Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Jackson of Peterborough and Lord Leong

Wednesday 20th November 2024 Grand Committee

[Lord Leong (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for that. If it helps, I have gone through some of our 150-odd existing product safety regulations—not all of them—and their technical nature includes scientific calculation and all kinds of other technical input. Are we saying that we want this in every instance of primary legislation? I think not. If noble Lords think that we should have every technical aspect in all primary legislation, we need to have a different debate entirely, but for this, for technical reasons, we need delegated legislation to ensure that we update the regulations.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

I do not want to labour the point, but it is either feast or famine. We are being told by the Government that we cannot legislate everything to the nth degree, so we should just trust them on the secondary legislation—the permissive delegated legislation and statutory instruments. But then, with the paragraph that is the subject of my amendment, we are going to the nth degree of granularity and technical finesse while not actually, as it happens, defining what “activities” mean. Activities could mean looking at a product, by which you would therefore be caught by the regulations.

I gently say to the Minister that the substantive clause is not undermined by the removal of this paragraph, and he should seriously think about that.

[Lord Leong (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for that. I shall take it away and speak to officials about this, but the purpose of the Bill is not to be too prescriptive, so that we cover most of the activities that can be described by various stages of production.

I want to conclude, if I may. I hope that I have been able to provide reassurance on all these matters and have assured noble Lords that the Government have carefully considered the importance of parliamentary scrutiny and sought to strike a careful balance. I therefore respectfully ask that the amendment is withdrawn.