dearden: Yes, of course. The OPSS is currently reviewing the scientific evidence on chemicals in hair straighteners, and are prioritising those substances in that assessment. Is there anything you want to add on that current review, Sarah?

Sarah Smith: Yes, we know about the concerns around sodium hydroxide and other chemicals—

Chair: And the endocrine disruptors.

Sarah Smith: Yes, and we are obviously aware of the research that has been published in the US. We are very fortunate to have our Scientific Advisory Group on Chemical Safety—esteemed experts in chemical and biological safety who give advice to the Minister about—

Q148   Chair: Are they reviewing this data and conducting new research, particularly into the intergenerational effects and the impact on children?

Sarah Smith: Yes.

Chair: They are. Okay.

Q149   Kit Malthouse: Finally from me, we have heard about the latest thing in this age of social media: the frog poison thing that is going around. I read in the paper that it has resulted in some fatalities. Is there any plan for real-time Government messaging on social media, from a public health point of view, that says, “This stuff that’s appearing is dangerous. Do not use it”? I can go online and find people promoting this stuff to me on TikTok and Instagram, saying, “This is great.” Every day I wake up to something new. The latest one is the olive oil and lemon shot in the morning; everybody seems to be doing that. Where are the Government on a real-time message saying, “We have detected this”? As the chaps before told us, we are detecting this stuff appearing on a daily basis; should there be an instant-rebuttal function for the Department of Health?

Kate Dearden: The Department of Health can go first and then I’ll go.

Kit Malthouse: Well, whoever—I don’t mind who answers.

Karin Smyth: There is on both. It is a good point, and I partly alluded to it earlier. Mr Malthouse, you will be aware that when Government try to announce a message, it does not always get much pick-up, whereas even in the depths of last August we had a lot interest from saying, finally, that we would regulate. That was largely driven by—I pay tribute to them—a lot of journalists, and particularly a lot of women journalists, who have followed individual cases and highlighted them. They see it in their own social media and they are very alive to it. I have learned an awful lot of things, including from civil servants and colleagues in the Department and around, and from family members who have said, “Oh yeah, I’ve heard about this stuff.”

There is an appetite for us being in that space to try to advertise and make people aware of some harms and the need to check products, check procedures and check the NHS website—Phil will remind me of exactly what is where. We have information on the NHS website.

Q150   Kit Malthouse: But doesn’t it have to be outbound?

Karin Smyth: We do try to speak to influencers and all those people, to get into the right channels—absolutely. We are doing that as much as we can. I think, Mr Malthouse, you are saying, “If a new thing comes up, can we respond like that?” I don’t know whether you want to pick up on that, Phil. That is one of the issues we have: things are coming on stream so quickly. There is a need for the regulations to be proportionate, and open, to allow new things to come on stream.

Phil Harper: It just underlines the need to be future-proofed in how we address some of these things. It is also worth saying that the Advertising Standards Authority have taken and do take action when they see things that are advertised and that are making false claims—

Kit Malthouse: It takes months.

Phil Harper: That is an additional safeguard.

Kate Dearden: Perhaps I can come in on the work we do with trusted partners in providing grants to raise awareness among consumers about potential risks. As an example of how this works in practice, the OPSS provided grant funding to the CTSI for the Cost of Beauty campaign. That was targeting awareness on teeth-whitening and skin-lightening products.

It is about recognising, as platforms crop up, the risks, particularly for young girls and women, from certain products and making sure that they are aware of those risks. We will continue to do a lot of that work and assess its impact, and see where we can do more and be more reactive. I really take your point, Kit, about what else we can do to provide that support. Public awareness is so important on these platforms.

Kit Malthouse: In another part of our universe, we are having a debate about how responsible the social media platforms should be for the information that they are promoting to young people.

Chair: Thank you very much, Kit. I appreciate the work that is being done generally to raise awareness of the risks associated with certain beauty products, but in terms of responding to viral products, what we are hearing is that there isn’t any response—any immediate response or any proactive responding. We also know, from our inquiry into misinformation, that the Government are not taking measures to address misinformation in this area. The Government are also not taking measures to address the digital advertising incentives. I know the ASA is responsible only for advertising when something is being advertised; it is not responsible for what influencers say and so on. I think there is a gap and that the public are suffering as a consequence.

Q151   Martin Wrigley: It sounds like you are doing good work in the areas that you cover, but I am still not quite convinced that we will be covering all the gaps between the various different definitions of a cosmetic, an injectable and so on. I hope that your statutory instrument will fill those gaps. It is a challenge to do that in a way that is adaptable. I challenge anybody to do anything that will be future-proof—nothing can be future-proofed—but I ask you not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good and delay it.

One of the things I am always interested in is the cost of inaction as opposed to the cost of action. We have talked about cost a lot of times. Many of these procedures cause immense human suffering, and some of the stories that we hear are absolutely dreadful, but it is always down to the NHS to put things right. That is where people turn when something has gone horribly wrong. Do we have any idea of how many people are coming to the NHS for treatment in the case of botched processes and practices and dodgy things that fall through the cracks, and what that is costing the NHS? If not, why not?

Karin Smyth: The data is not great. At the end of the day, people are free to travel to other places to do things—we cannot stop people getting on aeroplanes, for example. The data is poor. There have been some small studies. There is an estimate from the ONS on how many people travelled abroad for medical treatment, and that includes a huge range of treatments. We do not have reliable data, anecdotally, and that is why some clinicians and people are working with us to put that right. Certainly, from the experience of talking to some of them, they see some terrible results.

Q152   Martin Wrigley: There is a different question about travelling versus what is happening here in the UK. It is more interesting to think about what is happening here in the UK that causes cost to the NHS. From your answer, I take it that there is nothing other than an idea of how many people are travelling for such treatments.

Phil Harper: The data on this is really poor; it is not something that is easily accessible to us. Some small-scale studies have been done, but they are specifically in relation to the costs of aftercare from cosmetic tourism. They have indicated that the costs for that aftercare range from £6,000 to £24,000 per patient for the NHS. Those studies are very small-scale, but we can be sure that there are implications not just for the individuals who are coming to harm but for the NHS, which is having to pick up the bill. That is one of the reasons why we are really keen to crack on with this work on both the licensing and the high-risk restrictions.

Q153   Chair: I just want to clarify this, because I do not think Martin’s question has been answered, inasmuch as we are not asking you to look at how many people are travelling abroad, or even how many people are entering unregulated clinics. We are asking you whether, when people come to the NHS with sepsis, abscesses or tissue necrosis, they are asked about, or data is collected on, that was caused by an unregulated product or treatment.

Karin Smyth: If I could put another hat on, people turn up for treatment in the NHS having done all sorts of things. Generally, the clinician treats whoever is in front of them for the condition they present with. For all sorts of reasons, how they have got there is not routinely collected as part of that treatment. We can specify more for you in writing about how some of the data is collected. We would need to be thinking it through as a process point, and thinking about how to say to someone who turns up, “What happened?” so that person could disclose, “Well, I went to this place and had this done to myself,” or, “I did something else.” People have private lives; we do not generally ask people how they got to the state of where they are when they come in.

Q154   Chair: If someone has broken their leg, don’t we ask them how they did it?

Karin Smyth: Yes. We can give you data on when that sort of thing happens, but is that material to their treatment?

Q155   Chair: So we do collect data on causes in some cases?

Karin Smyth: In some cases, and we can give you some of that. But asking people in some cases, “What happened? Where did you go?” and collecting that data in a fashion that is useful to then direct something would be quite an exercise.

Q156   Martin Wrigley: Intriguing. I am sure we do that when there are breakouts of communicable diseases and things, because they are notifiable.

Karin Smyth: We do. Notifiable diseases are different.

Martin Wrigley: This is something that could help us to quantify the scale of the problem in the UK. I suspect some people will not wish to say, which is entirely fine, but that does not mean that we should not record when people voluntarily say what they have done and how they got there. I suspect that many people will say, “I had this injection from blah, blah, blah and my face has blown up like a balloon.” That would certainly be a first reaction that one might expect. Are there any plans to look at or try to recover some of the costs to the NHS where corrective treatments and treatments abroad have been taken? You talk about looking at the numbers abroad; has that been considered?

Karin Smyth: Not to my knowledge. Has something been discussed?

Phil Harper: No, there are not any plans to do that, but, notwithstanding the fact that people have the freedom to make the choices that they choose to make, there has been work done to try to highlight the risks of people travelling abroad. There is some guidance online that people can look at to find out what to look for and what to think through before doing that. The Department also partnered with TikTok on a campaign last year to highlight some of the risks around travelling abroad for cosmetic treatment and to provide checklists that people might want to use when considering that as an option.

Q157   Chair: Just to confirm, then, there is no assessment of the overall cost to the NHS of botched and unregulated treatments, and there are no plans to do so.

Karin Smyth: There is no reliable data currently, and we do not have any plans. I am not suggesting anything it if it becomes more of a problem. Our approach is to make responsible people aware of the risks, to license and, as we are doing with the red list, to make some of those treatments not possible in this country. As I said before, we can use influencers and other people, who are very willing, because they see the effects on their colleagues—obviously, the very sad death had a profound effect on many people. To my earlier point, there is a reception out there and on social media, and it is for good actors to warn people about some of this stuff. It is a constant dialogue.

Q158   Chair: I am surprised by that, but we will look at it as part of our report.

I want to ask both Ministers about consumer complaints and redress. Witnesses described inconsistent responses when complaints about cosmetic products or procedures are made, and we heard some very moving and distressing testimony about how individuals have been dismissed or made to feel like silly women when they have reported botched treatments. What changes are needed to ensure that consumers can get redress if they are harmed by a product or treatment?

Kate Dearden: It is really concerning to hear about people’s experiences; thank you for raising them with us today. If a consumer is harmed by a product, it is a safety issue and it should be reported through trading standards and citizens advice. I know you heard a lot about trading standards from the previous panel. Of course, that information is passed to OPSS in the serious cases, and OPSS has a role in supporting trading standards. There are various routes, from compensation under product liability to wider consumer rights remedies and regulatory action, which OPSS then investigates. If it is harm by a medical treatment, it is for MHRA and colleagues in DHSC.

With regard to culture, which you touched on, maybe I can bring Sarah in, but consumers’ ability to have quick redress and to report and immediately flag products that are causing harm is of serious concern. Where we can, we support the excellent work of trading standards. We are currently reviewing their enforcement duties as a Department, and officials have that work under way.

I also want to flag that we recognise we need to strengthen our wider product safety framework. Perhaps I can touch on that later, because it is important, in consumers’ experience, to be able to report harm, particularly in response to technological changes, and consumers’ ability to interact and purchase products. Therefore, the responsibility is on businesses to ensure that products sold online are safe. They have roles and responsibilities, and if they do not abide by the law, there are penalties and enforcements there.

Q159   Chair: Just to be specific about this, let us say that a consumer has a terrible experience with a gel manicure—we have heard evidence about some of them—or with a filler that has been injected. What you are saying is that they need to go to trading standards and report it to them. We have heard about the lack of resources within trading standards. Is that your recommendation for what they need to do?

Kate Dearden: Yes, and then of course to report to OPSS the serious harm and the concern around that product’s safety. It is for OPSS to investigate and then work closely with local authorities, which have budgets provided from MHCLG for trading standards.

Q160   Chair: Have you heard from trading standards that it is very hard to prosecute? What redress will the consumer get in that situation?

Kate Dearden: If it is regarding a breach of consumer regulations, that is where OPSS steps in with product recall, working with trading standards.

Q161   Chair: And they will not get money back, or compensation?

Kate Dearden: If it is regarding the product liability, that is where the compensation would come in, if I am correct. But if it is regarding that product and the regulation itself, obviously there are impacts and outcomes for those businesses and for the supply of that product. Additionally, when it comes to any misleading consumer claims about products, that would be unfair commercial practice, which is slightly separate. There are different routes depending on the circumstance.

Q162   Chair: Can I put another point to you? I think that Sarah will be best placed to answer. It is about an issue that has been raised with us, which is about the labelling of hair-relaxing products as “No lye, gentle or mild”, because they still contain lye or less reactive chemicals, but not at the levels considered necessary for them to be the main relaxing agent. If they are being marketed as “gentle” or “safe”, are they being marketed inappropriately, particularly when they are being marketed towards black children?

Sarah Smith: Do you want me to take that one specifically?

Chair: Could you take both of them together?

Sarah Smith: Okay. As well as consumers being able to exercise their own civil rights, and the fact that we have rights to redress through consumer law, we have a system for reporting serious and undesirable effects on consumers. We have very low reporting levels of that. That is something that obviously we want to think quite a lot about, because clearly hearing directly from consumers who have been impacted is a really important source of information for us in keeping the cosmetics product regime live. We get very few SUEs, as we call them—serious and undesirable effect reports—so that is something that we are actively looking at. There is also the SAG-CS, the Scientific Advisory Group on Chemical Safety. It is not just looking at the data that we get in, but at the literature, what is being said on social media and all those things. The data is a lifeblood for us as a regulator.

Q163   Chair: Why is it in the interest of a consumer who has been harmed to report a SUE? They are not going to get any compensation or any direct redress, are they?

Sarah Smith: Potentially, for consumers who are harmed by products, the civil regime is available, which we are also in the middle of considering. We have asked the Law Commission to conduct a review of the UK’s product liability regime. That is currently in train. It is about recognising that products can harm people, and about the fact that there is a suitable regime in place, not through the regulator but through the civil courts, for them to seek redress for harm and injury caused.

Q164   Chair: It does seem that it is a long process for consumers to seek redress, and that there are not incentives for them. You talked about the lack of reporting; there are not really incentives for them to report.

I am also not clear how the cumulative long-term risks from exposures to multiple products that salon workers, for example, would experience are identified and investigated.

Sarah Smith: Again, this goes to the work of the Scientific Advisory Group on Chemical Safety.

Chair: So they are working on this as well.

Sarah Smith: They are looking across the regime at chemicals in the round. Obviously, cosmetics are part of a chemical set.

Chair: They are chemicals, yes.

Sarah Smith: A lot of work goes on across Government around how chemicals impact the population, whether that is in cosmetics, food or other exposures. That is why we have the committee on chemicals in consumer products to look at what the effect is in those areas, as well as all the other work that goes on with DEFRA, the committee on carcinogenic chemicals and all these kinds of things. They are part of an infrastructure in which all that scientific research is being considered in the round.

Q165   Chair: Can you share with this Committee the most recent outputs of that?

Sarah Smith: The committee was set up in 2021 and has 10 members. So far, it has published 19 opinions, all of which are available on the gov.uk website.

Q166   Chair: One of the areas you are looking at now is hair relaxers and their impact. It is important to move on, but I want to raise, with regard to that committee—this is my understanding, but perhaps you can confirm this—of longitudinal and particularly of sex-specific research. Minister Smyth, you have spoken quite passionately about the absence of women’s health research and the lack of inclusion of women’s health issues in the scientific base. Are you looking specifically at addressing the historical paucity of research into women’s health and at providing more information about the impact of particular ingredients and products on women?

Karin Smyth: I am not really sure. The research goes through the NIHR as that comes forward. The Government are not looking to direct research to that particular issue, if that is your question.

Q167   Chair: Yes: it was about whether the Government or the committee that Sarah Smith mentioned are looking to do anything to address the paucity of women’s health research as it applies to cosmetic safety.

Karin Smyth: We are doing a lot around women’s health research, as you have kindly outlined. I do not think that there is anything in train particularly on cosmetic safety, but we can confirm anything to you in writing if that is helpful.

Chair: Yes, please do. I do not want to make gender stereotypes, but it is a significant part of many women’s lives, as we have heard, and an increasing part of men’s lives. The fact that women have been excluded so much from scientific research clearly has an impact on product safety as well. If you could write to us about that, it would be helpful.

Q168   Samantha Niblett: I want to talk about the effectiveness of advertising regulations. It is peculiar that I am about to ask this question, because I recently spoke in a Westminster Hall debate on, essentially, the shadow-banning online that prevents women from accessing information that supports their healthcare, when simple words like “breasts” or “ovaries” mean that a post is blocked or banned or a page is taken down. There is some sort of insane thing going on when that happens, and meanwhile somebody can access things online that are actually going to cause them harm. Is more effective regulation needed to prevent the promotion and advertising of potentially dangerous products and treatments online?

Kate Dearden: I will start, and Sarah might want to come in on the Advertising Standards Authority. Misleading consumer claims are really serious. They are also not fair for the good businesses that abide by the law and have good practices. They are ultimately undercut by businesses that do not, and they do not want that either.

There are serious consequences. If there is evidence of misleading consumer claims, that would be with the CMA. The fine is up to 10% of global turnover for lots of businesses that break the law. That is the route for misleading consumer claims and unfair commercial practices. Sarah, I am not sure if you want to add anything on the Advertising Standards Authority, but we can follow up afterwards if not.

Sarah Smith: The Advertising Standards Authority is the regulator of advertising in the UK, including online, but we can catch up with them on specifics.

Q169   Samantha Niblett: It would be really useful to know. If you cannot answer this now, there are a couple of other considerations to factor into your response; we can probably send them to you as well. One is about the extent to which it is possible, given the range of online platforms where products are sold, to prevent the sale of products that are illegal in the UK. How can you ensure that stronger products, regulated for professional use only, are not entering the general consumer market, including through online platforms? How can consumers be better informed and educated about the risks of buying products online or from unknown sellers? Kate, it sounds as if you are talking about after the fact—“If something bad happens, we can pursue this”—but it feels as if there is some work we can do at the front end to help to prevent it. If you could write to us on those questions, that would be great.

Kate Dearden: I agree. We recognise that non-compliant products can be easily available online, that consumers might have access to those products and that our product safety framework needs updating in that respect. Sorry to mention another consultation, Chair, but we are consulting on that. The original legislation is from 2005, so it is important that we update our wider product safety framework to reflect what we are seeing online, the way people can purchase products, the experiences of consumers and particularly the responsibility on online marketplaces. You heard from Sarah that the OPSS works closely with online marketplaces and reminds them of their responsibilities and the strict safety requirements by which they have to abide.

We are currently working on where we need to modernise that framework. The consultation closes later this month. We will be reviewing all those responses and are happy to keep the Committee involved in that work. We look forward to hearing what more you might have to share as part of that and what you have heard. We recognise that we are looking at once-in-a-generation reforms, because it has been that long since we have looked at them. It is really important.

Q170   Chair: We are coming to a close, but I do have a couple of points for clarification. You talked about online marketplaces. Give me some examples of online marketplaces.

Sarah Smith: This is a big focus for OPSS, as you understand, because that is where a lot of consumer transactions now take place and they are all unique. We estimate that there are 44 online marketplaces in the UK, including very familiar things like Amazon, eBay, Vinted and Meta—Facebook Marketplace. They all have different models for interaction between consumers and business. That is the important thing for us. They create the bridge between the consumer and the business and are involved in the supply chain. When they are involved in the supply chain, that is when we hold them accountable for the products that they sell and the sellers to whom they allow access to the platform.

Q171   Chair: That is the point that I wanted to clarify. We heard from the previous panel that products could be imported into the UK and that people would be held accountable only if they were placed on the market. Simply importing a product online did not count as placing it on the market. Are you saying that that is placing on the market and that people are therefore subject to all the regulation associated with products that are placed on the UK market?

Sarah Smith: That is our position in OPSS. If people make products available—

Chair: Not “make available”—if someone imports it. Let’s look at it that way.

Sarah Smith: If they import the product themselves, they become the importer of that product.

Q172   Chair: So that means that the salon or the individual businesswoman is responsible, not the online marketplace.

Sarah Smith: Potentially, yes. The online marketplace is what we would call, in certain circumstances, a distributor in the current law. They also have responsibilities under our current framework. That is why, as the Minister has outlined, we are in the process of consulting.

Q173   Chair: I am trying to understand where we are now. To be honest, I am confused by all the different consultations and where they are going to come to, but I will come on to that in a moment. Where we are now is that the products and cosmetic treatments that we have been talking about, as far as the Department for Business and Trade is concerned, are regulated under UK regulations the moment they appear in this country.

Sarah Smith: Yes. If they are imported into this country, they are subject to our rules and regulations.

Q174   Chair: We will definitely seek clarification on that. Karin and Kate, can each of you give me your top priority for regulatory reform in the cosmetic sector, and what specific changes consumers can look forward to in the current Parliament?

Karin Smyth: The fact that we are acting and prepared to regulate was a big step forward, and I think that has been well received. I do not think we should just bank that; we as politicians understand that the whole role of Government regulating in a space is a big step.

Q175   Chair: Sorry, Minister, but are you saying that it is a big step that we are prepared to regulate to stop women being injected with dangerous chemicals? You are saying that for this Government that is considered a big step, even though the Keogh report recommended it back in 2012?

Karin Smyth: And the fact that nothing was done since 2012, but we have decided to do it and regulate in this space? Yes, I do think that is good step forward. I take the point that it has taken that long, but within a year of this Government coming in, we had decided to regulate, and we have continued to do so.

Keeping people safe and recognising the harm that is being done is absolutely what we are doing. As Phil Harper has outlined, we are working closely with experts, clinicians and the industry to produce a red-amber-green list so that our constituents can be confident, and so that business owners can be confident to work with us to ensure that they are safe to provide what is a well-received and popular service.

It is about getting that right, which includes having these sorts of Committees, as I said at the beginning, highlighting the harms. In the end, people take responsibility for their actions, and we want to help them with that. We are taking forward this work and getting it done quickly. Having the Committee and other people’s work to support that is a really positive step forward, and we want to get it right.

I take Mr Wrigley’s point on future-proofing. You cannot make everything totally future-proof. This is very fast moving and really complex, as you and your previous panel have outlined. New chemicals are coming into play all the time, and I am constantly surprised about what is coming into the marketplace. Keeping up with that and having legislation that is fit for purpose is a difficult task, as we all understand, but it is one that we are absolutely embracing and making sure happens, for the very reasons that this Committee is investigating.

Q176   Chair: And you are committing to this Committee that the legislation will be ready by the end of the year.

Karin Smyth: That is the task we have set everybody, absolutely.

Q177   Chair: Can I clarify something? The Department for Education is not represented here. Is it involved in supporting and developing the training and qualifications necessary to ensure that the regulation of this sector does not prevent this from being an opportunity for young people in our communities to join the sector?

Karin Smyth: Training is a big issue, and I have alluded to why it is so important. These are good jobs for people in our constituencies. We want them to be well trained and doing a good job.

Q178   Chair: Who is responsible for that training?

Phil Harper: So—

Chair: Is it going to be a complicated answer?

Karin Smyth: Yes, it is.

Phil Harper: When it comes to the red list, that will be limited to specified healthcare professionals who are regulated, so that is already taken care of in that sense. The work we need to do for the licensing scheme is to determine what the standardised training and education qualification requirements are, which will be a part of that work.

Q179   Chair: Who will do that work?

Phil Harper: We will work with the sector, the Department for Education, the Ministry of Justice on enforcement, and MHCLG on how the process for licensing operates. It is a big undertaking.

Q180   Chair: Okay. Will you summarise which Departments and groups are involved? Finally, Minister Dearden, will you tell me your top priorities for regulatory reform in this sector? What specific changes can consumers expect to see? Will that require legislation?

Kate Dearden: Thank you, Chair, for the opportunity to discuss this important issue. I really welcome the inquiry, and I and officials look forward to hearing the findings on how we can work together to protect consumers from unsafe products. I mentioned the ambitious reforms we are working on, which will give us the opportunity to update the product safety framework, a significant part of our work and my priorities. It is absolutely key for consumers that we modernise the framework, strengthen the rules for them and maintain public confidence in the role that regulation plays across the UK. We will review the cosmetics regulations in due course, to ensure that they are fit for purpose. Looking at whether national and local regulators have all the powers that they need to act will be a key part of our work, too, where there is evidence of harm in consumer products or cosmetics. Those reforms will be important this year.

Q181   Chair: I have to press you on a timeline. The Health Minister was helpful in sharing one with us.

Kate Dearden: I mentioned the consultation that we are running. When it closes at the end of this month, we will review the responses and publish the Government response. In the process, with the usual timelines for legislation on reviews and consultations, it will be as soon as possible if legislation is required and parliamentary time allows. We will bring that across as soon as possible.

Q182   Chair: Will it be in this Session?

Kate Dearden: I would really hope so. The wider product safety framework has not been updated since 2005, so it is really overdue and necessary. You have heard today just why that is so important in cosmetics in particular.

Karin and I are keen to work on this across Government. We recognise the importance of the sector to our communities, all our constituents and those brilliant businesses that want to do well, to succeed, and not to be undercut by those who do not play by the same rules, who do not protect consumers in the way that they should and who use unsafe products. It is really important in our work, and in that of the Health Department and others across Government, that we can have the strongest duties on online marketplaces and businesses, hold them to account where we need to, and look where we need to legislate and regulate further if necessary.

Chair: Thank you, Minister Dearden, Minister Smyth and the officials. We have been really pleased about your ability to give us evidence and to respond to our questions, but I think it is true to say that the Committee has been alarmed and concerned about what we have heard.

There is no way to present the lack of speed at which this has happened and the harms that are happening as anything but a failure of Government. That probably speaks to what the Prime Minister means when he talks about the difficulty of making things happen. These are changes that really should have happened long ago. There is consensus around them. Even though the technology is evolving, the harms have been with us for a long time. Our concern, as a Committee, is about the scientific underpinning of products and treatments, about the understanding of the harms that they do, and about having confidence that the Government are addressing that.

We have learned a lot today—thank you. It was essential that we pressed you on timelines and on change actually happening. After 12 years, our constituents expect that. Let me close by thanking everyone.