Weights and Measures Act 1985 (Definitions of “Metre” and “Kilogram”) (Amendment) Order 2020

Debate between Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist and Lord Liddle

Wednesday 20th May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I join others in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, on the clarity of his exposition at the start of the debate on this very complex matter. It is also nice to see him at the virtual Dispatch Box once again. To tell the truth, I am rather missing him from all the debates that we had together on Brexit. It is a shame, in a way, that he has gone to another department—certainly his successor does not appear to wish to engage the House on the issues of our future relationship with Europe in quite the same depth that he was so nobly and willingly keen to do—so it is a pleasure to be debating something with him again today.

This is essentially a very technical measure; I thought the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, put it very well in explaining its importance. However, in the past this business of weights and measures has of course been of no small amount of political significance. I would just like to make some comments on that.

We will all remember the great brouhaha of the early 2000s about the “Metric Martyrs”, the refusal of traders in some of our markets to go along with these standards. They were taken to court, and this was described by the Daily Mail as the EU’s “bureaucratic bullying”. I think it was described by many people who were opponents of the EU at the time as a classic example of the EU bullying its way into something that good Brits wanted to have nothing to do with. What makes the row about the Metric Martyrs quite poignant is that, of course, one of the people who were greatly involved in it was a man called Mr Steve Thoburn, a trader in Sunderland. It was a case involving Sunderland City Council that brought this issue to prominence, and of course Sunderland was the city that voted overwhelmingly for Brexit.

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

I remind the noble Lord of the speaking time limit.

[Lord Liddle]

Yes. I believe that the Government should now be acknowledging that this issue is nothing to do with EU sovereignty but was to do with international standards, and that it is desirable for Britain fully to follow international standards. I humbly suggest that the Minister, as a former North East MEP, writes to the Daily Mail, the Daily Telegraph and all those others—

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist]

I suggest that the noble Lord draws his comments to a close.

[Lord Liddle]

Of course I will. I suggest that he writes to them and explains that the great brouhaha about EU bullying was so much nonsense.