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Gordon MP Condems Lost Opportunity on Common Chargers
Gordon MP Richard Thomson has condemned the UK Government for deciding not to introduce a requirement for a common electronic device charger - a move which could have saved consumers cash and prevented many tonnes of annual electronic waste.
The SNP MP had written to the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy arguing that UK consumers shouldn’t miss out on the benefits of a common standard moving forward. EU legislation requiring common charging devices across different electronic products was recently introduced by the European Parliament.
Commenting, Richard Thomson MP said:
“This is a missed opportunity to not only save people money but also reduce the amount of electronic waste which ends up being binned when people upgrade or change devices. It’s frankly a disgrace that it requires legislation like this to get companies to act responsibly, but it’s an even bigger scandal that the UK Government doesn’t intend to do anything about it.
“The EU law is practical, pragmatic, is designed to reduce electronic waste and save consumers’ expense. It seems that the anti-European stance of the UK Government extends to rejecting a rather straightforward example of a common standard benefit in favour of ideological imperatives, and it is consumers and the environment who will lose at the end of the day.”
In a letter to Mr Thomson, Paul Scully MP, who was until last week Minister for Small Business, Consumers & Labour Markets and Minister for London, stated the UK Government had “no current plans to introduce similar requirements in domestic law”
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