Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [Lords]

Adam Thompson Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 1st April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Reynolds]

I am grateful for that intervention very early on in proceedings. I cannot provide a definitive answer to the right hon. Gentleman on the naming of the Bill, but I promise that I will find out and put it to him in writing. But he will know that the Bill was, I believe, originally planned by the previous Government because of the need to repatriate powers to the United Kingdom as a result of our exit from the European Union. It is something we need in our toolkit, so, far from being Orwellian, it is a pragmatic, practical proposal. I look forward to now making the case for it in more detail.

The primary mission of this Government, and the driving force of my Department, is stronger economic growth: not just growth that looks good on paper, but growth that is seen and is felt on our high streets, in our towns and cities, and in the communities we serve; growth that reverses 15 years of stagnation, with all the negative consequences we all felt during that time. To do that, we need an economy in which shops and small businesses can compete on a more level playing field with online marketplaces and the big tech giants. We need an economy that promotes investment and innovation, but at the same time ensures consumers and businesses have real, modern protections. That is why the Product Regulation and Metrology Bill is a small but hugely important piece of legislation, one that will further cement the UK’s status as a world leader in product regulation and safety.

[Adam Thompson (Erewash) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend is giving an important introduction to the Bill. Does he agree that international alignment in the standards we are discussing on scientific matters is essential for the smooth operation of modern advanced manufacturing?

[Jonathan Reynolds]

I am hugely grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. I believe I am correct in saying that he is not only a metrologist, but the first metrologist elected to Parliament. I put no heavy expectations on his speech today, but we are all looking forward to it with interest.

My hon. Friend is right that there are areas where we will choose to work with international standards, and there will be areas where we choose to diverge, but that decision is made possible only by having the powers to begin with. No decisions will be made in this Bill, if it becomes an Act of Parliament, as to how we will do that; however, without it, we would not have the toolkit to make those decisions. The essence of these proposed laws is that we are taking back control for the House of Commons and Parliament to make these kinds of decisions.

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[Andrew Griffith]

The Labour motive is all too plain to see. This is a Labour party that voted 48 times to reject the will of the British people, led by the Prime Minister, who sought a second referendum to overturn that will. I accept that the hon. Member for Birmingham Northfield was not in the House at the time, but he might want to spend some time with his colleagues in the Tea Room and hear precisely what happened.

[Adam Thompson]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Andrew Griffith]

No, I will make some progress.

The anti-pub, anti-hospitality agenda goes far beyond this Bill. The jobs tax, the threshold change, the attack on seasonal and flexible working, the more than doubling of business rates, the war on pub banter and the garden smoking ban are all from this Government. Our hospitality industry—the Secretary of State is smirking—deserves infinitely better than this from this Government.

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[Adam Thompson (Erewash) (Lab)]

As the Secretary of State said earlier, I believe I am the first metrologist to be elected to this House in history, so it gives me great pleasure to rise to debate the Bill. I took the liberty of checking Hansard and until the Secretary of State used the word earlier, I was the only Member to have ever used the word “metrologist” in the House of Commons. I am proud to be here today and prouder still that the Labour Government have brought forward a Bill featuring metrology in the first year of our new Government.

Most of the debate has focused on the product regulation in the Bill, but given my background I will focus on the metrology. Prior to my election to this place, I was at the University of Nottingham, where I was active in research in metrology for advanced manufacturing, beginning with my PhD, continuing through several more years as a research fellow, and latterly as a senior research fellow. However, like most people I have known in my life, when I began my PhD, I had absolutely no idea what metrology was. Indeed, I am sure several colleagues in the Chamber did not know what it was before today, and I fear some still do not, so I would like to provide an explanation of the nature of my science, and explain why, contrary to popular assumption, it has nothing to do with clouds. [Interruption.] Please forgive my terrible pun.

The international standard, “Vocabulaire international de métrologie”, formally defines metrology as

“the science of measurement and its application”,

noting that

“metrology includes all theoretical and practical aspects of measurement, whatever the measurement uncertainty and field of application”.

It is not the

“branch of science concerned with the processes and phenomena of the atmosphere, especially as a means of forecasting the weather”,

which is, of course, meteorology—something I have explained almost every day of my professional career.

Metrology broadly encompasses the various fields of research that seek to develop the science and technology of measurement, be that measurement of any of the seven base quantities from the système international d’unités—the SI—or any of the units derived from those base quantities. The seven base quantities are, of course, length, mass, time, electric current, thermodynamic temperature, amount of substance and luminous intensity.

The great physicist Lord Kelvin once expressed:

“To measure is to know”.

He also said:

“If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it.”

Those sentiments are rarely more applicable than in the advanced manufacturing industry, where we are interested both in ensuring that a manufactured component meets the dimensional specification laid out by its designer and in constantly improving on existing products.

Metrology is a science that fundamentally underpins all other science. Without tools that allow us to measure and know, we cannot gain any understanding of the world around us, nor can we improve on it. In the fundamental scientific pursuit of understanding our universe, we are most often concerned with the metre, the first of the SI base units. The metre is defined formally by taking the fixed numerical value of the speed of light in a vacuum, C, to be 299,792,458 when expressed in the unit of metres per second and where the second is defined in terms of the caesium frequency. In fact, that definition changed very recently—it came into force in 2018. The metre is more simply described by its older definition, which is simply the distance travelled by light in a vacuum in a time interval, in seconds, of one divided by the speed of light. In my opinion, the metre is one of the most beautiful creations in science: it is defined by light itself, and it is a creation that allows us in turn to create everything in our world.

At the start of this debate, the right hon. Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) asked the House when weights and measures became metrology. The answer to that question is: several thousand years before the common era. Behind every great scientific advancement in history, there has been a metrologist. Behind the pyramids, there was the first standardised unit of measurement—the royal cubit, defined as the length of the pharaoh’s forearm as measured from the tip of his forefinger to the base of his elbow. The cubit was a technology so advanced that it allowed the ancient Egyptians to position the building blocks of the pyramids with an accuracy almost equal to modern methods. Thousands of years later, there remains speculation on whether they were in fact built by aliens, because of how incredible an achievement that was. They were, of course, built not by aliens, but by metrologists.

[Graham Stringer]

At the start of this debate, as a fellow scientist, I wondered what the difference was between mensuration and metrology. When I was an undergraduate, we did not use the word “metrology”—it seems to be a new word. Perhaps my hon. Friend can enlighten the Chamber.

[Adam Thompson]

Certainly. It is not a new word as far as I am concerned; I believe it was brought into common parlance in the Victorian era.

I will move on to some more examples. There is the James Webb space telescope—something more modern than the pyramids. It takes images of our universe more than 13 billion light years away that are deeper, more brilliant and more beautiful than anything we have ever seen. Behind that, there is the construction of a 6.5-metre mirror, flat to within just a few tenths of billionths of a metre from its highest top to its smallest valley. If we were to expand the size of the 6.5-metre mirror to the size of the Earth, the distance from the highest mountain to the deepest valley would be of the order of the height of my hip.

Behind the discovery of gravitational waves, there is a series of interferometers, kilometres in size, which can detect signals from noise at levels considered unachievable throughout human history until the past 20 years or so and which are capable of listening to the collision of black holes across spacetime.

[Sir John Hayes]

I hesitate to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, because he is making a wonderful contribution to our affairs, which is indicative of the beauty of science, about which we hear too little. Before he rushes—hurtles, one might say—into the future, can he say a word about the peculiarly British measurements that informed my childhood? I mean things such as pecks, perches, rods and bushels, for each of those was rooted in the way that he described.

[Adam Thompson]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention, and I am happy to explain. Those particular forms of measurement are not in common use any more, but of course many right hon. and hon. Members of this House will have grown up with them. Broadly, the ones that are still in use are defined in the modern parlance, but it is important to remember that the modern metric system accounts for all of those heritage measurements. The common inch, for example, is formally defined as 25.4 mm, and while I apologise to Members across the House, it is important for me to let them know that the pint is formally defined as 568 ml. Those heritage measurements and, indeed, the entire imperial system are now referenced on to the metric system; defined very simply, the imperial system is the metric system. There is no reason why we should not use those historical measurements—where they are useful, they are perfectly valid—but they are formally defined with reference to the modern metric system. I will talk more about this shortly.

Metrology lies at the heart of everything we know, from telescopes to speed cameras and from knee replacements to jet engines. Every single thing made by human hand was designed first, constructed second and then checked by a metrologist to ensure it met its specifications—if we cannot know it, we cannot improve it. However, ensuring that parts meet their specifications is not simple, as each measurement, dimensional or otherwise, has an associated measurement uncertainty. That is a non-negative parameter characterising the dispersion of the quantity values being attributed to the thing being measured, based on the information used. Estimation of measurement uncertainty is a complex procedure—one that formed much of my career prior to coming to this place—and is usually performed in line with the “Guide to the expression of uncertainty in measurement”.

Uncertainty estimation is generally performed by making measurements that are traceable to the definition of the SI metre—when we are concerned with the metre. Again, the “Vocabulaire international de métrologie” defines traceability as a property of a measurement result whereby the result can be related to a reference through a documented, unbroken chain of calibrations, each contributing to the overall measurement uncertainty. Traceable measurements allow for the successful estimation of uncertainty and are generally a base requirement for the verification of manufactured goods. Traceability is considered by the international community to be the only means by which evidence can be provided towards a given product fulfilling the requirements set out by its designer.

To provide an example, let us consider a length measurement made between two faces of a manufactured part, such as a Rubik’s cube. Imagine that I am holding a Rubik’s cube—I could not possibly have brought a prop, Madam Deputy Speaker. The length between two faces could be measured by a calliper. That calliper would be calibrated using a measurement artifact, most commonly a metal cuboid called a gauge block. That gauge block would in turn be calibrated by a more accurate instrument, which itself is calibrated using a more accurate gauge block. That more accurate gauge block would then be calibrated with reference to an optical interferometer using a laser source. That laser source is finally calibrated against the iodine-stabilised laser that is used to realise the definition of the metre, so traceability is established from the shop floor measurement all the way up to the definition of the metre by an unbroken chain of calibrations.

[Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)]

It feels impertinent to intervene, because my hon. Friend is giving a hugely passionate speech about a subject he clearly knows so much about, but how can he can help the next generation of metrologists to be as inspired about this topic as he clearly is?

[Adam Thompson]

That is very kind, and I thank my hon. Friend very much for his intervention. If he wishes, I have a 97-slide lecture that I would be more than happy to deliver afterwards.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Nobody wishes for the 97 slides, Mr Thompson.

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[Adam Thompson]

Do not worry, Madam Deputy Speaker—it is not one for today. I am nearly finished.

Each stage of the traceability chain has some discernible uncertainty, which generally increases as we move down that chain and instrument accuracy decreases. Estimation of uncertainty at each link in the chain is essential; it is impossible to have a traceable measurement without the inclusion of an uncertainty with that measurement. When applied in manufacturing, traceability allows us to create anything we can imagine within the confines of our chosen manufacturing process. It is the cornerstone of our modern manufacturing industry.

Through this Bill, the Government seek to update metrology regulations and the means by which those regulations are enforced. We have heard at great length different opinions about that process, but the Government are today ensuring conformity with SI, ensuring uniformity in the measurement, sale, monitoring and quantity of goods. Further, they are ensuring that the Secretary of State and other appropriate bodies have the powers they require to inspect and enforce that conformity. The Bill will ensure that UK law is updated to recognise new or updated international regulations and keep us at the cutting edge of science and regulation.

Members said earlier in the debate how the UK was at the forefront of regulation. I spent many years on standards committees working through these things. Every standards committee I ever worked on fed into the British standard, which fed into the European standard and the international standard. Those are the frameworks we are updating today to ensure that we remain at the forefront. It will mean cost savings for business and it will promote regulatory stability.

Finally, the provisions laid out in this Bill continue the work begun by the ancient Egyptians—the work that allowed us to build everything from the great pyramids to the phones in our pockets, the paper that we hold in our hands and indeed the very floor on which we stand today. Our work today will ensure that the bulbs that light this room are of an appropriate brightness, that the air that we breathe and that surrounds us is of an appropriate temperature, and that we can finally get a fairly measured full beverage of exactly 568 ml in the pub. I support this Bill wholeheartedly.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Follow that, Jerome Mayhew.