Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [HL]

Baroness Crawley Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 8th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Crawley (Lab)]

My Lords, it is an absolute delight to follow the maiden speech of my noble friend Lady Winterton of Doncaster, who has just demonstrated what an astute, feisty, gifted and yet totally grounded parliamentarian she is. I have known my noble friend Rosie for many years, for more years than she and I would wish to recall. She has always stood out as a true champion of the people, an authentic voice in British politics.

My noble friend has held many senior offices in government, and she referred to some of them. It is a long list so brace yourselves, my Lords: from the Lord Chancellor’s Department through Minister of State for Health Services, Minister of State for Transport, Minister for Yorkshire and the Humber, Minister of State for Pensions through to Business and Local Government. She was rightly made a dame in the New Year Honours List in 2016, and we all know that there is nothing like a dame. My noble friend Lady Winterton also spent many years as Labour’s Chief Whip in the Commons. She has indeed been there, done that, got the T-shirt. She was a wonderful Deputy Speaker in the Commons, combining being a stickler for the rules with being the epitome of calm and persuasion, especially with the awkward squad—a talent in anybody’s language—and all this while wearing the highest heels on the planet.

My noble friend chose this Second Reading to make her maiden speech because it is about the everyday concerns and safety of people and businesses up and down the country. That is, and always has been, her politics. I look forward to hearing much more from her in this Chamber, as I am sure we all do.

I welcome this landmark framework Bill, as does the Chartered Trading Standards Institute in coalition with the British Toy & Hobby Association, Electrical Safety First and Which?. As Which? has said, this Government are prioritising legislation that addresses a growing gap in consumer protections. The coalition also has concerns about the Bill, which the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, has referred to, and which will no doubt be addressed in the passage of the Bill.

The online marketplace in particular is not protecting consumers today and leaves them open to illegal, unsafe and, indeed, very harmful products, with few repercussions at present for those perpetrating these violations and finding gaps in the law. It is also so damaging to the very many good businesses that trade online in safe and legal products. There has been no real domestic reform to product safety regulation since our exit from the EU. The previous Government extended recognition of EU requirements, which had been due to fall away at the end of this year, but did not prioritise what comes next, either in general terms or in relation to the specific known issues, such as unsafe batteries in e-bikes and scooters, counterfeit electrical goods on online marketplaces, children’s toys, smoke and carbon monoxide alarms—on and on goes the unsafe products list. Although the powers in this Bill will not solve all these issues, they should allow us to make progress in a number of areas.

Some may see this Bill as EU alignment through the backdoor. I disagree. As I see it, the Bill will allow the UK to align with the EU when it makes sense to do so but also give us flexibility not to if, as a country, we want even stronger safety standards. Given the unique position of Northern Ireland in the post-Brexit trading landscape under the Windsor agreement, perhaps my noble friend the Minister could set out how the Bill’s provisions affect Northern Ireland.

I welcome the provisions on information sharing, which are designed to make it easier for public authorities such as trading standards and the emergency services to alert each other on cases they are working on across the country. The Bill’s enforcement aspects are also welcome but must be looked at in the context of very limited local authority resources—I speak as a vice-president of the Chartered Trading Standards Institute.

We have all been lobbied on concerns over the Bill’s metrology regulations, in that they focus on units of measurement and quantities of goods but are limited in scope. For some, the Bill does not grant sufficient authority to test and verify the equipment used for measurements. Perhaps my noble friend could write to me about this, as accuracy is key here.

The coalition of product safety organisations I referred to earlier wants the Bill to safeguard consumers through clear and enforceable duties on online marketplaces, clearly defined definitions of new terms, putting consumer safety on the face of the Bill, and more effective scrutiny processes.

The Regulatory Policy Committee has scrutinised the impact assessment published alongside the Bill and decided that it provides

“sufficient evidence of the problem under consideration and a strong argument for intervention”.

However, it suggests that the Bill’s impact assessment

“could be improved by including further detail of the impacts expected from the related secondary legislation”.

Will my noble friend the Minister comment on that part of the RPC’s opinion?

As I understand it, the Government want the Bill to tackle modern safety issues for consumers, grasp opportunities to deliver much-needed economic growth and offer a much improved level playing field to businesses. I am sure many of us would support those aims, and I wish the Bill well.

Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland: EU Proposals

Baroness Crawley Excerpts

Thursday 21st October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, opinions differ on the innumerable benefits of the protocol, as the noble Baroness puts it. I certainly hear concern from business about the imposition of EU law without consent that the Court of Justice of the European Union is at the summit of. The difficulty is that it is not true to say, as some do, that the protocol gives the benefit of both worlds. It gives access to the EU single market for goods but at the very significant price of restricted access to Northern Ireland’s major trading partner, which is Great Britain and the rest of the United Kingdom. That is the unsatisfactory balance that we currently have, one that needs to be redressed.

[Baroness Crawley (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister intend to promote the benefits of the protocol, as set out by the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, to the business community in Northern Ireland, 67% of which believes that Northern Ireland’s status now represents many opportunities for the region? Will he say which of the many benefits set out in the European Union’s 13 October proposals he is most excited about and engaged with? For example, is it that if a lorry transports 100 different food products from GB to Northern Ireland, only one certificate will now be needed instead of 100 certificates? We would join him in such a campaign.

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, my team has been in discussion with the EU on this subject all week. We are seeking to understand the detail that underlies some of the headline claims that the EU has made. It is possible that we do not fully understand that detail yet, but perhaps that will come. One aspect of the EU proposals that I am excited about is that they show that what previously it has considered impossible—changing its own laws for the special circumstances of Northern Ireland—is now possible. That is a very important and welcome step, and I hope the EU might be able to go further than the proposals it put on the table last week.

UK Government Union Capability

Baroness Crawley Excerpts

Thursday 1st July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Crawley (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, has alighted on one of the most urgent aspects of our political life in the UK today. The long-overdue publication of the Dunlop report is to be welcomed as a positive contribution to the very tetchy discourse that has surrounded the devolution debate, especially since Brexit.

As we know, the report calls for new governance to take devolution and union capability forward, such as a new Secretary of State to represent the union and a pool of civil servants with expertise of constitutional reform and devolution alongside a growth fund that is UK-wide, and much more. For those of us who support the union but want to see the language of respect and equality infuse the devolution debate, with the UK Government as the first among equals, the Dunlop report is an important step forward.

The noble Lord, Lord Dunlop, recently gave evidence to the Common Frameworks Scrutiny Committee, on which I sit along with other speakers in this debate. We agreed that renewing intergovernmental relations was a crucial aspect of opening up an economically healthy UK single market post Brexit. However, the Government’s response to the noble Lord’s report is still very much a work in progress. It is very disappointing for the devolution debate and for the developed Administrations, and is still not the cultural shift that the Government claim to aspire to. Still, it is a start—and about time, because time is running out, as the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, has said, for persuasive voices and policies to secure the union into the future and ensure that the poorest across the union do not lose out. This House has its part to play.

UK-EU Trade and Co-operation Agreement

Baroness Crawley Excerpts

Thursday 29th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, we made clear during the negotiations, and continue to make clear, that we would be ready to agree an arrangement with the EU based on equivalence. We believe that our standards of food security and biosecurity more generally are certainly equivalent. The EU was not willing to negotiate that issue last year but we remain open to discussing that this year if it would like to change its position.

[Baroness Crawley (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, in the Minister’s responsibilities for oversight of domestic transition readiness, why have so many UK government departments, including his own, not fully completed and published the common frameworks that make up the new UK internal market? It is now four months since the end of the transition period with the EU internal market, and businesses, regulators and, most importantly, consumers wish to know exactly what is happening.

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness draws attention to an important issue that is central to how we operate the single market of the United Kingdom. We are in the middle of the process to which she refers but I will look into the matter and, if necessary, write to her.

Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland

Baroness Crawley Excerpts

Thursday 25th March 2021 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Crawley]

To ask the Minister of State at the Cabinet Office (Lord Frost) why Her Majesty’s Government unilaterally extended the grace period for checks on trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland under the Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland.

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Lord Frost) (Con)]

My Lords, the temporary operational measures announced by the Government earlier this month were taken to avoid disruption to supermarket supplies and parcel deliveries, in accordance with the protocol’s aim to minimise disruption to everyday lives in Northern Ireland. We continue to discuss the implementation of the protocol with the EU within the joint committee framework.

[Baroness Crawley (Lab) [V]]

I thank the Minister and welcome him to his new post. Why did the Government not listen to the 29 trade associations that said in December that there were not enough official vets to cope with the new rules requiring export health certificates for trade in animal products crossing the Irish Sea? He tweeted on 12 March:

“overall freight volumes between the UK and the EU have been back to their normal levels for over a month now”.

Is he saying that for the first quarter of 2021 the volume of trade between the EU and UK will be approximately the same as for the first quarter of 2020? If not, what is he saying exactly?

[Lord Frost (Con)]

In answer to the first part of the question, I say that we work very closely with companies wishing to trade into Northern Ireland and have set up a movement assistance scheme specifically designed for companies exporting food and drink. On the second part, I say what I said in my tweet—freight volumes are back to normal and have been since the beginning of February. We must await official figures for trade value, and those are subject to some of the same considerations discussed earlier.

Office for Veterans’ Affairs

Baroness Crawley Excerpts

Wednesday 9th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his kind words about the work of officials; he is a great campaigner on these matters. He is absolutely right to signal the importance of work on mental health. The existing services we have established— the Transition Intervention and Liaison Service and the Complex Treatment Service—benefit from over £10 million of investment per year and have collectively received over 10,000 referrals. However, we want to do more, and the forthcoming veterans mental health high intensity service will see even more investment, providing crisis care, therapeutic in-patient support and help with co-ordinating care. We are currently recruiting for this service. I will certainly talk to Mr Mercer about a meeting with my noble friend and we will see what we can arrange.

[Baroness Crawley (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, when does the Minister envisage a full service returning to the Veterans UK helpline, which is offering only limited information to veterans over the phone at the moment? I tested it myself yesterday. Also, when do the Government plan to revisit their totally unsatisfactory policy on war widows’ pensions as a result of the letter from the Secretary of State for Defence to the chair of the War Widows’ Association on June 29? As a vice-president of the WWA, I know that war widows cannot wait much longer.

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness asked two extremely important questions. Government services for veterans have continued throughout Covid, but she is right that there have been changes to ensure safety and social distancing. For a period during the peak of the pandemic, the helpline was closed as it could not operate effectively, but support continued to be offered through email, digital means and a call-back service. I am advised that matters are now returning to normal. I will certainly pursue that in light of what the noble Baroness has said. On war widows, for whom she is a consistent advocate and I praise her for that, we are now exploring the full financial and legal implications of the options in making the move she is seeking so that the Defence Secretary can decide how to proceed. I assure her that work is continuing at pace in the Ministry of Defence and across government.

Covid-19: Infection Rate

Baroness Crawley Excerpts

Monday 6th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord True]

My Lords, I will look into this specific matter. I am aware of the event the noble Lord refers to. He will also be aware that, at the time, the advice on large-scale events was not necessarily what it is today. I will certainly undertake to pursue the matter and will ensure that there is a response to Parliament.

[Baroness Crawley (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, could early street-level data sharing with local directors of public health be the way forward for local lockdowns in the event of future spikes in infection? Will the Minister say why that did not happen in time in Leicester, and why pillar 2 testing data is muddled and full of duplications?

[Lord True]

My Lords, the role of local councils is extremely important—noble Lords will not be surprised to hear me say that, given that I gave half a lifetime to local councils. We are ensuring that all local and public health bodies have the data that they need to support their plans for potential outbreaks. Since 11 June, an operational data dashboard was made available for all local authorities, to give them a clear picture in their local area. This includes counts of total tests and total positives, and a rolling average for pillar 2.

Grenfell Tower

Baroness Crawley Excerpts

Thursday 14th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I am not sure that I fully understood my noble friend’s question. The assistance that the Government and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea are seeking to extend is to those who were living in Grenfell Tower or Grenfell Walk at the time who are now homeless, or who were homeless shortly after the fire. Therefore, anybody who was living there at the time is now being assisted by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. My noble friend has lived through tragic circumstances where people have lost their lives. He will know better than anyone else in this House the trauma that those people have been through. We ought to allow them the time and space to find suitable accommodation to move into.

[Baroness Crawley (Lab)]

My Lords, in the aftermath of the Grenfell tragedy, why are the Government continuing apace with their deregulation agenda?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

So far as Grenfell Tower is concerned, the noble Baroness will know that the Hackitt review is shortly to produce its interim report on fire regulations and fire safety. She will know that after the tragedy at Grenfell Tower, advice was given on two occasions by the DCLG to owners of property that might not have the appropriate cladding on how to make safety measures appropriate for those blocks. The whole thrust of the inquiry under Sir Martin Moore-Bick and of the Hackitt inquiry is to make sure that nothing like this ever happens again.

European Union Committee Report

Baroness Crawley Excerpts

Monday 26th November 2012 Grand Committee

[Baroness Crawley]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain. I congratulate her on her work on women on boards and on her consumer focus in her committee. As a non-committee member, it is a pleasure for me to take part in this debate where we look back at the extensive and thorough scrutiny of EU legislation undertaken by the European Union Committee and its sub-committees. We thank the noble Lord, Lord Boswell of Aynho, and the former chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Roper, and indeed all the former committee members, including my non-controversial noble friend Lord Foulkes of Cumnock, for their detailed and influential work at a time of great flux for the EU.

As president of the Trading Standards Institute, I was particularly interested in the work of the sub-committee on consumer protection. Part of reinvigorating confidence among British consumers and getting us out of this recession is improving, protecting and increasing their buying activity within the EU. The committee’s report on the EU financial framework for 2014 heralded the difficult discussions in Brussels over the past few days on the future of the EU’s budget. The Prime Minister has the unenviable task of negotiating not only with the EU Commission and each of the member states but also with his out-and-proud Back Benches, whose idea of a successful relationship with Europe is spelt “D-I-V-O-R-C-E”.

In his speech to business leaders in London this week, Tony Blair will make the essential case for the EU to become more relevant, not less, as a trading bloc in an increasingly competitive world. In the UK, we should be standing up to the BRIC countries in trading terms through our membership of the EU, not throwing verbal bricks through the Commission’s windows from a position of pedantic insularity. The CBI and others in the UK’s business community do not want us to have second-class membership of the EU; they want us to travel into the next decade in business class only.

The committee’s work on the scrutiny of subsidiarity and proportionality, which was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, is all the more important at a time when the public’s view of the EU is so often of resentment towards perceived high-handedness from Brussels. As my taxi driver told me today, “I hate that Europe. Why should some Danish geezer sitting in Brussels tell us what a Cornish pasty should look like—or was it some Cornish geezer sitting in Brussels telling us what a Danish pastry should look like?” He has a point. There is often a case for less Europe, just as there is sometimes a case for more. That is all part of the reform agenda, which this EU Committee takes an energetic role in.

Ed Miliband spoke last week to the CBI on that very subject. Being pro-European does not mean being complacent in our European policy. As Ed Miliband said,

“there is an urgent imperative for us to reform the European Union so that it can help us compete and pay our way in the world”.

In that process of reform, we need to seek to build and rebuild alliances for a different approach. From our point of view in the Opposition, that means a more pro-growth, pro-jobs approach for all parts of Europe, including the UK.

Does anyone really think that a weaker and de-integrating Europe would bring us improved living standards in the UK in the future or that it would be anything other than a wondrous windfall for all those Asian and South American businesses that are busy plotting, as we speak, to dominate global consumer markets tomorrow, never mind the next decade? Does anyone really think that, if our Eurosceptic friends—all those people who still have trouble dealing with the tragic events of 1066—have their way, we would have anything other than a Europe that simply could not protect our future prosperity, in Birmingham as much as in Barcelona and in Manchester as much as in Milan? Do we really want Britain to be decoupled and to cast itself adrift from Europe, and to set itself up as some kind of bargain basement Atlantis, with all the economic strength of the Faroe Islands and all the political influence of Rockall?

Some may want to take risks with Britain’s prosperity, but the Opposition most emphatically do not. This EU Committee will continue to be an example to us all.