Future of the Post Office

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Monday 18th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

I will need to double check that. One of the complications is that there are already four schemes running on different principles. I will need to double check the definitions of the groups the noble Lord is talking about, but I believe that they are included. If I am mistaken, I am sorry, but I believe they are included in one of the schemes. I understand that people who left before the Horizon scandal came to light—I apologise if I have got this wrong—will be included in one of the schemes.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I add my voice to others speaking up for the rural network. Could the noble Baroness examine the model currently on the table, which seems defective? The price of stamps has gone up incrementally over the past two years, yet the service has gone down. Saturday deliveries have been taken away and I understand that posties, who are the heroes on the ground delivering the post in all weathers, have been told they can have no overtime this autumn. Could she use her good offices to examine that and make sure that we have a rural network that is fit for purpose?

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

The noble Baroness is talking about the Royal Mail service, rather than the Post Office. I know that there are separate discussions with the Royal Mail about the future delivery programme. I do not have the details in front of me, but if I can find details, I will write to the noble Baroness.

Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (IAC Report)

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Tuesday 19th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, with permission, I will speak in the gap. I congratulate the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, and the committee on an excellent and timely report and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, on presenting it. I will focus on points made by the noble Baroness and others on the parts relating to sanitary and phytosanitary agreements—or, as I would call them, food safety measures. This follows neatly on from what my noble friend Lord Udny-Lister said.

While I welcome this agreement, it is important to realise that the loss of trade since leaving the European Union will have an ongoing cost to our GDP of 4% per annum. That is the background against which we must judge every free trade agreement that we consider.

I will raise with the Minister the implications of this agreement for farming and food security. Clearly, it is in the interests of the UK to accede to this partnership agreement given the current insecurity to food supplies due to hostilities in Ukraine and the Middle East. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, referred to sanitary and phytosanitary arrangements; it is extremely important to say again, as we did when the original international trade arrangements were put in place when we left the European Union, that it is incumbent on our farmers to produce agricultural goods and food to the highest possible levels of animal welfare and food hygiene standards.

There have been recent reports of a pause in the discussions with Canada, which were pulled for reasons which all of us, particularly the farming community, can understand. What is the current position of our relationship with Canada in the context of the CPTPP? I understand that the agreement on our massive exports of cheese to Canada, which is so important to cheese producers in this country, is coming to an end. Can my noble friend outline what will happen when that occurs?

Finally, what is the position on the dispute-resolution mechanism that is available under the agreement? In the circumstances to which my noble friend Lord Udny- Lister referred, where there are differentials between food safety standards in this country, which we are imposing on our producers, and imports from partners under the CPTPP, what can our producers do if there is an eventual conflict? Otherwise, I support this agreement.

UK Tradeshow Programme Closure

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Monday 18th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Johnson of Lainston (Con)]

Since many of our exports are going to be food and drink, I think overegging the pudding is precisely what we should be doing when it comes to encouraging our exports. The opportunities that CPTPP presents are, first, a new trade deal with Malaysia, which we do not have; far better arrangements around rules of origin, which noble Lords opposite who have been involved in motor manufacture will see the benefits from; and very important new opportunities to export our agricultural goods. CPTPP is not a single trade deal but a living agreement. We hope new members will join which are aligned to our ambitions. That will allow us to have access to even greater markets. I am very proud of this Government’s record of negotiating trade deals, but there is more to do, so I am excited about the future too.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, will my noble friend thank the department for sending a representative to local businesses in North Yorkshire to sell the business advice that they give from the new hub in Darlington? How widely known is the hub, and how available are such things to give such advice?

[Lord Johnson of Lainston (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for that point. Absolutely, promoting our activities is one of the key issues we face and we rely on chambers of commerce, and indeed the general body politic, to do that. There is always more work to do and I am grateful to her for amplifying our message.

UK-EU Trade: Small and Medium-sized Enterprises

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Wednesday 31st January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord. As I said yesterday, Europe remains a massive part of our trade—41% with the EU 27 and 48% with the euro 34—and that will continue to be the case. However, the growth areas for our markets will be the US and the rest of the world. SMEs recognise that and are pivoting to the Indo-Pacific region. DBT is putting a lot of effort into helping them get there fast and profitably.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

Will my noble friend make sure that there is complete fairness between exports of food and agricultural products from Great Britain to the EU and those from the EU to this country? Will he update the House on the position of seed potatoes? Can we export them directly to the EU at this time?

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

I thank my noble friend. Seed potatoes are a specialised area so I will need to write to her on that.

UK-Canada Trade Deal: Suspension of Negotiations

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Tuesday 30th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

I fundamentally disagree that we are in chaos; quite the opposite. We are making great progress. The first thing that we did when we left the EU was do a trade deal with Europe that involved rolling over trade deals with 65 countries. We have now improved that with a further seven deals. When I was in Canberra two months before Christmas, the Australia deal was held up as one of the best deals it had ever signed. As we move through, because our economy is 80% services and 20% goods, we have now got trade deals that encompass services, digital and innovation.

We wanted to do the same deal with Canada, but Canada crossed one of our red lines. The negotiations have not failed. The noble Lord and I have done many negotiations together—we sometimes have moments of pause. The Canadians have crossed a red line where they know we would never accept the hormone beef trade deal that they want to do with us. We have said no to that, which is why we have stopped.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the Government on the position they have taken by pausing the trade talks at this time, reflecting the high production standards that our farmers have to meet in this country. Could my noble friend explain what the position is specifically on exports of British cheese to Canada, including the excellent cheese produced in north Yorkshire? I understand it now suffers from a 245% tariff on export to Canada.

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

Cheese is now a pawn in the game, and that has now become the focus of attention. When we were in the EU, we had 2,000 out of 14,000 tonnes of cheese allocated to us. That has now been taken away and allocated to Europe—France and Germany, mostly. We are now allocated 6,000 for the rest of the world. Canada knew that we had a right to roll that over to 2,000 within the WTO trade agreement. We do not have that now. That is £18 million of trade. Out of £26 billion, one might say that is a small number, but we know that the farms in Somerset and Wales in particular, which produce incredible quality cheese, have built up a superior market share in Canada. The Canadian consumer wants this cheese and has been buying and stockpiling it for six months in advance of this happening. This has only happened because the Canadian farmers want to send hormone beef to the UK and we refuse to drop our standards, as some people said we would do when we left the EU.

Trade (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership) Bill [HL]

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend the Minister on the enthusiastic verve with which he has handled the whole of this legislation. We in the International Agreements Committee have been examining the detail of membership at considerable length for some time. Long before that, and long before Brexit many years ago, we were working to see our greater involvement in this pivot to south-east Asia and Latin America.

As the Minister said, this is a historic moment: we are entering now, with new opportunities, the fastest-growing markets of the next 30 years. Beyond that lie even bigger investment opportunities and markets which will ensure that we can maintain our own living standards in this country. This is a great move in the right direction, which will, if we work at it, bring enormous benefits.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend the Minister on securing the safe passage of the Bill. He is aware of the concern of farmers across North Yorkshire and the rest of the country about the Bill’s impact. I look forward to the increasing consumption of cheese, chocolate and whisky produced in all four parts of this country in all the countries that are party to the CPTPP—the whole thing; tout.

Can I raise two issues with my noble friend? Will he work very closely with Defra on the labelling of provisions when we eventually import products that may not meet the same standards of animal welfare and environmental protection that our farmers have to meet? Can I press him on his last comment on seeking the legislative consent of the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish? It is complex. Does he have a date—now that the Bill will pass to the other place—when that legislative consent will be granted?

Trade (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership) Bill [HL]

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 16th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

My Lords, I support all the amendments in this group. I happily added my name to Amendment 11, but I will focus on my Amendment 9. The common theme through these amendments is of raising concerns about possible issues arising from a trade agreement. We are all free- traders now, but there is a recognition that free trade should be respectful of the limits that we and other countries set to protect labour standards, the environment, food quality and so on. There is a balance to be achieved and this series of amendments raises issues of concern.

These amendments are all limited, because the Bill is limited. It is not the treaty, but just the administrative arrangements required to implement it, so it could not achieve a lot anyway. We are asking the Government to review these issues. I hope that they are of sufficient importance that they would be studied, in any event. It is possible that we do not need these amendments, as a good Government would review these issues, but they provide us with the opportunity to point out areas of concern.

My Amendment 9 concerns investor-state dispute settlement mechanisms. The investment chapter of the CPTPP contains these arrangements and allows companies to sue Governments over decisions to implement policies that impact their corporate profits, even when these decisions were made in the public interest. We debated this in Committee, and I am sorry to say that I found the Minister’s reply to our concerns less than reassuring. Referring to these arrangements, he said that that they do not

“derogate or hinder our right to regulate in the public interest, including in areas such as the environment and labour standards”.

Referring explicitly to the CPTPP, he also said that it

“preserves states’ rights to regulate proportionately, fairly and in the public interest”.—[Official Report, 14/12/23; col. GC 375.]

That sounds fine.

The International Bar Association has a similar view, stating that,

“while investment treaties limit states’ ability to inflict arbitrary or discriminatory treatment, they do not limit (and, in fact, expressly safeguard) a state’s sovereign right to regulate in the public interest in a fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory manner”.

The problem is that these phrases, “arbitrary or discriminatory treatment” and a

“fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory manner”,

are doing a lot of heavy lifting. They are all subject to interpretation. There have been real concerns that, in practice, commercial interests will be elevated above those of the public. There is so much there that needs to be taken on trust. The key point is that this clearly—and, I suggest, inarguably—is an issue that needs to be kept under close review, which my amendment does.

The problem we face is that ISDS arrangements have been used to challenge health provision, labour rights and other important regulations. This is not a theoretical possibility; there have been enough examples in practice to give rise to this concern. I quoted the CBI in Committee and it is worth expressing its views again—that there is

“a risk of the UK becoming disproportionately targeted through ISDS”,

and that

“there could also be environmental implications of the UK being exposed to the ISDS mechanism”.

These are not fringe concerns but concerns of different interest groups.

In simple terms, the ISDS arrangements make it possible for firms to sue Governments for measures that harm their profits. The existence of this power has a chilling effect on regulations, particularly those designed to combat climate change.

A specific example, of which we need some account, is the attitude to the energy charter treaty, under which many cases have been brought by western companies taking action against Governments to limit their use and expansion of fossil fuels. So problematic has this become that large European countries have signalled their intention to exit from this treaty. The Government themselves have said that they are reviewing their energy charter treaty membership and

“will carefully consider the views of stakeholders”.—[Official Report, Commons, 4/9/23; col. 4WS.]

Given the dawning realisation that these sorts of clauses are an impediment to climate action and to sovereign policy-making in general, it seems wrong for us to sign up to further restrictions through this treaty. I am amazed by the modesty of the demand that this aspect of the CPTPP should be subject to a formal review so that we can see what impact it is having on government corporate relations.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to speak to Amendment 10 in my name, which is in similar terms to the amendment I tabled in Committee and requests

“an assessment of the impact of the implementation of the CPTPP Chapter on government procurement on environmental protection and animal welfare, health and hygiene”.

I am grateful to my noble friend for trying to seek me out. I missed him yesterday and he missed me today. Along with the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and a number of others, we were paying tribute at the memorial to an outstanding parliamentarian, Baroness Boothroyd. I am sorry that I missed my noble friend’s attempt to speak to me, but I am grateful for the opportunity to speak to him in the confines of these deliberations.

What has changed very clearly since Committee stage is that an announcement was made by the Environment Secretary at the Oxford Farming Conference that the Government are committing to consult on new food labelling—plans that will ensure that British produce will, as he put it,

“stand out from the crowd”.

The idea is to allow changes to food labelling entitling consumers to make better decisions at the supermarket in particular, while also highlighting high-quality British produce to the public. I quote from the press release issued by the NFU, which quotes what my right honourable friend Steve Barclay said:

“New food labelling would also make it clearer when imported products do not meet the same UK welfare standards”.


I put it to my noble friend: would it not be better if we did not import food that does not meet the high UK animal welfare and environmental standards that consumers demand and our domestic producers are honoured and delighted to meet? What is the relationship between this new labelling scheme and the Red Tractor scheme, which already demonstrates compliance with all the food requirements by domestic producers?

Is it not a fact, and does my noble friend not agree, that domestic producers meet the highest standards of animal welfare and environmental protection in their production? This means they are meeting a higher standard and it is therefore more expensive to produce. This is exactly what happened in the 1990s with the decision to unilaterally ban sow stalls and tethers in the production of pigmeat while we continued to import pork produced by sow stalls and tethers for an interim period of seven years. This meant the consumer swapped high-end, high-quality, high-animal-welfare-standard UK pig production with lower, cheaper, substandard imports. After seven years, this put our pig producers out of business.

I hope my noble friend will give me his assurance today that after six months—or 12 months in the terms of my Amendment 10—an assessment will be undertaken by his department, jointly with Defra, to ensure that the trade Bill before us this evening does not discriminate against UK domestic production, particularly of meat and dairy. In addition, can he give an assurance that the food labelling provisions that Defra is proposing to consult on, and which I support, will apply not just to supermarket labelling but will somehow translate on to the food menus for food sourced from third countries in our restaurants, bars and cafés in this country? That is the main purport lying behind Amendment 10.

Trade (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership) Bill [HL]

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 14th December 2023 Grand Committee

I hugely support Amendment 15, tabled by my noble friend Lady Boycott, on deforestation. These forest risk commodities pose huge threats to biodiversity and our carbon drawdown. They also pose a risk to indigenous communities, as many of them come from areas where there are indigenous and forest people. There is so much evidence of dispossession of their collective customary lands, territories and resources in a number of CPTPP countries, including Peru, Mexico and Chile. The evidence base is strong. I hope the Minister can reassure us that recognition will lead to action and agrees that this amendment provides the Government with the opportunity to ensure proper monitoring and protection of these indigenous people’s rights. I look forward to his response on both amendments.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Baronesses, Lady Boycott and Lady Willis, since my Amendment 27 follows on neatly from the thinking behind Amendments 15 and 16, introduced so eloquently by them.

Clearly, I made a slip of the pen when I asked a Minister of the Crown within 12 months—for which read “24 months” or longer—to publish an assessment of the impact of the implementation of the CPTPP chapter on government procurement on environmental protection, animal welfare, health and hygiene. My noble friend was very kind to take me for a cup of tea to discuss these issues on previous legislation, so he is well versed in my concerns here.

Amendment 27 is meant as a probing amendment to ensure that there are not just opportunities for fair, better trade between the CPTPP block and the UK but that we are mindful of what our consumers want and what our farmers are being asked to deliver: high food safety and high food production standards. My probing amendment seeks a commitment and a reassurance from my noble friend that those high food production standards required of UK farmers and insisted upon by British consumers are met equally in these imported products. It also asks at what point, as the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, insisted, these products imported under this Bill will be checked at the external borders.

Why is this of concern and why is it necessary? The Government’s own advisory body—the Food Standards Agency—and Food Standards Scotland go into some detail in this regard in their latest annual report, Our Food 2022. I will not rehearse exactly what the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, said, but she was very clear that there are effectively two different schemes. One is the EU, which, the report says,

“still accounts for two-thirds of all food and feed imports, and 80% of all meat and other products of animal origin”—

that must be true because it is from the FSA. It continues:

“All food and feed imported from outside the EU is subject to a series of checks to make sure it is safe. The type of checks carried out depends on the type of product and the level of risk it may pose to public, animal and plant health”.


Then, of course, there is the category of the Windsor agreement—I accept I do not fully grasp it but my noble friend will be much more familiar with it. For the purposes of this afternoon, what concerns me is what the FSA focuses on at page 49:

“Currently, all food and feed of animal origin coming from outside the EU is subject”—


only—

“to documentary checks (which confirm that appropriate documentation is supplied)”.

Therefore, we are entirely taking as read what the exporting countries are saying. The identity checks will only

“confirm that the product matches the documentation”,

and, as the noble Baroness said:

“Additional physical checks are carried out randomly on a pre-defined percentage”.


To me, that leaves a bit of risk.

The FSA and FSS go on to say:

“Overall, non-EU imports have remained largely compliant with import checks compared with”


the year before—2021—so they are saying that there is not any significant fallout. However, the FSA

“recently commissioned the food consultancy ADAS to identify measurable metrics and data sources for imported food production standards that might be used to give the public a fuller picture”.

The ADAS report highlighted three specific points, which I think are of concern this afternoon:

“A general lack of publicly available data and issues with the quality of the limited data available … A lack of measurable metrics or clear approaches to measure or monitor them”,


and

“The absence of frameworks to evaluate production standards”.


The FSA and FSS conclude:

“Although the current system of border checks gives us assurance on food safety, there is no similar system for food production standards. Being able to assess the production standards, like animal welfare or environmental standards, of imported food on a comparable basis to UK food, is essential if we as watchdogs are to be able to assess whether the food standards of the food the UK consumes has been maintained”.


That is the fundamental issue that Amendment 27 seeks to address.

I accept that the NFU regards this as a more modest and measured agreement, focusing on market access by removing trade barriers, which highlights opportunities for exporting UK products that to a high proportion have hitherto not been possible. I have not been able to find the details, but I understand that there has been an announcement of more agricultural attachés, which I applaud. The first one, which was appointed in Beijing a number of years ago, has had substantial results. We are way behind the Danes and other countries in this regard, so we are finally catching up, which is very good news indeed.

I conclude with a very simple question for my noble friend. Does he believe in his heart of hearts that there is enough in the Bill and its supplementary provisions to ensure that our consumers and our farmers, who adhere to the highest standards of food production, environmental protection and all the other things that this amendment would enhance, will not meet unfair competition from imported products from the countries that are party to this agreement?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Johnson of Lainston (Con)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for raising those points, and I am happy to provide further reassurance in terms of how we control our borders. We already import products from Australia and have done for many years; the Australia-New Zealand FTA does not make any difference to that. In fact, I can turn now to the protections we have for our agriculture sector. I follow on from comments I made in the Australia-New Zealand trade treaty debates that protecting our farming community is absolutely paramount for us. We are very sensitive to the effects that global trade flows can have on industries and communities, and it is completely right that we do what we can to ensure that we take a very gradual and phased approach to the changes of our quotas.

However, I would say that for the CPTPP, the impacts on agriculture are significantly less significant—I am sorry to have not presented a particularly clear sentence in that instance—than they are for the Australia-New Zealand trade deal, in the sense of the areas where we have increased the tariff rate quotas, in particular areas such as whole shell eggs, pork and other products, which are not at significant import volumes from countries such as Mexico, Vietnam and so on. We have phased in our tariff rate quota allowances over 10 years; we have taken a very measured approach.

I spoke recently to the president of the National Farmers’ Union, and she was very pleased. I asked whether I was able to repeat her sentiments, and she said I was. She felt very comfortable and pleased with the way we have negotiated tariff rate quotas at the levels we have ended up with. I will defer to my colleague, if she wishes to make an intervention.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

I am sorry to intervene. I do not have the Trade and Agriculture Commission report in front of me, but I think there may be a difference between food safety and food production standards. Will my noble friend take the opportunity to look at the ADAS conclusions and the conclusions of the Food Standards Agency on food production standards just to be absolutely sure before we proceed to the next stage?

[Lord Johnson of Lainston (Con)]

Yes, I will reply on that point. As I said, there will be differences in food production standards, production capabilities and so on because we are looking at having trade agreements with countries in different parts of the world which have different weather patterns. In many respects, the whole principle is to complement our production. We are talking here about ensuring that the safety of the British consumer is not jeopardised through FTAs, and I am comfortable expressing that very important point.

My final point is on deforestation and other standards and relates to production standards rather than simply importing goods, particularly agricultural goods. As noble Lords will know, as a result of the Environment Act, we are bringing in further protections such that companies above a certain level are obliged to ensure that their supply chain is compatible with the legal framework. I understand that that will include illegally occupied territories that have been deforested.

I am afraid that I do not have an update on the timing of that legislation. As I believe my noble friend Lord Benyon said recently, it will be taken through when parliamentary time allows. I know from my conversations with my noble friend that this is an area of great interest for him. That was not a light-hearted comment meant to play for time. Noble Lords understand that we have a parliamentary calendar and have to make sure that this is done appropriately. I cannot comment on that, but I can say that the Government are committed to ensuring that these things run in sequence as closely as possible. As I said, we are already doing business with many of these countries and, in my view, a delay of a relatively short or reasonable period would not make a significant difference to the timing. They do not have to run concurrently, as they are not linked together.

I hope I have covered all the points. I am very comfortable coming back to noble Lords—I see I have not so I shall take some interventions.

Trade (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership) Bill [HL]

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 7th December 2023 Grand Committee

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I want to intervene at a late stage on this amendment. I, too, was unable to participate at Second Reading because I could not be there for the whole debate, which I understand the rules, quite rightly, insist on. I apologise for not being able to participate then.

The amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, seems to have a certain similarity to a later amendment in my name, Amendment 27. I have already spoken to my noble friend the Minister informally—I hesitate to say “casually”—and alerted him to the background to that amendment, to which I shall speak when the time comes. Can my noble friend help me by telling me what the relevant conformity standards body is for food and agricultural imports? He will be familiar, I am sure, with the report from the Food Standards Agency in England and the Food Standards Scotland, to which I shall refer in more detail when I speak briefly to my amendment.

I want to congratulate the Government on something that I have been asking for for some 10 years. I understand that they have appointed a larger number of agricultural attachés. The original one was appointed in Beijing by my right honourable friend Liz Truss when she was the Secretary of State for agriculture. If attachés can be placed in countries such as those referred to my noble friend Lord Trenchard, including Japan and others, under this agreement, it will be an enormous boost. I applaud that. If my noble friend the Minister cannot answer today, could he provide the Committee with details on what part of the cost the farming and food sector would have to pay and which part the Government may pick up, because it would be an enormous investment?

As I said, I would be interested to know also which conformity standards body would be relevant to food and agricultural products, but I shall keep my main thoughts for when I speak to my own amendment in more detail.

[The Minister of State, Department for Business and Trade (Lord Johnson of Lainston) (Con)]

I greet noble Lords who have been kind enough to come back for another wonderful discussion on the merits and benefits of free trade that will be visited upon our nation thanks to the vision of this Government in seeking to apply to and being successfully admitted, we hope, to the CPTPP. I am grateful to noble Lords for continuing their discussions, particularly those who have tabled amendments, and for the interlocution that we have had up until now, which has allowed us to have a good debate. I hope that they are well aware that I am available to them continuously to make sure that we draft the right legislation and profit from these free trade agreements.

I shall take the amendments one at a time if I may, though in this instance I think they are quite well grouped. The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, well covered the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Purvis. There is no derogation of standards. This is not about standards; it is quite a helpful and straightforward process of authorising conformity assessment bodies to perform a function which, in many instances, they may already be doing—there may be mutual recognition in some areas and there may be other standards being undertaken or tested for. It simply allows the Secretary of State to authorise CABs to approve the activities of a CAB in a CPTPP country. Very importantly—we forget this, because often we look only one way in these agreements—CABs in CPTPP countries can authorise activities in the United Kingdom so that we can export more efficiently. It is of enormous assistance to industry, without question.

I have just been told the answer to my noble friend Lady McIntosh’s question: UKAS is the conformity assessment body for agricultural standards. That answer came through just at the right time, but, as always, I am happy to write to noble Lords if I do not have the specific information. On CABs, the statutory instruments or secondary legislation that will come from this will cover a whole range of specialist and manufactured goods.

I feel I have been brief, but I believe everything has been covered in the discussion, unless I have missed anything. This is not about regulations, changing standards or anything like that; it is about a straightforward process where conformity assessment bodies can be authorised to follow whatever standards the domestic CABs wish them to follow in any CPTPP country. This strikes me as eminently sensible, and we very much hope that the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, would be comfortable with withdrawing his amendment.

E-scooters and E-bikes: Battery Fires

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Tuesday 27th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for his question on that specific matter in relation to one part of the United Kingdom, but this is not a UK-central issue: it is an international issue. New York is considering the whole gamut of proposals; its fire department has implemented a range of activities, which our Office for Product Safety is looking at. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has announced that it will hold a forum on 27 July to look at lithium-ion batteries and e-bikes after an increasing number of fires and fatalities. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has outlined lithium-ion batteries as one of its product safety priorities, while Barcelona has imposed a six-month ban on e-scooters on public transport and Paris has banned rental e-scooters. We are not alone in considering how to deal with this modern technology.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, can my noble friend the Minister tell us how many e-scooters are in legal circulation? Private e-scooters are to be driven only on private land, including car parks and private property; rented scooters are the ones that he referred to under pilot schemes. How many will go on to become permanently rented, lawfully and with a licence? Will licences soon be issued for privately owned e-scooters as well?