Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [Lords] (Second sitting)

Debate between Adam Thompson and Alison Griffiths

Committee stage
Tuesday 13th May 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Adam Thompson (Erewash) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Vaz. It is also a great pleasure to serve on this Committee. It is rare that a Member has the opportunity to influence legislation that affects their specific area of professional expertise. As the first elected metrologist, I feel deeply honoured to be debating amendments to this Bill.

Amendment 27 seeks to remove the powers granted to the Secretary of State under metrology regulations regarding quantities and units of measurement in marketing goods, as we have just heard from the hon. Member for West Worcestershire. However, there are many reasons why it is not a good amendment.

During my speech on Second Reading, I discussed both what metrology is—the science of measurement and its application—and its history. I highlight that definition again because the decisions we make today will affect not only our trade relationships, as we have been discussing, but how fundamental science is conducted in both research and practice.

I discussed the history of the Egyptian royal cubit, which was the first unit of measurement, but today I will highlight how metrology is a fundamentally British science, with metrology regulations having formed a notable part of our legislative history. Magna Carta, the document that in many ways represents the birth of our nation—a copy of which sits in the other place—contains the first example of metrological regulation in Britain.

Magna Carta specified, for the first time, rules for the measurement of various commodities, such as wine, ale, corn and cloth, and represented a notable step forward in early British science, placing us very much at the forefront of the international curve of progress. The focus on alcoholic beverages in that document perhaps states something telling about the nature of early Britishness, but metrology’s inclusion in our great charter demonstrates Britain’s early standing as a nation of progress and science.

Britain has always remained at the front of that curve of progress, through the greats of the Victorian era, from Lord Kelvin to Darwin, and right up until today. A little over a century ago, we, the British people, formed the Engineering Standards Committee, later the British Standards Institution. The BSI was formed in 1901 and now operates in 195 countries, with 90 offices across 31 of those countries. The international nature of the BSI is essential to its success. By operating on the global stage, we have maintained our global soft power in the creation of standards and regulations that allow British industry to maintain dominance in fields from life science to advanced manufacturing.

I have had the privilege of serving on several BSI committees, most notably spending eight years of my former career on the technical product realisation committee 1/11, which is responsible for standards verifying X-ray computed tomography systems. That committee feeds into the work of the International Organisation for Standardisation, and specifically of technical committee 213, working group 10—the taskforce for X-ray computed tomography. While standards development is often slow and laborious, the great joy for me of sitting on that committee, and the various others that I contributed to over the years that preceded my election to this House, was the opportunity to work alongside technical experts from across my field representing industry, instrument manufacturers and academia.

I stress the importance of technical experts in these spaces. Standards frameworks work only because of the input of unpaid experts who come together to create a mutually acceptable national and international standards system that allows everything to function. Metrology and standards frameworks should be designed not by politicians and Governments but by technical experts. Indeed, I have spent many hours working on standards designed by non-experts that were often cumbersome, non-functional and, crucially, destined to be forgotten as the useless wastes of paper that they were. There is nothing worse than a bad standard. We need standards to be decided and honed by true experts and to have the broadest possible reach so that we can be as productive and effective as possible in our work.

The Bill, as currently drafted, allows the Secretary of State powers to maintain pace with the decisions of those experts. Amendments such as this one serve only to detach us from the perpetual motion of progress. Opposition Members have argued, wholly falsely, that the Bill defers powers to foreign nations or that it gives too much power to the Secretary of State of the day. The Bill is not about giving powers to foreign nations; it is about ensuring that the UK remains at the bleeding edge of science and regulation.

[Alison Griffiths]

I am interested in the hon. Gentleman’s point about expert witnesses. Like the relevant authorities we spoke about earlier, and which also come into clause 6, there is no clear definition of who those experts will be. The hon. Member is taking it on trust that they will indeed be experts.

[Adam Thompson]

It is important that I describe how standards bodies work. They come together through relationships between experts within an industry, and through mutual recognition of peer-to-peer expertise. That is how standards bodies are formed here and across the world. Inherently, the system that creates those standards bodies forms a trustworthy circle around them. Standards are ultimately optional. If a standard does not work, people can just ignore it. Standards are essentially meritocratic. If they are not good, they do not continue.

[Alison Griffiths]

I defer to the hon. Gentleman’s knowledge of metrology organisations around the world and recognise his expertise. However, from a legislative perspective, the Bill does not rely on metrology experts being the relevant authorities. If metrology experts had been defined as the relevant authorities, I think we would be significantly less concerned. The hon. Gentleman lays out the exact expertise that we would all love to hear. My issue is with the lack of clarity in the Bill.