Recommendation 17

The OPSS explained that, under current legislation, online marketplaces are not responsible for the safety of products sold by third parties on their platforms. This responsibility remains with the individual product sellers, who may be small home sellers or businesses based overseas that are harder to reach to ensure compliance.31 The OPSS told us that it has a dedicated team examining the safety of products sold online and has removed 5,000 unsafe product listings in the first three months of this year. Despite this, there is concern around gaps in regulatory powers to tackle the issue. Regulatory powers are limited over sellers based overseas if no UK business is involved in the supply chain, and local regulators experience legislative challenges in enforcing regulations on home sellers.32 The Department noted that regulation is also a challenge simply due to the large number of small sellers in operation. It recognised that these issues may have resulted in an unlevel regulatory playing field between online sellers and high street retailers, with the latter being subject to greater levels of regulatory enforcement.33