Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [HL]

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 26th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

I remind noble Lords that we are on Report, we are not in Committee. It is very clear in the Standing Orders that you can speak only once on Report unless you are the mover of the group, in which case you can respond to the Minister. It is not within the rules to have this sort of debate. That is for Committee, not for Report.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. Our focus will be—

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[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.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I want to speak briefly to Amendment 20 in this group, which is in my name. It is an opportunity to restate an argument, which I will not dwell on at length but which noble Lords may recall from Committee: there is an inherent advantage and desirability that, when we are determining product requirements and regulations, we should, wherever possible, do so by reference to international standards and agreements.

This is of course something that the Government, like the previous Government, are committed to, not least under the latest statement of public policy in relation to standardisation, which was published this year. It gives very useful examples of how this country, the British Standards Institution, some of the organisations to which we contribute and the innovations that we have led have been the basis of the establishment of many of those international standards. I am convinced that it is not absolutely necessary to put it into the legislation in order for this to be the case. I hope that, in response to this debate, the Minister will again restate the Government’s intention that international standards should be the basis.

However, I wanted the opportunity to add one further thought. If we were to arrive at a point where EU legislation or regulations diverged, in our view, from an international standard or agreement or from sound science—for example, the precision breeding legislation and statutory instruments that have just been brought forward, which technically diverge from where the European Union is now; I hope, declaring an interest in the European Union context, that the EU will change its legislation to bring it much closer to us, rather than the other way round—there should be a presumption that adherence to international standards would be the priority. We should look to that as the basis on which we set our standards and not treat the decisions made by the European Union as ones to which we should necessarily incline.