[Neil]

Originally Posted by MargaretR

Has the earth point of any socket ever been known to become 'live'?

There are items called 'socket checkers' which can detect malfunctions
Equilibra Flexible & Professional Grounding Products

All it takes for the earth pin to become live is a bad connection of the ring main earths in the consumer unit and an earth fault on an appliance or cable.

I had a metal kettle a couple of years ago that faulted live to earth so the whole metal kettle would be live if the earth had been missing in the socket or consumer unit.