Product Safety and Metrology etc. (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Debate between Baroness McIntosh of Pickering and Baroness Crawley

Monday 4th March 2019 Grand Committee

[Baroness Crawley]

Oh, 2.54. I was told that it was 4.5 kilograms, so the figure has doubled. My first thought was: thank goodness for the Explanatory Memorandum. I tried reading the instrument without the Explanatory Memorandum just to torture myself, but I did not get very far without a stiff drink.

When I read the House of Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s acknowledgement that the SI had to be corrected and relaid because of legal drafting errors in an earlier version, it did not fill me with great confidence. The scrutiny sub-committee voiced concern at the department’s decision to combine so many different legislative measures in a single statutory instrument, and I certainly agree with that concern. I come to this as a vice-president of the Chartered Trading Standards Institute and as a guardian of hallmarking in the Birmingham Assay Office.

It is virtually impossible to scrutinise this instrument effectively with the crazily reduced time limit of 29 March. The scrutiny sub-committee expressed concern about uncertainty and the impact that leaving the EU’s produce safety regime in a no-deal scenario could have on UK consumers and businesses. In that context, I should like to put some questions to the Minister.

On the category of cosmetics, for instance, paragraph 7.19 of the Explanatory Memorandum states that,

“this instrument will make further amendments to ensure the continued protection of UK consumers after exit. In a ‘no deal’ scenario it is likely that the UK will no longer have access to the EU Cosmetics Products Notification Portal which provides essential information to National Poison Centres to protect public health. Work has already begun on a UK replacement database”.

Can the Minister guarantee that no British consumer of cosmetic products will be put at risk of being poisoned? The Explanatory Memorandum uses the phrase “Work has already begun”. Will that really reassure British women—the principal consumers of cosmetics—that all cosmetics made at home and abroad will be safe? What will a functioning statute book actually look like in the cosmetics sector, and could rogue cosmetics firms set themselves up with the precise purpose of circumnavigating loose consumer protection in this area and making fast bucks from an overly trusting shopping sector, especially online? Is this the kind of no-deal consequence that we are facing in this sector? Also, what is the timescale for the completion of the UK’s replacement cosmetics product portal?

Perhaps I may also ask the Minister a few questions about consultation. Paragraph 10.1 of the Explanatory Memorandum states:

“The Department did not undertake a public consultation”.


At least that has the virtue of honesty and brevity. But further down the page we read, at paragraph 10.3:

“Informal consultation has taken place with a good cross-representation of stakeholders, including trade associations and other industry representative bodies across the product areas covered by this instrument”.


Can the Minister give us his definition of “informal” and “good”, as in,

“good cross-representation of stakeholders”?

How many meetings took place with the stakeholders? Did the cross-representation of stakeholders have the Explanatory Memorandum available when they looked at this SI? If they did not, I admire their superpowers. Did the informal consultation involve, say, trading standards, the Scottish Government or the CBI in all its regional forums, and were the meetings in situ or just a set of emails and phone calls? If we leave the EU without a deal, is this a good time to be “informal” about commercial regulation?

I have a few final questions. On the impact of this SI, paragraph 12.1 of the Explanatory Memorandum states:

“The impact on business has been looked at in an Impact Assessment … for this instrument”,


and has been assessed as de minimis. That is all right, then. However, later in the Explanatory Memorandum there is a reference to how much this whole procedure will cost businesses, and it does not seem like small beer. Paragraph 12.3 informs us that some of the 241,000 businesses that are to be affected will try to familiarise themselves with the new inventory of regulations. The cost estimate is put at £19.6 million, which is a substantial sum in itself, on the assumption that the average business leader will need only three hours to build total operational familiarity with these new rules. That is ludicrously optimistic. To take the example of a managing director of a company in Birmingham—a city I know well—which trades across Europe and indeed the world, she can get to work on a Monday morning and will have absorbed the consequences for her business of a no-deal Brexit by lunchtime that day. Is that the Government’s professional opinion? I would be grateful for the Minister’s response.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Baroness, because we overlapped for at least five years as Members of the European Parliament. The noble Baroness referred to cosmetics; I think we will both remember the fevered exchange we had with constituents on animal testing. I echo her remarks.

I am sure my noble friend will be only too aware of the criticism that has been levelled at his department, and I feel for him most deeply, because this epic package is the surest cure for insomnia that any Minister could wish for. Could he put our minds at rest, and those of the members of the sub-committee? I am mindful of the problems we have already heard: this instrument had to be reissued because there were minor drafting errors in the original script, plus the fact that the impact assessment was published subsequently, which meant that the scrutiny committee was not able to perform its function because it did not have that document in front of it.

I do not detract from the fact that this is a very necessary piece of legislation, but I hope that this will not be the way forward. There will be instances where regulations fall naturally together, but the very number of pages here, and the fact that this has had to be repeated and that the impact assessment could not be packaged together with it, must surely be a cause of concern for the department. I do not want to go down this path again.

I have a number of questions. The sub-committee noted that there is considerable uncertainty, for reasons that have been well rehearsed, about the possible impact on UK consumers and businesses of leaving the EU’s product safety regime. Does the Minister share the concern of the scrutiny committee’s Sub-Committee B about the impact that the loss of access to EU product safety databases could have on UK consumers? Even at this late date, might the department be able to provide that information in writing to the committee before the SI transfers from here to the Chamber? That concerns me, given that it relates to offshore installations, other major industries and explosives as well.

I want to share one anecdote with my noble friend. In a previous ministry—it was the Department of Trade and Industry, under a Conservative Government, I think—it was decreed that second-hand toys could no longer be sold in charity shops because of the danger that the eyes and other pieces might be displaced and be a great safety risk to small children. What I was not prepared for was the amount of correspondence—in those days, they were hard-copy letters; people printed out a standard letter and we received multiples of it because we had thousands of constituents. That was an unintended consequence of the toy safety directive as it was implemented in UK law at that time. One might say that it was gold-plating, so it would be nice to know that nothing is being gold-plated here and that we are just transferring what is already in UK law. If my understanding is correct and we lose access to EU product safety databases, it must surely set alarm bells ringing.

With so many regulations or schedules to regulations bundled together here—and following on from what was itemised by the noble Baroness, Lady Crawley—is my noble friend convinced that we are not missing a matter of public policy here? This is our one opportunity to discuss it before we pass the regulations in the Committee and subsequently in the House.