ABSTRACT
An effective consumer safety policy cannot be confined to rules that dictate what shall be marketed, and under what conditions. 'Post-market' controls must be put in place that will allow action to be taken if unsafe products are released and pose a threat to consumers. Prior to 1961 safety regulation in the UK comprised a patchwork of product-specific laws. Individual measures regulated goods such as medicines and fireworks, but there was no single statute capable of imposing obligations relating to safety on producers generally. Severe safety problems could be dealt with only by securing the adoption of new primary legislation, a laborious and cumbersome process. The existence of two sources of product safety law in the UK raises questions of a constitutional nature that are equally of great commercial significance. The two regimes of control are not coextensive. The notions of 'safe' under the Act and the Directive, as implemented, run in parallel.
