Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [HL]

Baroness Lawlor Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 8th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lawlor (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his analysis. It is a pleasure to congratulate him on his appointment and welcome him to the Government Front Bench. I have greatly enjoyed working with him on other enabling Bills, such as the CPTPP Bill, and find myself in agreement with him on many issues. I also welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Winterton of Doncaster, and congratulate her on her winning maiden speech and her extremely impressive parliamentary career. I look forward to her future contributions to this House.

This Bill can be read in two ways. First, it can be read as an enabling Bill, to enable regulation on product safety and consumer protection to be updated, to keep pace with new products hitting the marketplace and new platforms for the market, especially online retail. The Bill, as we have heard, will update product regulation to keep pace with market developments and new marketplaces, and provide, as we have also heard, a means of recognising new or updated EU product requirements, with the intention of preventing additional costs for business. Noble Lords across the Chamber have commented on this, and we have heard many examples of the scary risks from e-bikes, the safety mechanisms that do not work and the calls on the London Fire Brigade. This is all very illuminating and, where necessary, I would totally support the updating of safety and product regulation.

Secondly, in addition to the first way of reading the Bill, it can be seen, as other noble Lords have pointed out, as a Bill to rationalise the UK’s product regulation across the UK’s internal market and to keep it up to date with EU product regulation, which Northern Ireland has been obliged to accept. The King’s Speech guidance illuminates the second reading of this measure, although I am afraid that the Bill is less than forthright about it. I hope the Minister will forgive me if I have questions about that. Page 38 of the guidance says:

“As most product safety legislation falls within scope of the Windsor Framework, EU changes to product regulation only apply in Northern Ireland, resulting in divergence within the UK internal market as EU laws are updated. This Bill gives the Government specific powers to make changes to GB legislation to manage divergence and take a UK-wide approach, where it is in our interests to do so”.


The House of Lords Library briefing, for which I am most grateful, highlights this provision as follows:

“The Government has stated the Bill would give it specific powers to make changes to … GB … legislation to manage divergence within the UK internal market. … Under the bill’s provisions, the government would be able to amend GB legislation in order to … take a UK-wide approach”,


et cetera.

In the impact assessment for the Bill, section 4 explains that the Government’s preferred option to change the law on product framework will ensure the framework is

“agile in its response to emerging threats, new technologies and changes in EU law … This option will ensure that the Government can fully implement a framework for recognising existing EU requirements for a range of products”

and ensure powers

“to enable the Government to manage divergence pragmatically”.

This suggests that the Government will be empowered, in order to manage divergence, to introduce and impose EU goods and product law as they decide. It implies that the EU goods laws now imposed on Northern Ireland could or will be extended to the whole of the UK. Can the Minister clarify whether this is correct and what precisely the Government intend in order to take a UK-wide approach to the internal market, and under which powers particularly conferred in the Bill?

Are the Government planning to end the dual system either at one stroke or in a piecemeal way? This is a dual system in which we have an EU system for Northern Ireland products and UK arrangements which may diverge from inherited EU regulation. Will that be by imposing EU product laws on the whole UK manufacturing sector in order to promote the integrity of the internal market?

I now turn to specific questions on Clauses 1 and 2. Clause 1(2) gives the Secretary of State powers to make regulations for

“marketing or use of products in the United Kingdom, which corresponds, or is similar, to a provision of relevant EU law for the purpose of reducing or mitigating the environmental impact of”

goods. The Henderson Chambers barristers, Prashant Popat KC and Noel Dilworth, in an analysis published on the web, for which I am grateful, say that Clause 1(2)

“empowers the Secretary of State to harmonise UK law with EU law in order to reduce or mitigate the environmental impact of products”.

Can the Minister confirm that he agrees with this analysis and that the UK Government can now decree that our producers must follow such EU legislation as they—the Government—decide, for the purpose, of course, of reducing or mitigating the environmental impact of products?

If so, can the Minister point me to specific pieces of EU legislation, which, to date, fall in this category—since, of course, 2018—that is, any existing EU regulations, and which UK goods and producers will be affected by and subject to it?

I am sorry for the list of questions, but I hope the Minister will bear with me. Is it supposed to be a dynamic alignment, as other noble Lords have suggested, so allowing the continued keeping up with EU laws on product safety? If so, what is the certainty that producers can have as to whether the rules will change, even when some product is already on the assembly line? Who will judge whether a product falls within the law—in fact, EU law—and who will operate the law?

I now move on to the powers given for product requirements in Clause 2, to require conditions to be met for products in the UK. I refer to Clause 2(7), which allows that

“product regulations may provide that a product requirement is to be treated as met if … a requirement of relevant EU law specified in product regulations is met, or … such a requirement is met and conditions specified in the regulations are also met”,

provided due regard has been taken of

“the social, environmental and economic impact of making the provision”.

Does this mean that, in addition to the assimilated or inherited EU law, the Government intend to allow or impose a replacement of UK product law with EU product regulation, and in practice, the shadowing of the EU’s level playing field laws and EU economic law for goods in a dynamic alignment?

If my reading is correct—I would like some confirmation on this—it suggests that the Government intend, under cover of the Bill, to bring in the Chequers agreement piecemeal by the backdoor, which was rejected by the House of Commons three times. Would the Minister agree with that analysis in general?

To conclude, I urge the Government to embark on their new term of office, for which I wish them very well, by being open and transparent with the people of this country, to rethink the Bill to allow only for standard updating procedure for product regulation and metrology where absolutely necessary, and to drop the enabling powers in the Bill which allow them to impose EU law and regulation alignment by the backdoor.

I conclude by proposing, as other noble Lords on this side have already outlined, that the UK recognises the best international standards, wherever they come from, and that it plays its part in helping to shape these standards for product regulation, as it has done so successfully in so many other areas. I note here international financial services regulation in particular. Indeed, I echo the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, in saying that the UK is well-placed to chart its own course and to reflect the best international standards, without looking over its shoulder to enact EU regulation. Much of it, I fear, is unequal to keeping pace with the best—and the worst—new products as they hit the market and the best international standards.