Lithium-ion Battery Safety Bill [HL]
Monday 29th July 2024
(5 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Lithium-ion Battery Safety Bill [HL] 2024-26 Read Hansard Text
Lithium-ion Battery Safety Bill [HL]
Friday 6th September 2024
(3 months, 3 weeks ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Lithium-ion Battery Safety Bill [HL] 2024-26 Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Redesdale (LD)
My Lords, House of Lords Private Members’ Bills are rarely successful in reaching the statute book. I should know—I have introduced quite a few over the years. Their purpose is often to raise the issues in the Bill and encourage the Government to bring forward their own legislation. In that regard, the lithium-ion safety Bill has been incredibly successful: we have only got to Second Reading and already the Government have responded by publishing the Product Regulation and Metrology Bill.
Of course, as the Minister will say, that Bill will cover many of the areas in my Private Member’s Bill. In the light of that, I will therefore look to amend the Bill in Committee. However, while going through the clauses, there are a number of areas where I would like to question the Minister concerning the scope of the Product Regulation and Metrology Bill. I start by welcoming the Minister to her new role and thanking her for arranging a briefing from the Bill team, which was incredibly helpful and constructive.
The basis of this Bill is about protecting the public. Lithium-ion batteries are a vital part of the UK’s transition to a greener, lower-carbon future. Indeed, the acceptance of these batteries as an integral part of our lives ranges from laptops through to the electric bike I have parked outside the building today; it is, of course, an issue that we are not allowed to bring electric bikes into the building because of the potential fire risk.
The way we treat lithium-ion batteries shows how safe people feel about them. Although the vast majority of batteries are safe, there are two areas that need to be focused on: the fires that can be caused by poor-quality batteries and chargers; and the problems associated with disposal. Electrical Safety First, a prime mover in drafting this Bill, has calculated that, on average, an e-bike fire or e-scooter fire occurs once every two days in London—a worrying trend that is happening across the country. Since 2020, lithium-ion battery fires linked to the charging of e-bikes and e-scooters have been linked to 13 deaths in the UK, with many other people seriously injured or hospitalised—including, of course, members of the fire service—and significant damage caused to property.
Lithium-ion battery fires are caused by thermal runaway. The reaction in the cells of the lithium-ion battery produces an exothermic reaction that cascades through all the cells of the battery; this causes a prolonged release of energy and results in fires with temperatures exceeding 600 degrees Celsius. The batteries release toxic gases such as hydrofluoric acid, which corrodes the lungs. Once they have started, lithium-ion battery fires are almost impossible to extinguish with traditional firefighting methods as the battery creates its own oxygen.
Although the risk of fire is low, the ways in which people charge their e-bikes and e-scooters mean that these fires can be particularly dangerous. Many devices are charged in halls or stairwells—and often overnight, which is one of the reasons for the number of deaths associated with fires at home.
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
Forgive me for interrupting the noble Lord’s extremely interesting and important speech so early. Can I just ask at the outset whether this legislation proposal addresses the future? We know that a great tide of new technologies is going to replace lithium-ion. I have a list in front of me now: sodium-based batteries, graphene batteries and manganese oxide batteries. Most of them are being pushed by the Chinese. Does the noble Lord’s legislation look forward to this new scene and in any way address the obvious problems that are going to come with this new generation of different technologies for batteries?
Lord Redesdale (LD)
The simple answer is no, I am afraid. Obviously, there will be a new generation of sodium batteries with their own problems, but they will, I hope, be extremely safe when brought to market.
There is a growing awareness of the fire risk from faulty batteries or defective chargers. However, less well known is the area of disposal. Many batteries end up in the waste stream without being segregated. Batteries are presenting acute challenges for operators in the metal recycling industry. The British Metals Recycling Association has estimated that each year more than 200 fires at metal recycling plants are caused by lithium-ion batteries, with damaging environmental impacts including harmful emissions being released into the atmosphere and contamination of firefighting waters. The insurance company Zurich has seen claims for lithium-ion fires increase significantly over the past few years, and research from Recycle Your Electricals shows that battery fires in bin lorries and at waste sites in the UK have reached an all-time high of more than 1,200 in 2024—an increase of 71% from 700 in 2022.
A consultation by the Government on battery disposal is planned. That is timely, but we should recognise that the rate of recycling is low; I suggest that the figures on recycling mask that because fewer batteries are actually recycled than are reflected in the figures. When I met it, the British and Irish Portable Battery Association set out some of the problems associated with recycling. One area worth considering is working on solutions to regulations to allow batteries to be collected, perhaps by delivery companies or supermarket delivery drivers. This could be a safe way of recycling the millions of used batteries that are in people’s drawers around the country without people dumping them in the rubbish; I suggest that many noble Lords have a whole box full of unrecycled batteries that they leave in places and always forget to take to the recycling centre.
I was going to give a long speech about disposable vapes, another real issue here. However, due to time, I will leave my noble friend Lord Foster to deal with that and instead move on to the clauses in the Bill. Clause 1 details the purposes of the Bill, including
“to better protect … householders, and … communities from the dangers of lithium-ion batteries”
and
“to increase public confidence in, and acceptance of, Battery Energy Storage Systems”.
Clause 2 would require the fire service, the Environment Agency and the Health and Safety Executive to be statutory consultees on planning for new stand-alone battery energy storage systems. This would allow for a greater understanding of the risk profile and necessary planning to allow any future incidents to be responded to by the relevant services. This clause may be addressed by Defra and the EA in the consultation they are taking forward and the work they are undertaking, but making sure that the fire and emergency services can access these batteries in the unlikely event of a fire is really important—especially if the batteries do not need planning permission because they are retrofitted into sites close to residential areas.
Clause 3 would require the Secretary of State to make regulations requiring the operator of online marketplaces to take reasonable steps to ensure that the products sold on their platforms conform to the relevant safety standards. Currently, substandard and dangerous products relating to and including high-risk lithium-ion batteries, such as universal chargers or ill-made conversion kits, are continually bought and sold across a plethora of online marketplaces, presenting risks to those purchasing and using such products. The health briefing from the Bill team indicates that this clause will be covered in the new Bill coming forward. However, I hope that the Minister can ensure that there is a focus on conversion and charging kits because this is where most of the fires occur.
Clause 4 would introduce third-party certification of all e-bike and e-scooter batteries before they can be placed on the UK market. This is a similar requirement to that for other high-risk products such as heavy machinery and fireworks. Having a dedicated safety standard to monitor and enforce compliance would also aid trading standards and the Office for Product Safety and Standards in their duties. This morning when I took my bike out, I read the back of the charger. It does have a CE mark, which gave me confidence—until I talked to members of the industry, who said, “That might not give you all the confidence that you really need”. I am fortunate that I charge my bike in a bike shed outside, on that basis.
Clause 5 would introduce safety standards for ancillary products associated with these devices, such as a standard for conversion kits and chargers. This would reduce the risk of improper battery systems powering converted e-bikes and the risk of overcharging the battery, which can lead to thermal runaway.
Clause 6 would introduce regulations for the disposal and safety information supplied with the battery, giving clear information on the disposal requirements and the cell chemistry in the battery. This clause would help to reduce the number of fires at waste disposal sites and in bin lorries and provide information about the chemicals that people may have been exposed to, helping healthcare professionals to administer appropriate treatment.
I look forward to the Minister’s response. In light of the Product Regulation and Metrology Bill, I have feeling that this Bill might not sail through the House and on to the Commons. However, I will be looking to perhaps move forward to Committee, where I would address any concerns, especially those raised by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. If the Minister can give me assurances at a later stage, I may even withdraw the Bill.
Much of the meat of the new metrology Bill—I keep thinking of it as “meteorology”—will come in secondary legislation. I hope that the Minister will hold consultations with all parties going forward, especially on this issue. To help me decide whether to withdraw the Bill, I hope I can have a meeting with some of her officials and the relevant parties before the next stage.
I thank all noble Lords who are taking part in this debate. I beg to move.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, and to congratulate him on winning a place in the ballot and on his very interesting speech. I shall come back to the issue of the support from the Government that seemed to come yesterday, which is rather good.
I and many other noble Lords have had concerns about lithium-ion batteries for a long time. I am honorary president of the United Kingdom Maritime Pilots’ Association. At its AGM a couple of years ago, a retired pilot gave a presentation about a ship a few miles off the coast of the Netherlands that was carrying several hundred lithium-ion battery cars for export to somewhere in the Far East. One of the cars caught fire. As the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, says, that is quite possible. The frightening thing is that the fire from these cars goes downwards, hits the floor, then goes sideways and of course, the fire says to its next-door neighbour, “Do you want to join me?” In the end, the whole ship caught fire. Worse still, the emissions from the fire were heavier than air, so they affected the lifeboat crew, who by that time were trying to save the crew and possibly the ship. As far as I know, the crew were saved. The ship sank.
That confirmed to me that there is no way of putting these fires out, as the noble Lord said: seawater, freshwater—it makes no difference. Then there were reports of a fire in a multi-storey car park at Luton Airport a year or two later. The local fire brigade said that it had nothing to do with lithium-ion. I thought, “Do I believe them?” Of course, everybody thinks that lithium-ion batteries are the answer to our green agenda and not having to use diesel and petrol in our vehicles, but we have to make sure that they are safe. This Bill is a really good attempt to ensure that the product used in these things is safe. Also, the London Fire Brigade persuaded TfL to ban e-scooters from the Underground because, as the noble Lord said, there have been a number of instances of e-scooter batteries catching fire on the Underground, which is clearly highly undesirable.
That, of course, leads on to the attempts many of us have been making over the last few years to persuade government not only to introduce some product regulation, as the noble Lord’s Bill attempts to do, but to link that with how these things are used. A lot of people like using scooters, for example. Some noble Lords may not agree on this, but I love using scooters— the legal ones, of course—and I have an e-bike. However, we do not want to be seen to be contravening the law every time we use them, because we do not know whether the batteries are safe as they do not have the conformity stamp, for example. So there is a lot of work to be done on this. This Bill and my noble friend’s Bill, which we heard about yesterday, are essential parts of getting the conformity issues correct.
There is the parallel side, which probably comes under transport, of making sure that the people who use these things use only batteries that are sound and that they comply with the law on riding on pavements, which we will no doubt be debating next week. However, on this Bill and the issue of conformity, it is terribly important that the whole thing be seen to be done properly. For example, to judge by the report on the Grenfell Tower fire, the insulation clearly was not done properly. It is fine saying that there is a stamp, but if it is not properly delivered on, that does not help. At the moment, I remain to be convinced that lithium-ion is the answer to everything that people say that it should be. I do not like petrol or diesel cars either—I would rather have cycle power—but there we are.
We also need regulation as to what size of batteries are used where. Two or three months ago, your Lordships’ House debated a regulation that allows batteries in freight bicycles, if we can call them that—you see them on the streets quite often—to have double the power output. I remember asking the Minister why we need double the power output in cargo bikes. The Minister replied that it would enable them to carry bigger loads. But are the brakes tested? He said, “If you want to get up the hill to Hampstead Heath, you need power”. But what about coming down? You have to be able to stop. It seemed a rather odd regulation that was brought in for no particular reason. I am sure the cargo people are very happy, but it does not help safety or anything else.
I hope that the new legislation that my noble friend has promised is going to cover everything that we have talked about today, and that she will encourage her colleagues in the Department for Transport, and I suppose the Home Office, to look at the other side of the coin and make sure that people comply, with enough people to enforce and inspect users, and take them to the cleaners if they do not—otherwise, we will have failed.
The fires that the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, and I have mentioned are frightening. People do not know about them because they are kept under wraps. London Fire Brigade has done a great job warning people, but the solution is not to stop people using these things; the solution is to have a conformed battery that works and is safe. It must be safe and it must be seen by independent regulators to be safe—otherwise, it will not have done its job.
I was interested in the Minister’s letter to noble Lords on 5 September about the introduction of the Product Regulation and Metrology Bill. It is a good start, but it estimates that
“at least 300,000 UK businesses must adhere to product safety legislation”.
How many people will inspect that and check that the legislation works and that people are complying? I am not really expecting my noble friend to answer that today, but she can try.
We have to tackle non-compliance and make sure that, to start with, the regulations do the job that they are intended to do, rather than giving in to the manufacturers’ pressure that it will be all right on the night and we will have a better model next year. Next year’s problem may be different or it may be the same, and I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, will be looking at whether the current Bill covers the future. We have to get this right and make sure it is tight. If Grenfell is not a good example, I do not know what is. I wish the Bill well.
Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to take part in this Second Reading and to follow the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, on his Bill and on the impact that it has already had on the new Government. It means that, unusually for a Second Reading, I can indulge in more questions to the Minister than may otherwise be the case.
It is clear that we cannot turn our energy system green and we cannot reach net zero without batteries. The questions are what batteries and with what chemistry within them, and around how they are constructed, controlled and deployed. That goes to the heart of the noble Lord’s Bill, which I support and wish well on its journey. It seems it may have a longer and more winding journey—or perhaps shorter and more winding—than other Private Members’ Bills.
I have a number of questions for the Minister, not least on the Product Regulation and Metrology Bill, which encompasses much of the noble Lord’s principles in his Private Member’s Bill. First, would it be a good idea to have a complete prohibition on charging any of these batteries, whatever device they are in, in any hallway or common parts of shared dwellings?
Secondly, are the current sanctions against those who manufacture and produce batteries that are not of the requisite standard and quality at an appropriate level? I am also interested to hear what representations the Government have had from our courageous firefighters on what is happening out there? Do we have a clear picture of the number of fires caused by lithium-ion batteries? Do we have that mapping exercise and is it clearly understood? What do the Government need to do to support our firefighters to face different challenges? There will be an exponential increase in the number of these batteries, not just on our person but moving around on small, large and mega mobility devices. What is the Government’s plan to control and effectively deal with these devices when, in tragic and horrific situations, they go wrong?
Looking broader than the Bill, it is clear that the Government need an overall battery strategy. We saw issues with Britishvolt in the north-east, so I am interested to hear from the Minister about the Government’s current strategy for battery use and development, and to get the UK to the level of battery manufacture that it requires to deliver on net zero and our mobility needs.
I refer the Minister to a report on this issue of the Science and Technology Committee, on which I was involved, a couple of years ago, called Battery Strategy Goes Flat. I cannot claim to have been the author of the title but, as it referred to the previous Government, perhaps the Minister can tell us the current Government’s strategy for the battery needs of the country.
Similarly, what level of investment is going into developing and understanding not just current battery technologies but—as the debate already referred to—all the new technologies coming on stream and very nascent technologies that are likely to form a large part of our battery need in a short time? All have potential, but allied to potential risks that need to be understood and legislated for.
Finally, on the future, what is the Government’s grand vision for the role of batteries and fuel cells across our economy and society, so that we have a safe, positive transition to green energy, to mobility for all in an inclusive manner, and a situation where the chemistry and science are fully understood so that, most importantly, we can all go about our business safely. I wish the Bill well and look forward to seeing how it interacts with the product safety Bill to put the country in a far better situation for the generation and storage of energy, and, crucially, our safety.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the important remarks by the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, on the drafting of this Bill. I think it has made an impact.
My interest in this was sparked when I was on a visit to the London Fire Brigade headquarters, because of the research it has done into low-level carbon monoxide poisoning in people who are living on houseboats—I chair the CO Research Trust. The senior officers who I saw that day were really shocked, because they had just had a call to a fire triggered by one of these batteries being charged in a living area in a flat, and the child to whom the new scooter belonged had sustained terrible life-changing injuries. They were devastated by what they had encountered. I feel that this Bill is incredibly important.
The London Fire Brigade told me that it has seen a stark rise in e-bike and e-scooter fires; on average, there was a fire every two days in 2023; and, last year, three people died as a result of these fires, including Sofia Duarte, who on New Year’s Day was the first Londoner to die as a result of an e-bike fire. She was at her boyfriend’s house celebrating the new year when disaster struck. Five people escaped through the second-floor window, but she was trapped inside. Her family are now petitioning for new legislation on e-bikes and e-scooters.
The Bill aims to increase product safety of e-bike and e-scooter products, as sold online in particular. As the noble Lord, Lord of Howell of Guildford, raised, there needs to be future-proofing. I hope that the Bill will provide a template that can be built on as new products come online, because we need to have a starting point and the Bill is trying to provide that. It needs to include all high-energy and lithium battery types and materials, as well as non-rechargeable lithium batteries, all of which pose a real fire risk to the public, as well as the incredible risk to the firefighters themselves who need to tackle these awful blazes. The number of e-bike fires in the capital has risen from just 13 in 2020 to 143 last year and, by September this year, the numbers had risen even further. It is a prime example of how quickly new technologies can present a real risk and why future-proofing is so important.
E-bikes and e-scooters catch fire incredibly quickly if their batteries become damaged or begin to fail, but they can just catch fire spontaneously. Although privately owned scooters remain illegal in public places and on London’s roads—and, very fortunately, are not allowed on the Underground—they are not illegal to purchase. New York has taken the issue so seriously that it has banned the sale, use or rental of e-mobility devices and related storage batteries that fail to meet recognised safety standards.
When these batteries catch fire, as has been said, the temperature is astounding. They can reach a temperature of between 700 and 1,000 degrees centigrade spontaneously, and the fire comes with outreaching plumes of flame, so it is not just that the device burns but that it seems to explode. These plumes of flame cause life-changing injuries to anybody nearby, and they happen so fast that it is before people can take action to avoid being near them.
Many of us have devices in the home with Li-ion batteries in them, and we are often completely unaware of the future potential of these. I noticed that I have a vacuum cleaner which has one of these batteries in and is rechargeable, and I recharge it within the flat. I have become aware that this may be quite dangerous. It is of crucial importance that they are not charged near any exits or in bedrooms. In blocks of flats, it is important they are not charged indoors, as this endangers the lives of many people and blocks the exit from the building.
A problem area is when these batteries are bought over the internet, from places of dubious provenance in particular, and then charged without the correct charger. One brand of battery has been particularly dangerous.
Conversion kits are a major problem. The London Fire Brigade believes this innovation has come ahead of proper safety standards, and there is inadequate regulation for e-bike and e-scooter conversion kits and accessories. Many of the lithium battery fires have been caused by faulty or mismatched and unsafe products. Clause 5’s focus on conversion kits is an important inclusion to protect the public. People can modify bikes to e-bikes with a conversion kit. These kits involve sourcing a battery and a charger separately, which may not reach correct safety standards. The batteries are then more susceptible to catastrophic failure when the incorrect charger is used. It is essential that all the data on these is collected centrally to allow people to better understand the risks relating to these conversion kits and that regulation is robust. I hope that the Government will look at the importance of data collection nationally—I mean across the four nations—to understand where these fires are breaking out and exactly what is being used.
The danger, of course, comes from online marketplaces. People from all backgrounds use e-bikes, and people on low incomes are more likely to report being regular users. They are then at higher risk. These include people working in delivery companies, as has already been said, and people living in high-rise properties, who are at greater risk of charging them in hallways and communal areas. The London Fire Brigade has recently worked with Deliveroo to try to reach delivery riders with important messaging about e-bikes and e-scooters, because although they provide cheaper and sustainable transport in London, the batteries present a unique fire challenge.
Regulating the sale of batteries to online marketplaces is vital to increase standards to protect people. I know the London Fire Brigade has been working with Amazon to ensure anyone buying an e-bike or related products gets safety advice emailed to them after the purchase.
The Clause 3 provisions to regulate online marketplaces are welcome, but consideration must be made for how this will work for second-hand products sold online through online marketplaces such as eBay, Facebook Marketplace and Gumtree. That must also cover e-bikes and chargers and batteries, because of the ferocious fires. During a London Fire Brigade investigation, it has seen second-hand products involved in incidents across the capital, including the lucky escape already referred to at Sutton railway station where, thankfully, there were no injuries. The Bill must align—and, from the way the debate has gone so far, will probably be replaced—with the Product Regulation and Metrology Bill, which looks to address product safety and online marketplaces.
There are two brands of e-bike battery that have had withdrawal notices issued on them. These are UPP and HL R-Team batteries. Unfortunately, they are still around and being used.
The term “micromobility vehicles” needs to be clearly defined so we cover all types of e-bikes and e-scooters and other battery-type devices. The conformity standards have been partly defined through the European or UK conformity assessment markings but, as has already been said, these need to be enforced, and we need to ensure that the inspection of these is adequate.
In the last moments, I will tackle disposal of batteries. People are completely unaware of how to dispose of these batteries. Recycling centres and scrapyards have had terrible fires, which are difficult to extinguish. People need to be able to dispose of them easily and safely through local advice. The inclusion in the Bill of how to dispose of batteries is really important. I hope that the lessons from it can all be taken forward.
Lord Winston (Lab)
My Lords, in principle I completely support the Bill. We must, however, look at the detail more closely. For example, we have to recognise that there are large numbers of different chemistries used to make batteries—the lithium battery is only one such. I was interested to see how we label them so I went outside for a magnifying glass to look at my hearing aid batteries, to see what the chemistry was. It turns out that the label does not tell me. It tells me that they may catch fire if I throw them on to a fire. On the other hand, these might be silver zinc batteries, in which case they are completely safe and unlikely to overheat or cause fires spontaneously.
The problem with lithium is that it is the lightest metal, one of the lightest elements, and is highly volatile. It burns very easily and there is pure lithium in batteries. What happens, as the noble Lord has mentioned, is a kind of chain reaction—the thermal continuation that feeds itself. All batteries will produce heat as part of the energy that they produce, and so produce the seeds of their own eventual destruction if they get overheated.
Clearly, therefore, labelling must be considered very carefully in the Bill. How you keep your batteries might be important. There is no question, for example, that charging a bike with a lithium battery overnight without supervision might be more serious than one realises, but it might be completely safe with many other different technologies and chemistries. One of the issues, therefore, is that the chemistry has to be labelled.
I do not want to add difficulty. Every time we table an amendment to a Bill we make it more difficult to pass, and I do not want to see that happen—this is a good idea and it is important. However, we must recognise, as the noble Lord, Lord Howell, said, that there might be technologies that change things. In the lithium battery you have lithium cobalt on one side, for example—incidentally, the cobalt is there for concatenation, which is interesting given the previous debate—and on the other side at the anode you have carbon, or graphite. The ions pass across and when they reach the anode they oxidise and you get power—and that is a rechargeable battery. There is of course a separator in the middle to prevent that, although at the moment these separators are permeable, not solid, and perhaps, with better technology, one solution would be that if the separator responds to heat and becomes completely solid the battery could not continue in that sort of way. Those sorts of technologies might make a difference. We should not condemn these batteries out of hand whatever happens, because that is something that we might feel important.
There is clearly more need for education about the subject. I will not go on at great length but I want to suggest a few points. I do not know whether my hearing aids have lithium in them; they might be lithium-air, but they have not so far caused my ears to burn while I am sitting by the fire—that happens only when people talk about me.
We have not dealt with something important in the Bill. Lithium is a rare resource. It is difficult to mine and there are not many places in the world where you can mine it. There are many of these technologies, such as silver, and zinc too to some extent—all of these things are precious and we cannot renew them. The noble Lord pointed out in his speech—nobody else has properly pointed it out—that when you come to recycling it is difficult to separate the elements. The problem is that if you take, for example, a hearing aid—it is tiny and one could ask whether worth recycling, but a deaf person using a hearing aid for five years will build up quite a lot of batteries—there are no instructions as to whether we should preserve that material and find some ways of better recycling it. There is more to be done to separate the various metals, and there are large numbers of different metals in batteries that we need to consider. The chemistry needs to be thought about in the future.
I do not think it is part of the Bill, but the labelling is relevant in terms of public consciousness. Above all, we must recognise that if we continue to overuse the world’s resources, such as lithium, we will run out of what could be a valuable element in other ways. That is one of the important points in this issue.
Lord Foster of Bath (LD)
I just want to draw attention to the very point that the noble Lord has made about the waste of these materials. If we look at the disposal just of disposable vapes in this country alone, it is estimated that that is the equivalent of throwing away 10 tonnes of lithium each year.
Lord Winston (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Lord. That would make a fantastic bonfire, would it not? You would not want to pour water on it.
Some batteries do not have that kind of technology. Silver zinc is an aquatic substrate in the battery, so will not get very hot—at least it cannot burn at the sort of temperature of 700 degrees Celsius.
Finally, some years ago I tried to introduce a Private Member’s Bill about the labelling of drugs. I wanted particular labelling—which I will not go into as it is not relevant to the Bill—as I felt that it was missing. The Government at the time were well disposed towards the Bill, and we went through Committee without any problem. However, the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, took me to one side and pointed out that this might affect EU legislation. At the time of my Bill labelling any product would be subject to EU regulation, and it was clear that we would not get it through the EU. We are now, of course, free of that—I am not a Brexiteer by any means, by the way—but there is still a problem about labelling. We must ask ourselves how we can get a decent label on a small package and what we put on it, with some kind of legal advice—maybe even commercial advice—to make certain that we can sell our batteries in the EU. We are trying to expand the industry in this country, with gigafactories and so on. We need to think about it very carefully, as clearly it would be valuable, having made safe batteries, to be able to sell them globally. I commend the noble Lord and support the idea of taking this to Committee.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Winston, who in his own way has made us think more deeply about the chemistry, which we often do not. The specific points he made about the chemistry would probably be covered by secondary legislation or below that in regulations from the OPSS.
I congratulate my noble friend Lord Redesdale on bringing his Private Member’s Bill and on securing such an early Second Reading. His speech and the description of the clauses of the Bill have set the scene very well for us. I thank the organisations that have given us briefings, including the London Fire Brigade, Electrical Safety First, the Institution of Engineering and Technology, the House of Lords Library and the LGA. I declare my interests as a vice-president of the LGA, and as vice-chair of the APPG on Fire Safety and Rescue, which I have been for over a decade.
As an officer of the APPG on Fire Safety and Rescue, I had a meeting with the Minister responsible for regulation and representatives of the Office for Product Safety and Standards in the Department for Business earlier this year, along with other officers from the APPG, on this issue of regulating lithium batteries and their safe disposal. I will come on to some of those details later.
The fire background is stark. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, that our fire services absolutely know what is happening, and the APPG has been seeking meetings with Ministers at, I think, four different departments and counting. Part of the problem is that there are many different areas to be covered, so it is wonderful that we now have a Bill which enables us proper parliamentary time to discuss it. We heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, that the London Fire Brigade told us that London alone had 143 fires last year, in which there were three deaths and 60 injuries. In the first eight months of this year alone there have been 127 e-bike and e-scooter fires.
Last year in Cambridge, Gemma Germeney and her children, Lilly and Oliver Peden, lost their lives when an e-bike bought online exploded and set their flat on fire. Her partner, Scott Peden, was in a coma for a month and has prolonged injuries as a result. He has demanded tougher regulations for such devices. He had no idea of the dangers of the item he bought online. Cambridgeshire Fire and Rescue Service wrote to the coroner to ask for better regulation of online sales of e-bike batteries. Although the inquest has been opened and adjourned, it has not yet come to its final conclusion, and it will be interesting to hear the coroner’s views on what should happen.
The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Fire Safety and Rescue has seen videos of lithium battery fires. The description of the fire by the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, was helpful, but actually watching that white explosive fire burning at 1,000 degrees gives a lasting impression of how dangerous they can be.
The Institution of Engineering and Technology provided a helpful focus on how regulation and development might work in practice. Thinking about building in safe design alongside assessing product risks is vital. If there are clear standards and firm regulation in design, the sector will work much better. The institution also suggests greater OPSS involvement with international alert systems for dangerous products —for example, Safety Gate—but this must be adequately funded and staffed. There has already been reference to global online markets these days, and it is really short-sighted to think that self-regulation could ever stop at our borders. I will return to that in relation to flying with lithium batteries.
The OPSS also has a role in raising consumer awareness levels and changing purchasing behaviours, which would thereby complement enforcement measures. That is the biggest thing that we need to do. Just having adverts saying these things might be dangerous is not enough. None of us is aware of how many lithium batteries we have around us every day.
The LGA forwarded the data on fires in waste trucks and waste sites, which is really shocking. Local government and large retailers, such as supermarkets, can and should help to raise awareness about the disposal of batteries, especially those that cannot be removed from small appliances, for example, electric toothbrushes.
Most people do not know that the act of crushing even a healthy battery is likely to cause a fire. It is the act of crushing that does it. Anything that goes into the waste could be compacted either in a truck—there have been fires in trucks—or on the waste site itself.
The London Fire Brigade suggests some possible strengthening of the Bill. That has been covered by other noble Lords and I will not repeat it. I shall move to the LFB’s concerns about Clause 4, which states that lithium-ion battery-powered vehicles must have a safety fire certificate. There has been mention of micromobility vehicles needing to be clearly defined. The LFB suggests that perhaps mobility scooters ought to be added to the list of registrations.
The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, talked to us about doing regulation properly, which relates to one of the problems that the all-party group faced. I want to come on to the details of why this is. We are thinking only about where there has been a fire, but we have not yet got to grips with how people’s lives can be affected by the poor regulation that we have at the moment, but not in a fire-safe way. I apologise for using personal examples, but scooters and wheelchairs with lithium batteries are a real problem for disabled people. We had a debate in your Lordships’ House last year where I said:
“The noble Lord, Lord Blencathra … talked about the ridiculous process we have to fill in for our wheelchair dimensions and battery details when booking the flight, then again when the airline confirms the booking, then again when you check in online to get your seat, then again when you arrive at check-in and again when you arrive at the departure gate”.—[Official Report, 23/11/23; col. 97GC.]
That is because everybody in the airport is worried about batteries. They cannot take the evidence that you have given them.
In an APPG meeting with the Fire Minister last year, we were told that there was a plan to produce wheelchair and wheelchair-battery passports. That seems to be really helpful because not only would it act as evidence that the battery had been bought safety and approved but there would be the numbers of the batteries in the passport and it could act as a logbook. I know I have to have my electric wheelchairs maintained at least twice a year to make sure that the batteries and other parts are safe, so that is important. However, I have had three experiences in the past year where there has been an issue with my wheelchair batteries. First, an airport refused to allow my wheelchair on a plane because it said, incorrectly, that the lithium batteries were too big even though they met the IATA regulations. Secondly, after I flew to Bucharest using not my lithium battery chair but my bus battery chair, the ground services manager told me that I personally had to physically lift out my two bus batteries and carry them on to the plane because I needed to have them with me in the cabin. Thirdly, I hit a problem when I got to Sweden: I had been allowed out there with the wheelchair with the lithium batteries but was refused a flight back. I persuaded the company that that would not look very good because they had flown me out three days earlier. We need to think about this sort of thing because if we start regulating only for safety, we will completely miss the way that all of us live with batteries in our lives. For those of us for whom lithium batteries make travel easier, if we are buying the right things, we should not be penalised.
I shall end a point about making sure that all departments are involved. It is right that the Department for Business and Trade and the OPSS lead on this. However, as far as fire is concerned, we already have a problem with where the dividing line is between the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and the Home Office. There are other issues as well, particularly for disabled people, so there needs to be involvement from the Disability Minister too. Will the Minister ensure that, as the Bill progresses, the discussions that were beginning to happen between Ministers across departments in the previous Government continue, and that, particularly for issues affecting disabled people, the Disability Minister and disability organisations are kept informed as well?
The Earl of Erroll (CB)
My Lords, that was a most useful speech because it went into great detail about things that I just had not thought about. It is ridiculous when you cannot use things to make your life easy. As we get older, we are all going to end up using such things, and the amount of checking that goes on everywhere just gets worse.
The noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, has introduced a timely, useful and important Bill. I am sure that it needs to cover all lithium-ion batteries as they are all potentially dangerous if they are not manufactured to the right standards and used right. As has been said, the real problem is that standard foam, wet chemical, powder or water extinguishers are ineffective for lithium-ion battery fires. They do not form long-lasting oxygen barriers, they deliver insufficient cooling and they are unable to stop the thermal runaway. You must use specialist fire extinguishers for them, so a provision needs to be added mandating the presence of such extinguishers in flats, houses or places where these batteries live for any period of time or are permanently installed, which is what I want to deal with.
Apart from small scooter batteries, large batteries are going to be used in houses, blocks of flats and places like that to store the excess energy being generated by solar PV at any given moment. I am looking at this issue right now for a house, and it will end up with two or three large lithium-ion batteries. We are dealing with a reputable company, so I am sure the batteries will be to the right standards and everything will be right, but it had never occurred me that we also ought to have the correct fire extinguisher, accessible and near them, just in case. I was thinking of putting the batteries in a nice inaccessible place out of the way, but I now wonder whether that could be a danger as well because you presumably have to have access to these things in order to check them. We need to think about these things. It is the large batteries that are worrying me, as everyone is thinking so hard about e-scooters and so on.
We have got the grid, and I can feed excess electricity into it to a limited extent. However, we are paid very little to do that and what I draw from it when we need it back is really expensive, so it is just not economically sensible. It is much cheaper and more effective for me to install these batteries, but that is not as safe. You should be able to take your electricity out of the grid for a very small marginal cost, having lent it to it for a while. In fact it probably ought to pay you since you have lent it to it for that period, and maybe you should get a small percentage on top of what you put into the grid because it has saved putting up yet another large windmill that is made of steel all the way up with carbon fibre in the rotor blades that cannot be recycled, so is not entirely environmentally friendly.
The other danger is that it is not helping the move to get people to use public transport. I was faced with a large poster on my Thameslink station this morning that said, “You cannot take e-scooters, electric bikes or hoverboards on to the station or the train”, so how do you get to your final destination affordably? Okay, if I come into London there is public transport, but if I go back home at night and I want to get a taxi—if I could get one—from the station at Sandy back home, it will cost £25 to £40. It is just not affordable. Therefore, if I were to do that, I would love to have some form of e-transport—except in midwinter.
Also, you have to be careful if you are flying. If, so that you do not run out of battery just when you are about to show your electronic ticket to the right face, you have a top-up battery pack for your telephone in your hold luggage, that will get scanned by scanners in many airports just to make sure there are not any batteries in your hold luggage. So, you are not allowed to do that. If the airport detects them, it will remove your bag. We had this problem in India. We arrived at an Indian airport to find that one of our bags was not there because of exactly that: the lithium-ion battery in it had been removed, although I cannot remember quite how. Anyway, it was sent to the airport early the next day, but the airport doubled as a military airport and was not open until 11 am, so we spent a lot of time sitting around when we were meant to be off doing other stuff. It wrecked that part of the day of the tour. You need to be very careful of that.
If we had safety standards for lithium batteries that ran across all devices, all batteries and so on, maybe we could do something about that. When the technology moves on, which I am sure it will, the problem will be solved, but maybe in the interim we could do something about it. I do not know what. My key point is about the large batteries in offices but particularly in dwelling places, because you do not have the back-up people to do something about it. I hope the Government will use this debate to usefully inform amendments they might want to put forward to their own Bills, because it has been incredibly knowledgeable, wide-ranging and useful.
Lord Foster of Bath (LD)
My Lords, I begin by welcoming the Minister to her new role. I am certainly delighted, as others have been, to support this Bill. I congratulate my noble friend Lord Redesdale on his excellent introduction to it and on doing so well in the ballot, since I have twice been less lucky than he has with a not dissimilar Bill.
With the help of Electrical Safety First and Mr Ron Bailey, I have been raising issues around the safety of lithium-ion batteries over the past few years. For example, during the debate on the pedicab Bill in the last Session I pointed out, echoing what my noble friend said in his speech, that lithium-ion batteries are becoming increasingly important because they store more energy —in fact, the equivalent of six hand grenades in the case of an e-scooter battery—than any other type of battery, allowing for much longer use. But, as he and other have pointed out, if those batteries are overheated through misuse, damage or using substandard chargers, they can create those fierce fires that people have referred to, with very high temperatures, and which, as the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, and others have pointed out, are extremely difficult to extinguish. I argued for the introduction of measures in the pedicab Bill not dissimilar to those in the Bill before us.
More recently, on Monday this week, during a debate on children vaping, I expressed concern about disposable vapes, which are also powered by lithium-ion batteries. In arguing for a ban on the sale of such disposable vapes, I pointed out that over 84 million are thrown away each year in the UK, most frequently into domestic waste. The same is true for many other discarded lithium-ion batteries. They get picked up by refuse vehicles, and they can then, as my noble friend Lady Brinton pointed out, be compacted, which can cause damage to some of the batteries and lead to thermal runaway fires in the vehicles. The compacting process in landfill sites can cause the same problem. As a result, as we have heard, there are over 1,200 such fires each year in the waste industry.
Indeed, my interest in the safety of lithium-ion batteries began when Zurich Insurance drew my attention to the rapidly increasing number of fires caused by lithium-ion batteries at waste and recycling plants that it insures—fires which cost millions of pounds each year and risk lives. Sadly, as we have heard, there are far too many examples of lithium-ion battery fires that have cost lives, both here and around the world. The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, referred to the devastating fire on board a ship, and over this summer 22 people died in a South Korean factory when some lithium-ion batteries exploded. On almost the same day, here, in Cambridge, a mother and her two children died in a fire after an e-bike exploded.
Damage to or inappropriate charging of batteries in e-bikes and e-scooters has become a major concern, as many noble Lords have said. As London Fire Brigade points out, fires in e-bikes and e-scooters are one of the capital’s fastest-growing fire risks:
“On average there was a fire every two days”
last year. It goes on:
“Sadly, there were 3 deaths and around 60 injuries caused by these fires”.
Again, as we have heard, many local transport bodies now ban them. Chiltern Railways has posters everywhere stating: “No e-scooters allowed on trains or stations. Lithium batteries are a fire risk”.
Electrical Safety First has produced an excellent in-depth report, Battery Breakdown, on the safety of lithium-ion batteries in e-bikes and e-scooters. It shows the huge increase in fires caused by damage to or inappropriate charging of them, the financial cost and, more significantly and tragically, the cost to life. Fire brigades around the country report similar increases in such fires and have indicated strong support for the introduction of the types of measures in my noble friend’s Bill.
Indeed, there is very widespread support for such measures. My own unsuccessful but similar Bill had support from nearly 90 national organisations, including the National Fire Chiefs Council, the Association of British Insurers, Which?, Brompton Bicycle UK and the British Burn Association. Equally importantly, support came also from numerous local organisations, from large councils such as Newcastle upon Tyne and Brent to smaller town councils, parish councils and community councils from all over the country. All wrote in support of the types of measures contained in my noble friend’s Bill.
Posters and other publicity material have been placed on hundreds of parish noticeboards across the country. Parish council magazines and local newspapers, such as the Hawick Paper in the Scottish Borders, have contained articles alerting people to the dangers. Jura Community Council in the Hebrides supported the measures and told me in a letter
“our extremely remote location can cause huge difficulties in accessing appropriate disposal facilities’,
a point raised by a number of noble Lords. The parish meeting of Redlingfield in Suffolk—population 140—supported the campaign, and, spurred on by its excellent clerk, Sue Squire, Chulmleigh Parish Council in north Devon has displayed posters about it. Deal Town Council in Kent, Dyserth Community Council in north Wales and the Alford Hub in Lincolnshire were among the 400 other local councils that wrote in support. Some had special reason for doing so. Soham Town Council explained that its support was especially because
“people in our own community have tragically died as a result of batteries catching fire”.
I have provided these examples to illustrate how widespread are the concern and the support for action, including from many noble Lords in the debate.
I am pleased that, at last, there appears to be some progress. As we have heard, this week the Government published the Product Regulation and Metrology Bill. I genuinely hope that it will address many of the issues raised in my noble friend’s Bill. Sadly, however, it is somewhat difficult to tell from the Government’s Bill as it stands, since we understand that much of the detail will come later in secondary legislation.
Can the Minister tell us whether or not the secondary legislation will cover some of the key issues? Will regulations require, prior to the sale of e-bikes, e-scooters and their batteries, independent testing and a requirement to carry relevant markings to show it has happened? Will there be regulations about the safe disposal of lithium-ion batteries? Will there be regulations covering both the safety of chargers and of conversion kits, such as those that turn pushbikes into an e-bikes, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay?
Many of these products, such as e-bikes, e-scooters, chargers and conversion kits, are purchased online. So, finally, I raise another issue I have previously raised: the safety of electrical goods purchased online. At present, we have the unacceptable situation whereby a high street shop has responsibility to ensure the safety of the electrical goods it sells, whereas online traders have no similar responsibilities. There are numerous examples of unsafe electrical goods being sold online. It is even possible to purchase online electrical products no longer available on the high street because they have been recalled by manufacturers. This cannot continue. Can the Minister assure us that the Product Regulation and Metrology Bill will ensure that online traders have the same responsibility as high street traders for the safety of the electrical goods they sell?
As my noble friend said at the start of his speech, it is not important whether the measures contained in his Bill come into being through the passage of his Bill or through the Government’s own legislation. However, bearing in mind the urgent need and huge support for such measures, I hope the Minister will assure us that we will not have to wait long for action to be taken—either through my noble friend’s Bill or the Government’s own proposals.
Viscount Camrose (Con)
I join other noble Lords in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, for bringing this hugely important topic to us today. I thank all noble Lords who have spoken so well and so fascinatingly in this debate. I appreciated the horrifying example offered by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, of the fire on board a ship started by an electric vehicle. My noble friend Lord Holmes was on the money, as ever, in calling for an overall governmental battery strategy. The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, and the noble Lord, Lord Foster, also stressed the importance of working with the online marketplaces, as they are a really dangerous source of some of these unsafe items.
The noble Lord, Lord Winston, in addition to giving an—in my case, rather overdue—erudite chemistry lesson about batteries, made a very important point about the role that education can play in driving the safety of batteries. The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, powerfully supported this argument with accounts of her own. I was struck also by the call of the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, for mandating specialist fire extinguishers; that is a very interesting idea.
I am also grateful to the London Fire Brigade for its comprehensive briefing, and to the other groups which gave us briefings. Like, I think, almost every other speaker, I latched on to the statistic of 143 e-bike fires—a fire every two days—in London, resulting in three deaths and 60 injuries. It is a very powerful statistic, and we should really take note of it. I will not talk more about the importance of safety because other noble Lords have made this point so clearly and so well.
I turn to the market for lithium-ion batteries. The global market is expected to grow from $56.8 billion last year to $187 billion in 2032. I hope and think that the UK has a significant role to play in the safe development of this huge and hugely important industry. Without it, we will not realise our ambitions for electric vehicles; renewable energy and storage; tech innovation of all kinds; environmental and productivity improvements to manufacturing and supply chains; the circular economy and recycling; and a range of export opportunities. So we on these Benches absolutely support the Bill’s goals. It is essential for both safety and growth that lithium-ion batteries are safe.
That said, we need to be satisfied on a range of questions about the Bill’s workability, effectiveness and proportionality. First, how does this work alongside both existing and planned legislation? As others have raised, I ask the Minister to give the Government’s assessment of the existing product safety laws. I believe that lithium-ion batteries are already subject to the Electrical Equipment (Safety) Regulations 2016. Are these regulations inadequate, or is there an issue of enforcement? The Bill proposes a role for conformity assessment bodies, and I would welcome more clarity on the role of these CABs, as opposed to the OPSS and the local authority trading standards, both of which have relevant enforcement powers. Like other noble Lords, I look forward to hearing more about the Government’s Product Regulation and Metrology Bill, particularly with respect to lithium-ion battery safety. I would certainly welcome a sense from the Minister of the overlap between the two Bills.
Secondly, we are not, of course, the only nation wrestling with battery safety. I would welcome the chance to understand the Government’s view of the international context: which countries have implemented the most effective regulatory systems, and what can we learn from them? I was interested to hear briefly from the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay—I am sure she has more to say on the subject—about some of the regulations in New York in this respect.
Thirdly, how do we ensure that these regulations are proportionate? A BESS can be anything from an enormous industrial site to a domestic appliance. I would welcome the views of the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, on the applicability of the same regulation and the same enforcement bodies to these very different participants in the marketplace. Equally, will it really be necessary or achievable for a proposed BESS to consult separately with three different public bodies in seeking approval? Is this an appropriate way to achieve our growth means?
Finally, is it appropriate to focus solely on lithium-ion batteries? A number of noble Lords raised this, particularly the noble Lords, Lord Winston and Lord Holmes, who spoke compellingly on the different chemistries of other batteries and how they may also form part of this legislation.
Lithium-ion batteries are important, but their safety clearly needs to improve. As I have set out, we have some questions about the approach taken in the Bill, and I look forward to hearing from both the Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (Baroness Jones of Whitchurch) (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, for tabling this Bill. It has enabled us to have a fascinating and wide-ranging discussion. I have certainly learned a lot about the issues as we have gone forward.
At the outset, I should say that I share the concerns of noble Lords at the number of traffic deaths that have occurred, and we share that determination to make sure that we prevent further deaths by whatever means possible. I also assure noble Lords that we have received proper briefings from the fire service. We have met and talked with it and take its concerns very seriously. I hope that, as a result of this debate and the issues that I shall come on to, we will have a common cause on the way forward.
The Government recognise the intent of the Bill and the importance of safe storage, use and disposal of lithium-ion batteries. However, for reasons that I will set out, and as I think noble Lords already know, we have reservations about this particular Bill. I hope that I can reassure noble Lords about the alternative that we propose.
First, I reassure your Lordships that the Government take product safety extremely seriously. As such, we are already taking significant steps to protect people from the types of harm that the Bill aims to address. The Office for Product Safety and Standards, which sits within my department, has been working with colleagues from across government and industry to ensure that action is taken to protect consumers and remove dangerous products from the market. For example, action has focused on assessing the compliance of manufacturers and importers to ensure products are safe when placed on the market; issuing guidance for repairers to make them aware of their responsibilities to be competent to complete safe repairs and modifications; giving consumers clear information to enable them to purchase and use products safely; and ensuring that online marketplaces play their part in keeping consumers safe.
The OPSS has been working with local authorities and has successfully targeted unsafe and non-compliant products at the border to prevent them entering the UK in the first place. We have also engaged with UK businesses to ensure that compliance with regulations is carried out, and we have worked with the fire and rescue services to identify products involved in incidents and to take action where unsafe products are identified. Our efforts have led to 18 separate product recalls and 20 other enforcement actions for unsafe or non-compliant e-bikes or e-scooters since 2022. The OPSS has issued 26 withdrawal notices on eight online marketplaces and two manufacturers and across 16 separate sellers to stop the sale of dangerous models of e-bike battery manufactured by Unit Pack Power that were identified by the fire and rescue authorities’ investigations.
While batteries and chargers may individually be compliant with the law, we know that if they are used in a combination that is not compatible there is a risk of product failure leading to serious fires. This may also be the case when an e-bike or e-scooter draws more power from a battery than it is manufactured to supply safely. The emerging evidence base also suggests that, when these products are modified inappropriately, they can pose a high safety risk. The noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, and the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, were right to make the point about the dangers of modification and conversion; evidence shows that there is a particular danger of fire when that occurs.
Based on this evidence, earlier this year the OPSS launched the e-bike and e-scooter repairer project, working with local authorities across the UK to conduct inspections at local businesses involved in the maintenance and modification of e-bikes and e-scooters. Those inspections are focused on providing advice and guidance on businesses’ legal responsibilities to complete safe modifications and repairs. In addition, the OPSS published a safety message for consumers in the run-up to Christmas last year, with five steps to follow to reduce risks when purchasing, using or charging an e-bike or e-scooter. This followed guidance on safe charging published by Fire England. Further guidance was also published by the Department for Transport in February this year. We continue to work closely with fire and rescue services and other stakeholders to raise consumer awareness and reduce the risk of fire.
Noble Lords are right to raise concerns about how easy it can be for unsafe products to find their way on to the market through online marketplaces. That is why, in addition to the action that I have just referenced, the OPSS wrote to major online marketplaces earlier this year to express its concerns about the availability of unsafe products online. We have demanded action on the need for user instructions to be supplied with all e-bikes and e-scooters, including batteries and accessories. In addition, online marketplaces must comply with legal notices that prevent the supply of specific products.
Existing product safety law is clear: products must be safe before they are placed on the market, and those seeking to profiteer from the supply of products that are unsafe will be dealt with. However, while a significant amount has already happened to ensure that people are kept safe, we know that much more must be done. As noble Lords will be aware, the Product Regulation and Metrology Bill was introduced by the Government on Wednesday. It will have its Second Reading here on 8 October. In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Foster, I hope that many of the points he raised will be raised at that Second Reading, when there will be a proper, thorough debate.
This Bill will ensure that we have a regulatory framework that is agile and adaptable in a digital world. The potential fire risks posed by lithium-ion batteries is today’s challenge, but it is not the first and it will not be the last. As the products we buy and the way we buy them adapt in a digital world, it is essential that we have laws that can adapt and go forward when we need them to protect the public. This is what the Product Regulation and Metrology Bill will deliver. Through the powers in that Bill, we will be able to respond to emerging risks in product safety. This includes, where necessary, strengthening regulation to respond to risks from a range of products such as lithium-ion batteries and e-bikes, protecting consumers. It will also allow us to look more closely at those who are making these products available on the market, including online marketplaces, and to take the necessary steps to stop unsafe goods reaching consumers.
I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, that product safety should start with safe design and I very much hope that our Bill will be at the heart of that. I also agree with the noble Viscount, Lord Camrose, who said that this is an opportunity for us to be trail-blazers in global safety standards. There are huge opportunities in the marketplace for us to set standards and to maximise our growth in this market if we get it right, so there is a win-win in pursuing this with vigour.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My noble friend has given the House a good list of the work that has been done recently to make the whole system safer, and I am hoping that the new Bill will do that, but have the Government got as far as being able to persuade the London Fire Brigade, for example, to withdraw its ban, or recommended ban, on scooter batteries on trains and things like that? In other words, are they happy that the new regulations will enable people to use these things safely wherever they want to go?
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
I do not know the answer to that specifically. My instinct is that there needs to be a policy of “safety first” on issues such as the London Underground, but we may well get those standards to a high enough level. I was very interested to hear what the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, said about passports for batteries. There may be schemes like that that we could adopt. I do not know the answer, but it is a very good point that I think we can pursue outside this Chamber.
I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Winston for delivering an interesting lesson on the science and chemistry behind these products: I know that we all learned from it. I reassure him that the Product Regulation and Metrology Bill will allow for changes to labelling to ensure that proper details are updated and safety information on products is made clear.
Lord Winston (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for that helpful point. Does that mean that there is a possibility that the chemistry might be labelled? If we could actually teach people a bit more about the chemistry, it would do no harm. Also, of course, we are dealing with products that are going to become scarcer and scarcer and which will be thrown away, or not recycled. There is a public lesson that is rather more important than the average labelling that we see on many foodstuffs, for example.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
In fact, I am going to come on to the point about the availability of lithium, so bear with me for a second. I reassure the noble Lord that we are taking greater education very seriously, and we will be running more consumer campaigns. The composition of the products might be included in that. I recognise, however, that more can be done.
A number of noble Lords, including my noble friend Lord Winston, made a point about the new technology implications of this. I assure them that the Product Regulation and Metrology Bill will allow us to regulate for developments of innovation and technology in UK energy going forward, because there are new issues that a number of noble Lords have raised. It will enable powers to change the regulations, to future-proof full technological advancements.
To noble Lords, including the noble Lords, Lord Holmes and Lord Howell, and my noble friend Lord Winston, I say that at the moment lithium-ion batteries are the most efficient way of powering vehicles; we should not lose sight of that. We will, however, continue to keep the mining of critical minerals and their use in our green technology under review. We have to do that because, as my noble friend quite rightly said, if we do not, we are in danger of scarcity on these issues. We have to keep moving forward. There is not an endless supply of these minerals, so we have to make sure that those in circulation are protected and properly recycled.
My noble friend Lord Berkeley made a point about battery safety being a wider issue and gave some very vivid examples of why that was the case. I assure him that we continue to liaise with the Department for Transport on these issues. Similarly the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, raised an important point about wheelchair travel. She mentioned the issue of wheelchair passports, which was an interesting conversation. I assure her that we will continue to liaise with departmental Ministers across the board, including the Disability Ministers, because we need to get this issue sorted.
I have spoken a lot about product safety, but I am aware that the noble Lord’s Bill goes further in scope, so I will now turn to battery energy storage systems, which are also covered by the Bill. The flexibility offered by grid-scale lithium-ion batteries will play a vital role in the decarbonisation of the grid, enabling Britain to balance the system at lower cost while maximising the efficiency of intermittent low-carbon generators such as wind and solar—a point the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, quite rightly made.
The Government agree with the intent of having robust measures in place to manage the risks associated with facilities that involve the use of large numbers of lithium-ion batteries. In terms of the proposals in this Bill, powers already exist under the Pollution Prevention and Control Act 1999 to bring new sectors and pollution sources in scope of the Environmental Permitting Regulations (England and Wales) 2016. Similarly, the Government do not believe currently that there is a need for additional statutory consultees on planning applications for standalone battery energy storage systems. However, my officials continue to work closely with the industry-led electricity storage health and safety governance group to ensure that a robust health and safety standards framework is maintained.
A number of noble Lords talked about disposal. The Government are deeply saddened at the recent increase in the number of fires at waste treatment facilities caused by batteries. We are committed to cracking down on waste as we move towards a circular economy where we keep our resources in use for longer and reduce waste. The existing producer responsibility scheme for batteries and waste electricals makes producers responsible for the cost of end-of-life treatment.
Under the existing legislation, it is already mandatory for all batteries placed on the market in the UK to be clearly marked with the crossed-out wheeled bin symbol. This symbol indicates that batteries should not be disposed of by throwing them in the bin. This symbol is also mandatory on electrical products containing batteries. Existing legislation also requires those selling batteries to provide a means to take back waste batteries —for example, the waste battery collection bins at supermarkets, which many noble Lords will be familiar with. Similarly, sellers of disposable vapes, which were mentioned earlier, are now required to provide take-back of waste vapes. Producers of industrial batteries, including e-bike and e-scooter batteries, must take back waste batteries free of charge on request. This means that a shop selling e-bikes, such as Halfords, must take back a waste e-bike battery if asked to do so by the owner of that battery.
There are also existing public awareness campaigns such as the HypnoCat Recycle Your Electricals campaign, funded by industry to educate the public on safe battery disposal. Ministers are reviewing proposals to consult on reforms to UK battery regulations before setting out the next steps. However, I agree with noble Lords that we need to find more imaginative ways to help consumers dispose of batteries more conveniently and in greater numbers than is currently the case.
In summary, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, for the debate that this Bill has enabled. As I have laid out, my department is already working across government to identify the key aspects of lithium-ion battery safety and has taken action where needed. The Product Regulation and Metrology Bill, which will soon be debated by your Lordships’ House, will enable us, where necessary, to make regulatory change to keep our product safety framework up to date. We are seeking to address this complex issue while ensuring that we have the evidence to help prevent further injury and loss of life. We will continue to engage with all noble Lords on these critical issues as we develop our regulatory approach.
I can of course assure the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, that we will continue to consult with him about his Bill, which will happen at a ministerial and official level, as necessary. I hope that the noble Lord has heard my request for him to consider withdrawing this Bill and I look forward to his response.
Lord Redesdale (LD)
My Lords, I start with utter shock and surprise that the Minister could ask me to go down that route. It seems to be traditional on every Private Member’s Bill for that to be added at the end of each speech.
The Minister has made a very comprehensive reply and I will obviously take on board her views that I should look at the next stages of this Bill. I thank her for the opportunity to talk to her officials before I make that decision. I know that many of the bodies involved in this will perhaps look at giving their views before I do that.
On the Bill itself, the noble Viscount, Lord Camrose, raised two issues. The first was about the three bodies that will be looking at this, but of course they each have very separate responsibilities. It is a problem across the board, with the EA, health and safety and planning, that some of these issues fall between the cracks. One issue that I was particularly concerned about and is raised in the consultation is retrofit. You can take out a generator and put in a battery and no consultation would have to take place if original planning permission was sought. That will be a real issue, especially, as the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, said, these batteries will be put in places to fit within the building envelope, which sometimes might not fit within the envelope that the fire brigade would wish for.
The noble Viscount also asked why I stuck with only lithium-ion. As was raised by other noble Lords, with a Private Member’s Bill, you can of course do only so much. The purpose of the Bill is to have a first bite of the cherry, looking at how the issues are going to be raised in the forthcoming Bill. I look forward to having a second try in that Bill, but I do not think I will be alone in that. There will be a very long list of people who want to partake in that Bill, and I wish the Minister all the luck with some of the issues that will come forward.
I should say for the industry that while there is a risk from lithium-ion batteries, that risk is obviously not high; otherwise, my noble friend Lady Brinton would not be sitting on two large lithium-ion batteries at this very moment in time.
I thank all noble Lords for taking part. I should mention something raised by the doorkeeper when he asked for my notes, which is that there is a battery disposal point at the entrance to the Commons Terrace, if anybody wishes to make use of it. The Minister raised the problem of disposal, which I might come back to in Committee. There seems to be a massive problem, not from the industry nor from the waste industry but from the public, in making sure that the large amounts of batteries that people happily throw away do not end up in the waste stream.
On that basis, I beg to move.