Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [HL]

Lord Beith Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 26th February 2025 Lords Chamber

To conclude, all these amendments are intended to shape, constrain and control the environment in and purposes for which the novel powers in the Bill can be used, and to require more justification of those powers when they are used.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Beith) (LD)]

If this amendment is agreed to, I will not be able to call Amendments 6, 8 or 27A by reason of pre-emption.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I have put my name to one of the many amendments in this group, Amendment 13, which in essence is perhaps a more balanced version of the amendment tabled in Committee. This more balanced amendment seeks to ensure complete and utter equivalence and transparency, whether the Government decide—for reasons that have to be stated, clear, transparent and the result of consultation—to align with the EU or with any other country or group of countries. It is simply to try to make sure there is complete equivalence and transparency, with no hidden agendas, no constitutional crisis, as the noble Lord, Lord Frost, described it, in understanding the rationale behind the decisions that are taken. As I stated at Second Reading and in Committee, however people may interpret my intentions, they are decidedly Cross-Bench and apolitical. I have no interest in revisiting some of the painful politics and turbulence of the last decade or so, which this country has willed on itself.

In relation to the specific amendment, what is really driving this is what I think should be paramount: the interests of the country, obviously. In an instance such as this, I personally regard the interests of the country to be predominantly to do with the views of the businesses most directly affected by these regulations. The organisation that I think has taken the closest interest in this and has been talking to its members in great detail about it is the British Chambers of Commerce. Your Lordships may or may not be aware that I should declare an interest in that its president is a fellow Cross-Bencher, the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox. It did an extensive survey of its membership, which was published just before Christmas. I remind your Lordships that the chambers represent about 50,000 businesses across the UK, which employ about 6 million people and have an aggregate turnover across all the companies involved of about £600 billion per annum—a not inconsiderable part of the economy.

The views of the membership are pretty clear. They are in no way ideological about this, but there is a clear view on the part of a majority of the businesses that, in many instances, alignment with the EU is in the direct interests of their businesses and employees, particularly if they wish to grow their businesses. Many are involved in exports—and imports—to the European Union, which continues to be their single largest export market. They have an understandable wish for the ability to grow their businesses to be as easy as possible. What has happened over the past few years has, in many cases, made it a great deal less easy than they would wish.

There is, therefore, a very clear stated wish. They have come up with a wish list that they hope the Government will focus on. It is interesting that one thing they said should be a medium-term view relates specifically to the Bill that we are discussing. They say that the UK should build on the Product Regulation and Metrology Bill to facilitate alignment of UK regulation with relevant—but only where it is relevant—primary, secondary and tertiary EU decisions in the traded goods sectors. That does not deny the fact that, in some areas and in some sectors and instances, it will not make sense to align with the EU. The point that the noble Lord, Lord Frost, made—and I am sure others will make—about having the ability to align with other countries or groups of countries is entirely open to the Government to do. I think, however, that they will do that only as a result of careful consultation with the interested bodies. They would then have to make a judgment call on what is in the best economic interests of the UK in terms of which direction they go in.

That is quite simply what this amendment is about. It is meant to promote growth. Those businesses are looking for greater predictability, transparency and consultation—the feeling that they have actually been listened to. Above all, what I think they are looking for—and what sometimes one senses, from some of the interventions on this Bill, is missing—is rebuilding a sense of genuine trust between those who may have slightly different views about the direction that we should take on issues such as this, as well as a relationship that is more trust-based and transparent and where dialogue is easier with some of the bodies, including the EU but also those other countries that we might align with, than has been the case hitherto.

King’s Speech

Lord Beith Excerpts

Wednesday 24th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Beith (LD)]

My Lords, the gracious Speech makes only limited reference to the criminal justice system and none to the crisis within it, but, even as it was being prepared, delivered and debated, the Government were making some significant steps. One that we have heard more detail on this afternoon is the release of 5,500 prisoners, not as part of a developing policy on the effective use of custody but as a crisis response to the fact that the prisons are full. This is clearly a disgraceful inheritance from the Tory Government and one that the Government have tackled with difficulty. However, the current Government cannot escape all blame for the situation: Labour ramped up the rhetoric on locking people up some years ago, which set a trend that has continued since and needs to be reversed.

One positive thing that the new Government have done is to appoint a Prisons Minister with knowledge, commitment and practical experience in rehabilitating offenders, the noble Lord, Lord Timpson. I congratulate him on his Maiden speech. I also welcome the appointment of our respected colleague the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede, to the department, and the noble Lord, Lord Hanson, with whom I worked on these issues when we were both in the Commons. These Ministers will need firm backing at Cabinet level for the steps they will need to take to end the chaos and redesign the system with the objective of reducing crime, not of winning headlines for talking tough.

I draw the Minister’s attention to the report on community sentences from our Home Affairs and Justice Committee, and I apologise that I cannot be at Friday’s debate, when he will hear more about it from my noble friend Lady Hamwee. I also commend the House of Commons Justice Committee’s report, Public Opinion and Understanding of Sentencing. That is the issue I want to touch on now.

Parliament proposes, the Sentencing Council interprets, and judges and magistrates impose sentences, which may include custody. Custody is a massively expensive and huge commitment of resources, in a criminal justice system that is desperately short of resources, but it has often been the most readily available option. In a particular court area, there may not be a combination of measures that could be effective in dealing with an offender, so custody becomes the alternative.

Why does our system put and keep in prison more people than any other system in a western European democracy? There are several reasons for imprisonment. The first reason is the protection of the public from dangerous and violent offenders, but that protection is necessarily limited by the fact that most offenders will eventually be released, and therefore need the prison system to provide—the second reason—rehabilitation by means of courses, training and other activity that can reduce reoffending. An overcrowded and understaffed prison system cannot do this. The third reason for custody is the belief that the risk of a prison sentence is a deterrent. There are some crimes for which that may be true, but some of the crimes we are most anxious to deal with do not fall into that category: domestic violence is not cured or prevented by the fear of a prison sentence, nor is much alcohol or drug-related violence.

We need to recognise that there is a fourth factor—a powerful one—promoting the inappropriate use of custody: prison sentence and its length is used by the public and the media as a yardstick by which to measure the relative seriousness with which we take any particular offence. Custody and its length are used as a proxy for disapproval and for indicating how seriously we take a crime. That distorts the effective use of the remedies that are available. Relying on a community sentence, however effective, is seen as not taking a crime seriously enough.

This is compounded by newspapers. I refer to an article in a newspaper that takes all these issues seriously and is working on them: the Times, which has a commission on justice. Last Thursday, we had the headline:

“Asylum seekers who snatched Rolex watch walk free”.


It is that “walk free” that so distorts the debate. In fact, they were given five-year criminal behaviour orders, subjected to six-month curfews, required to live in Home Office accommodation, required to complete 150 hours of unpaid work and 40 hours of rehabilitation, and banned from the City of Westminster. That does not sound like walking free to me.

This makes me reflect on the other side: I am not convinced that four-year or five-year prison sentences for disruptive but non-violent environmental protesters is a very good use of scarce resources. We need to develop the understanding that the way to take crime seriously is to make sure that the sentence is likely to reduce reoffending. That is the measure. I hope that the new Ministers can encourage rational debate on this issue so that we can start to use custody where it needs to be used and not abuse it when other things would work better.