Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [HL]

Lord Johnson of Lainston Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 8th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Johnson of Lainston (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Fox. He was highly eloquent—although I feel he got slightly stuck on the Peterborough ring road towards the end of his speech when talking about Europe.

There were phenomenal contributions from across the House, including, obviously, from my noble friend Lord Sandhurst. I also pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Winterton, who gave a phenomenal maiden speech, but I was confused as it was filled with compassion, humility and personability. I do not see those as qualities at all relevant to being Chief Whip from my recollection, so I assume she filled her other roles with excellence. I welcome her to this House and look forward to working with her over the coming years.

The Bill is a very important evolution of our product safety processes. It continues much of the work undertaken by the previous Government to ensure that consumers can be safe in the knowledge that what they buy conforms to high standards and that shops on our high street do not have to compete unfairly with online providers through a derogation of standards. I congratulate the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Leong, for continuing the excellent work, if I may say so, of previous Ministers in the DBT. To follow on from that, the metrology part of this Bill has its roots in a sensible need, quite rightly, to update the legislation to ensure that we can have control over our measurements and standards following our departure from the European Union.

However, as we heard from a number of noble Lords, we have some significant concerns about how these measures will be implemented, as well as the risks contained within the Bill, which could easily lead to less protection for consumers, less choice and higher costs to businesses, and have the exact opposite effect from our desire to have greater freedoms to be an independent trading nation.

I have a few points. This has been a fascinating debate on what could have appeared to be a Bill with a rather anodyne title. I will add to the list of questions, some of which are overlapping and some of which follow on from the excellent speech given by my noble friend. I have not received very clear responses back on questions following the last few debates I have spoken in, so I would be grateful if we can get those, because these are technical points. We want to create good legislation and I think the whole House is agreed that this is an important Bill, but we have to do it correctly.

It is relevant that we are having a philosophical debate. I think the noble Lord, Lord Fox, mentioned the principles around the philosophy of this legislation. It is important; we are changing significantly the principle of responsibility and where it lies for online marketplaces. That is complicated. At the same time, we do not want to distort the new gig economy. Millions of people trade online. I should declare an interest that my sons spend a great deal of their time trading football shirts on various websites. We have to be very careful to ensure that we are not affecting or limiting the prospective future of the online economy because we are concerned about product standards in some respects. Having said that, we have to ensure that the responsibility is properly delineated and that there is a high degree of product safety. I would like to hear the Minister’s thoughts on the philosophy relating to some of the more intellectual concepts around the changes to where responsibility lies, and for him to give us some security that this is about product responsibility rather than necessarily trying to overregulate people’s activities when it comes to online marketplaces.

I would also like some clarity, if the Government can provide more to this House, on the costs of enforcement and how they will ensure that the fees levied will be incidental, or indeed affordable. I have a fear that we will see a whole raft of new regulators. It is clearly important that we have enforcement, but this has to be paid for. This could create an entire new web of regulatory activity, which can often be misguided and expensive.

I am very concerned, as I think are many Members of this House, both noble friends and noble Lords, about the range of criminal offences that will be created, with different tariffs. For some reason we love locking people up in this country and then seemingly releasing them soon after. It would probably be sensible to outline here and now what the real constraints are in this area. I do not think it is good enough, as we have repeated many times in this debate, simply to have that be defined at a later date.

I would like to see the consultation outcomes on product safety. My noble friend Lord Sandhurst mentioned this. It seems absolutely bizarre that we have not seen the outcomes of the consultation that was done a year ago. I am very aware that there was an election, but that should not have stopped officials doing the work to understand the responses. It is impossible for us to legitimately say that we can have a proper debate in this House if we have not seen the feedback from the consultation around product safety and how we need to go forward. I believe, from an informal discussion we had earlier this week, that there is a commitment to produce at least a summary of the findings before Committee, so I call on the Government to do that.

I also press the Government further for more work on battery safety. A number of noble Peers with great expertise have contributed to that part of the debate. It is essential that we deal with this urgently. In response to the noble Lord, Lord Foster, I would not like to confuse some of the comments about battery safety—not that he was confused in any way—with the importance of having proper legislation on consumer safety in general in this Bill.

I want to follow up on the points, well made, by the noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor, about the effect of this legislation on the Windsor Framework. Other noble Lords have raised this issue too, and it is very relevant; we are dealing with complex, sensitive webs of legislative activity and it is essential that we really consider what the impact will be. It is not good enough to say—I fear that I predict this response from the Minister—that there will not be an effect. There clearly will be, because this is a complicated issue. It is very important that we have an open debate about that.

The noble Lord, Lord Browne, and other noble Lords rightly raised the issue of the devolved nations. Have they consented? Where are we in the process of gaining legislative consent? How will this affect the internal market of the United Kingdom? Again, this is not straightforward. It is simply not good enough to say that we hope to get it at a later date, or that if we come back in a few months’ time, it will all be fine.

Then, there is disquiet about how these measures may be used—when they are eventually defined—to align our standards ever further with those of the EU. This is especially relevant in areas such as environmental protection. We know well that, in many instances, blindly following the EU will have negative impacts on our economy. Can the Minister please respond to these important questions? I am concerned that this has somehow been negated in the discussions we have had. It is very important to get the philosophical elements of this correct. An element of openness and transparency will be welcome; it will solve problems in the future if we have an open discussion now.

It is true that this is relatively technical legislation designed to play catch-up with a new modern digital economy. Unfortunately, however, the phrasing is very broad and the powers are ill-defined. Trying to ensure that the Government can evolve their regulatory frameworks as technology evolves is fair, but, at the same time, we need more detail. There is also a growing body of opinion that these plans do not go far enough in genuinely ensuring that consumers are protected, and that trust can be properly vested in the online marketplace industry.

Giving such broad powers to a Government who, by their own admission, do not have a clue as to what tomorrow holds is extremely dangerous and goes against the principles of good lawmaking. It is crucial that we have a proper debate now to ensure that we understand what we are doing and have thought clearly enough about how these marketplaces will operate and how consumer product safety can be properly engaged.

I am also extremely concerned that, if we rush this and simply use secondary legislation to bring in criminal offences, fines, costs and other regulatory structures, we will end up with a clunky, heavy-handed set of regulations that do not protect the consumer. They will end up checking boxes and denigrating out business base, reducing consumer choice.

Finally, it is clear that this House, and, indeed, the nation at large, need to be properly reassured that this Bill is not a simple attempt to realign us with every aspect of EU regulation, but that we have thought clearly about the ramifications of how the world has changed and how properly to police that to ensure consumer safety in a growing economy. I very much look forward to a far higher level of detail as we enter Committee, and I look forward to Minister’s response.