Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Earl of Lindsay Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 6th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Lindsay (Con)]

My Lords, the overarching objective of this Bill is a timely and important opportunity to review, rationalise and update a wide-ranging tranche of legislation, and that I warmly welcome and strongly support. However, I have grave reservations about how the Bill proposes that it is done. My concerns are therefore about process, not purpose, and fall into two broad areas. The first is the role allotted to Parliament; the second is the uncertainties for, and potential impact on, consumers and businesses.

I will cover the first area with brevity. Having been a member of the SLSC when it signed off its report on this Bill and having become a member of DPRRC before it signed off its report, I fully endorse the concerns and recommendations set out in both those reports. They deal largely with concerns about parliamentary sovereignty, the need for greater parliamentary oversight, and the extent to which it is intended that secondary legislation will be used. I will not repeat those important concerns in detail, as they have been well articulated by others and not least by my noble friends Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts and Lord McLoughlin, respectively the former and current chairs of those two committees.

I turn to a range of more practical concerns. In doing so, I declare my interest as president of the Chartered Trading Standards Institute, the CTSI, which is the professional body for trading standards. In expressing its concerns, I am raising concerns that have equally been raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Crawley, who was my predecessor as president of the CTSI.

CTSI and the coalition of partner organisations see considerable merit in the opportunity to reappraise and update the legislation and regulations that underpin trading standards and consumer safety. However, they are deeply concerned about the practicability of doing this comprehensively, with due process and to good effect, across such a vast swathe of legislation, given the proposed sunset deadline at the end of the year and the minimalist approach to consultation and parliamentary scrutiny.

CTSI, alongside organisations such as the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health, the Child Accident Prevention Trust and Electrical Safety First, are therefore calling for the proposed sunset deadline of 31 December 2023 to be revisited. Their understandable fear is that, with thousands of pieces of vitally important but often complex legislation needing to be reviewed, rewritten or sunsetted, mistakes, omissions and contradictions are inevitable. This in turn could result in key protections for consumers and businesses being undermined or lost.

More specifically, CTSI and its partners are concerned that the Bill creates a lack of clarity around trading standards’ duties to enforce laws vital to ensuring the safety of products such as toys, electrical appliances and cosmetics; could weaken fair trading rules that protect consumers and law-abiding businesses; could undermine rules that ensure the welfare of animals and the UK’s ability to export animal products to EU member states; could result in diminished information requirements for food provenance, allergens and use-by dates; could make convictions for consumer rights offences unsafe if the laws that underpin them are not clear and coherent; and poses a threat to life due to differences in technical metrology definitions in the healthcare sector on the road and at sea. These are very real uncertainties and concerns, as are those that relate to the role of Parliament and parliamentary procedure.

I said at the start that the Bill is a rare and, I believe, welcome opportunity to review and update a lot of important legislation. We therefore need to ensure that the processes that the Bill is proposing are made fit for purpose and command greater confidence inside and outside Parliament.

Trade Bill

Earl of Lindsay Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 8th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Lindsay (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I too congratulate my noble friend the Minister and the right reverend Prelate on their excellent maiden speeches. In warmly welcoming the Bill, I want to focus on how the Government can deliver the priority they attach to the achievement of frictionless trade in current and future trade deals.

For trade to be frictionless, there must first be mutual recognition between trading partners of the standards relating to the goods and services being traded. Secondly, there must be mutual recognition of a regime of accredited conformity assessments that verify that those goods and services are complying with those standards. This mutual recognition of standards and accredited conformity assessments already underpins many international trade agreements around the world. It is therefore unsurprising that standards and accreditation, with their critical role in underpinning trade, are treated as global activities and are overseen by international organisations made up principally of the relevant national institutions of most of the world’s economies. In the UK, the relevant national institutions are: the British Standards Institution, or the BSI, the UK’s national standards body; and the United Kingdom Accreditation Service, or UKAS, the UK’s national accreditation body. Here I should declare an interest as chair of UKAS.

UKAS and the BSI are leading lights in the international organisations that oversee the global role that standards and accreditation play in facilitating frictionless trade. Accreditation at national and international level is the highest level of assurance that permits the free movement of products and services. The OECD estimates that 80% of global trade involves some form of conformity assessment which enhances competitiveness by demonstrating that products and services meet the requirements of Governments and consumers. In short, mutually recognised accreditation, alongside mutually recognised standards, is a tried, tested and well-proven combination for delivering frictionless trade.

In closing, I ask the Minister to confirm that the mutual recognition of standards and accredited conformity assessments derived from the UK’s national standards and accreditation bodies operating through international frameworks will be central to the UK’s trade negotiations and future trade agreements.

Enterprise Act 2002 (Specification of Additional Section 58 Consideration) Order 2020

Earl of Lindsay Excerpts

Wednesday 15th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Lindsay (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I welcome these two orders, but I want to raise an issue that is referenced in paragraph 8 in the accompanying report from the SLSC, of which I am a member. The issue is the lower turnover test threshold of more than £1 million below which the Government cannot intervene. Why is there any lower threshold at all when it comes to protecting the public interest in the relevant sectors?

It is entirely possible that a business with a turnover of less than £1 million could in other respects be of sufficient public interest for the Government to be justified in intervening. Recent new tech start-ups, for instance, or spin-out enterprises, perhaps from a university vaccine research programme, could well have a turnover of under £1 million but none the less meet the public interest criteria.

The £1 million threshold is even more questionable when one factors in the detrimental impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on business turnover and consequently the increased vulnerability of some businesses to predatory and opportunistic mergers and takeovers. A relevant business that had a turnover in excess of £1 million and was meeting the necessary criteria for intervention at the start of the year could now have a turnover of less than £1 million because of the pandemic; hence the simple question I pose to the Minister: why have a minimum threshold at all?

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

Earl of Lindsay Excerpts

Monday 4th March 2019 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Lindsay (Con)]

My Lords, like the noble Baroness, Lady Crawley, I am a vice-president of the Chartered Trading Standards Institute. The other interest I declare—as it is pertinent to the remarks I want to make—is my chairmanship of the government-appointed national accreditation body, the United Kingdom Accreditation Service, or UKAS. In that role, I welcome the work that has gone into this statutory instrument in respect to the transposition of the EU regulation on accreditation. I also welcome the consultative approach taken by BEIS and the Office for Product Safety and Standards with UKAS and other relevant stakeholders and the engagement surrounding that consultation. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, I thank the Minister and his officials for the briefing we were offered on this statutory instrument.

I recognise that transposing EU regulations to make them operable under UK law necessitates some changes. None the less, the reassurance that there has been no change to government policy is important. Therefore, UKAS is generally supportive of the way that the accreditation regulations have been transposed. We are reassured by the Government’s continuing commitment to maintaining the United Kingdom’s regulatory standards for product safety and the conformity assessment activities required for demonstrating compliance. We welcome the fact that UKAS’s position as the sole national accreditation body has been retained.

However, there are one or two potentially negative impacts from the amendments to EU Regulation 765/2008, the accreditation and market surveillance regulation amendment. My one question today relates to what measures are in place to prevent a competitive and possibly profit-driven rather than a not-for-profit accreditation market developing for United Kingdom-based conformity assessment bodies. Have the Government considered what else they might do to safeguard UKAS’s position as a not-for-profit national accreditation body and to prevent other accreditation bodies offering accreditation in the United Kingdom?

[Baroness Burt of Solihull (LD)]

My Lords, I add my thanks to the Minister for conducting a consultation on this “minor” piece of legislation last week and for his explanatory letter to the noble Lord, Lord Fox, which has been passed on to me. However, after the meeting last week I have rather more questions now than I had in the first place.

In the event of a no-deal Brexit, this SI creates a new independent regime for checking product conformity, initially mirroring EU product-safety standards. The Government have combined 38 measures into one, creating a piece of legislation over 600 pages long. The concerns that I outlined at the meeting—which were subsequently outlined by the noble Baroness, Lady Crawley, as well—regarding the breadth of industries and the number of sectors covered by this instrument remain. It makes it difficult for Parliament to read and scrutinise let alone those organisations to which it actually applies. Any company, small or otherwise, looking at this piece of legislation would be daunted, and I do not accept the argument that the repetition over all the different sectors covered will be reassuring and ensure consistency of treatment between different areas, as was mentioned at the meeting last week.

I also do not think that the 241,000 businesses which will be covered by this instrument will thank the Government for making them wade through so much paperwork to find what they need. Surely one of the fundamental principles of a democratic society is that people should be able to know what the law is and easily understand how it applies to them. Today’s SI has the potential to undermine that principle.

We know that there is a premium on time before 29 March, and we certainly have plenty of SIs to get through, but the Government could have laid each of the measures separately and then grouped them together in smaller debates. Companies, and consumers, will not thank them for this tombstone of an SI.

At the meeting last week, I also raised the costs of implementation, which have been calculated at a total of £25 million. The analysis and evidence summary talks of a corporate manager or director taking an average of three hours to familiarise themselves with the new legislation. The £25 million is supposed to cover an estimated £54 billion-worth of GVA and £63 billion-worth of goods from our exporters to other EU countries, with about £104 billion imported from EU countries.

The impact assessment does not include the wider impact caused by the separation of the UK and EU product safety regimes. It is surely here where the biggest costs to businesses of a damaging no-deal Brexit would lie. No assessment that I can see is made of the cost of relabelling products—removing the old CE marker and substituting the new UKCA one. The manufacturers’ organisation Make UK told the BBC that,

“thousands of companies are going to have to spend millions of pounds collectively on changing all their markings to comply with the new mark”.

It does not include the cost to British exporters of having to seek approval from two notifying bodies: one based in the UK and one based on the EU.

My first question is: what assessment have the Government made of those costs to UK businesses and what knock-on effect will they have on consumer prices? Is this not another reason why the UK would be foolish to leave on 29 March without a deal? That is a rhetorical question: the Minister and I both know the answer to it.

My second question, to which I would appreciate an answer, regards the impact of a no-deal Brexit on our 176 notified bodies operating in the UK which provide more than 4,000 jobs between them. If the EU does not allow UKCA-marked products to be sold in the EU, there will be no incentive for foreign manufacturers to have their products certified in the UK. They will go to an EU-notified body to receive the CE mark and then import the products into the UK. Does the Minister agree with that assessment? In the light of it, are the Government seeking assurances from the European Commission that it would accept UKCA products in a no-deal scenario?

On the subject of the CE mark, I should like to ask a question on behalf of the charity Electrical Safety First. It is concerned that although the UK Government have created their own mark, it will not be a consumer mark widely recognised by the public. What plans do the Government have to raise awareness of the new mark among consumers? What are the timings and what transition plans are there? Electrical Safety First would like the Government to work with it and industry to raise awareness of the UKCA. That sounds like a fair offer to me. How does the Minister respond?

Next, I should appreciate some clarification on the expiry of the CE mark. The Government have decided that they will continue to allow products imported from the EU that bear the CE mark to be sold on the UK market and that this will happen unilaterally, regardless of whether the EU agrees to allow UKCA-marked products to be sold to the EU. At the meeting with the Minister, he referred to a transition period of 18 months using the existing marks for importers, and to one of 90 days for cosmetic product imports. We discussed that earlier today. But there appears to be no sunset clause on the SI. I presume the Government will have to change the law to ban CE marked-products from being sold in the UK should they ever wish to do so. Can the Minister clarify whether that is correct?

Finally, I will mention market surveillance. The UK will lose access to RAPEX—the EU’s rapid alert system—and ICSMS, the Information and Communication System on Market Surveillance, which we will replace with our own databases for market surveillance and public protection to help remove unsafe or non-compliant products from the UK market. The charity Electrical Safety First is unsurprisingly exercised about counterfeit goods as well, particularly those sold online. What plans are there to prevent more counterfeit and substandard electrical goods from being sold, particularly online, after Brexit?

I am sorry for the length of my remarks and promise to make it up to the Minister in the next SI, but this is, as I have mentioned, an inordinately long one. I appreciate that I have asked a lot of questions, so will the Minister undertake to write to me on any he may not manage to answer today?

Industrial Strategy

Earl of Lindsay Excerpts

Monday 8th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Lindsay (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the publication of the White Paper and the Government’s commitment to boosting productivity and earning power across the UK.

As many noble Lords have mentioned, there are a number of positives, such as the strategy’s recognition of the importance of collaboration and partnerships and the Government’s increased commitment to R&D and innovative technologies.

Proposals to upgrade the United Kingdom’s infrastructure are another positive. I noted that my noble friend said in introducing the debate that high-quality infrastructure is vital, referring to digital and physical infrastructure. However, there is an important omission in the White Paper’s references to infrastructure. In drawing attention to this omission, I should declare an interest as chairman of the UK Accreditation Service and president of the Chartered Quality Institute.

One of the essential factors underpinning productivity, earning power, innovation and competitiveness is a framework of quality standards, accreditation, measurement and regulations which ensures that when businesses and consumers buy or receive something they get exactly what they expect. For standards, accreditation, measurement and regulations to be fully effective, they must be designed and implemented rigorously and consistently to give a high level of confidence in the outcome. The importance of achieving this consistent quality and rigour has led to the concept of a national quality infrastructure in the United Kingdom and, indeed, in a number of other leading economies.

A national quality infrastructure has four core components: standardisation, which creates the national and international standards that specify good practice in how products are made or services are provided; conformity assessment, which involves testing and certification to ensure that the quality, performance, reliability or safety of products and services meet the required specifications and standards; accreditation, which ensures that those who carry out conformity assessments such as testing, certification and inspection do so in a way that is competent, consistent and impartial; and finally and importantly, measurement, which ensures accuracy, validity and consistency.

A national quality infrastructure that commands confidence is vital to earning power, productivity, research, development and new technologies. Indeed a national quality infrastructure is vital for any industry and any modern economy. Furthermore, and of especial relevance as we prepare to leave the EU, a recognised national quality infrastructure also supports international trade and is an essential component of any free trade agreement; hence the use of national quality infrastructures to underpin WTO rules on eliminating technical barriers to trade through the acceptance of international standards and the mutual recognition of accredited conformity assessment results and regulatory equivalence.

The UK’s national quality infrastructure is largely delivered by four long-established and internationally respected institutions: the British Standards Institution, or BSI, which is the UK’s national standards body responsible for producing national and international standards; the National Physical Laboratory, or NPL, which is the UK’s national measurement institute; Regulatory Delivery, or RD, which is the part of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. that provides the regulatory and market surveillance infrastructure that enables businesses to export goods globally; and the United Kingdom Accreditation Service, which is the UK’s national accreditation body. As the UK’s national quality infrastructure, their combined contribution to productivity, earning power, industry and the economy should not be underestimated.

Independent research on the economic contribution of standards to the UK economy found that around 37% of UK productivity growth and 28% of annual UK GDP growth can be attributed to standards, the latter figure being equivalent to £8.2 billion per annum, and that standards also account for £6.1 billion of additional UK exports per annum. The benefits of accreditation to the UK economy are worth over £600 million in terms of those commercial benefits that can be measured against financial indicators, but this figure is probably closer to £1 billion per annum once unquantified trade and productivity benefits are taken into account.

In short, the wider benefits to the UK of our widely trusted and internationally respected national quality infrastructure include: improved business productivity and performance; increased domestic commercial activity; more innovation and faster commercialisation of innovation, creating new markets at home and abroad for UK businesses; better, safer, more sustainable and more tradeable products; increased competitiveness in international markets; reduced costs of international trade, and increased confidence on the part of non-UK investors in the United Kingdom market.

I therefore believe that the White Paper should have explicitly recognised the role of the United Kingdom’s quality infrastructure, and that my noble friend should have referred to not just a digital and physical infrastructure but to a digital, physical and quality infrastructure. Quality underpins confidence, confidence underpins investment and investment underpins productivity, growth, jobs, new technologies, exports and a lot more besides. A culture, commitment and reputation for quality, manifested through a robust national quality infrastructure, are essential to a successful industrial strategy and a successful economy. With this in mind, I urge the Government to ensure that the new independent industrial strategy council, which I welcome, includes among its membership an understanding of the vital role performed by the United Kingdom’s national quality infrastructure and the valuable contribution it can make in the future.

Queen’s Speech

Earl of Lindsay Excerpts

Monday 26th June 2017 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Lindsay (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the proposal in the Queen’s Speech to build a strong economy, and therefore cannot agree with the bleak analysis of the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport. I am pleased to see the commitment to continue to develop a modern industrial strategy, because I believe that the industrial strategy Green Paper is a good starting point. However, I believe that two key components are missing from that strategy.

First, there is no reference in the document to the importance of maintaining and enhancing the United Kingdom’s well-deserved reputation for quality. This reputation has been achieved through the support of successive Governments for a national framework of standards, measurement and accreditation, which together are referred to as the United Kingdom Quality Infrastructure, or the UKQI. The UKQI is delivered by four key bodies: the British Standards Institution, the National Physical Laboratory, the National Measurement Regulation Office and the United Kingdom Accreditation Service. Here I should declare an interest as chairman of the United Kingdom Accreditation Service. I should briefly highlight the important role played by the UK quality infrastructure in respect to trade.

The assurance and confidence provided by UKAS accreditation and the other UKQI partners have been instrumental in facilitating international commerce by reducing cross-border technical barriers and increasing cross-border confidence in goods, services and their suppliers. This illustrates the increased relevance of the UKQI as we develop future trade agreements with our European partners and others across the globe. Indeed, the unrivalled international reputation and trust established by the UKQI partners have already enabled the development of many successful cross-border agreements—and will be crucially important ingredients in post-Brexit trading relationships.

It is worth bearing in mind that the German Government are energetic in promoting the German national quality infrastructure to support their export drive, and we know how successful that is. I think we should do the same in this country. The UKQI partners also have a crucial contribution to make in respect of the industrial strategy’s focus on policies and institutions that underpin productivity and prosperity in the UK. The UKQI’s integrated quality framework is capable of driving and reinforcing work across the strategy’s 10 pillars by helping businesses to innovate, to develop new processes, goods and services, and to break into new markets. The UKQI likewise has an important role to play in supporting the national productivity investment fund and the new industrial strategy challenge fund. In developing the industrial strategy, I therefore urge my noble friend and the Government to ensure that the key role of the UKQI is properly recognised and that the UKQI partners are supported in the work that they do to underpin trade within the economy.

My second point in respect of the industrial strategy relates to the continuing need to fine-tune regulation to ensure that it is intelligent, proportionate and fit for purpose. There is just one paragraph in the Green Paper on the subject yet, in my view, modernising the stock of existing regulations and applying intelligent scrutiny to all new regulatory proposals should be one of the key pillars of the strategy.

Our withdrawal from the EU provides a significant opportunity to take a fresh look at the regulatory and enforcement landscapes. It is an opportunity to see if it could be made more fit for purpose in terms of both reducing unnecessary, poorly focused or disproportionate burdens currently placed on businesses, organisations, public services and individuals, and at the same time enhancing the effectiveness with which regulations and their enforcement are able to deliver their intended protections and other purposes.

There are other opportunities that are also worth exploring further, some of them already well tried and tested and many involving the UKQI partners. UKAS accreditation, for instance, has been successfully used by regulators to support and complement existing regulatory regimes, enabling regulators to adopt a more risk-based and outcomes-focused approach. This in turn has enabled them to target their resources where they will have greater impact, focusing on where the risk of non-compliance is highest.

UKAS accreditation of voluntary standards has also been used effectively to underpin the credibility of self-regulation, so that it can deliver greater confidence to government, regulators, consumers and users. I note in passing that the Government will be considering placing a duty on regulators to consider the needs of vulnerable customers. This is welcome, as their needs are important. However, I encourage the Government to include in their consideration the option of using standards underpinned by robust certification and accreditation. For example, the Government could look at the BSI standard for inclusive service provision, which includes requirements for identifying and responding to consumer vulnerability.

Encouraging or requiring businesses that want to use this standard to be audited by a certification body that is UKAS accredited would provide assurance and public confidence. Such an approach would also chime with the Government’s ongoing Regulatory Futures Review with its focus on regulatory self-assurance and earned recognition. In summary, I urge the Government, as part of their commitment to a strong economy and a modern industrial strategy, to ensure that the role of the United Kingdom Quality Infrastructure and its partner organisations is properly recognised, given the contribution that they can make to trade, investment, innovation, business growth and productivity. Likewise, I urge the Government to see a regulatory and enforcement landscape that is intelligent and fit for purpose as a key objective and to recognise the contribution that the UKQI partners, particularly those involved in standards accreditation, can make towards this end.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Earl of Lindsay Excerpts

Report: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 15th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I support the amendments in this group. I add thanks from these Benches to those expressed to the noble Lord, Lord Prior, and the noble Viscount, Lord Younger, for the government amendments that they have brought forward and for supporting those from noble Lords, which have certainly made it a much better Bill.

Amendment 162 mirrors an amendment which we brought forward in Committee. For all the good reasons which the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, has expressed, it seems niggardly to have one person trying to represent the three devolved Administrations. The arrangements would be stronger if there were somebody with experience of each of the three. There are distinct differences in higher education provision in the four parts of the United Kingdom. UKRI would benefit if it had relevant experience of all. We note that the amendment insists not that the person be Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish but that they have experience of those three devolved Administrations. I hope that the Minister will look favourably on it.

[The Earl of Lindsay (Con)]

My Lords, the amendments proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, address an important issue. I acknowledge that the significant proportion of research policy and funding reserved to Westminster offers advantages in its ability to support and encourage a cross-UK research ecosystem that can benefit all parts of the UK. I have had first-hand experience of what such cross-UK advantages can achieve from a Scottish perspective.

Until recently, I was chairman of a Scottish HEI with a strong research track record. The HEI that I refer to is SRUC, or Scotland’s Rural College. In the 2014 research excellence framework results, SRUC, in collaboration with the University of Edinburgh, came top in the UK for research power for agriculture and veterinary and food science. This is just one example of the extent to which Scotland contributes significantly to the overall strength of the UK research sector.

However, the ability of a cross-UK research ecosystem to benefit all parts of the UK, and in turn to benefit from all parts of the UK, relies on the research infrastructure. More specifically, it relies on a research infrastructure designed and operated in such a way that it clearly involves, understands, reflects and serves the needs of all parts of the UK equally.

In this respect, I am aware of well-placed concerns about the currently proposed design arising from the view that the different parts of the UK need a better defined role and involvement in setting overarching UK research policy and direction, hence my interest in Amendments 162, 184, 193 and 194 and my hope that my noble friend will support their intent.

The amendments would result in more structured, more certain and less ambiguous protection of UKRI’s duty and capacity to act in the interests of the whole UK. It could make sense for UKRI’s research strategy to be subject to consultation with the devolved Administrations. It could make sense for UKRI and for the councils to include members with experience drawn from the devolved jurisdictions of the UK to ensure that decisions were informed by knowledge of the diverse contributions made by different parts of the UK. It would also make sense for Innovate UK’s priorities to be informed by the specific economic policies of the devolved jurisdictions as well as by the UK Government’s economic policies. I hope that my noble friend will acknowledge the importance of the issues that the amendments address.