Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [Lords]

Jerome Mayhew Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 1st April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Reynolds]

As ever, I am particularly grateful to the right hon. Member for his courtesy. To my hon. Friend the Member for Blackley and Middleton South (Graham Stringer), I say that clause 2(7) says:

“Product regulations may provide that a product requirement is to be treated as met if—”.

It clearly says “may” and “if”. Again, I say that there will be times when it is in our economic interest to have a close relationship with the product standards in, for instance, the European Union or another jurisdiction. There will also be times when it is not. That will be our choice. I think we would all recognise the absence of powers without this Bill.

[Jerome Mayhew (Broadland and Fakenham) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman makes reference to the ability of this House to make regulations. We can, of course, do so by primary legislation. There was a parliamentarian who said that

“the use of delegated powers carries a risk of abuse by the Executive, which is not something the Opposition could ever support.”––[Official Report, Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Public Bill Committee, 1 February 2018; c. 305.]

The Secretary of State should agree with that, because it was he who said it.

[Jonathan Reynolds]

That was obviously part of a very wise set of remarks that I made from the Dispatch Box. But, yes, we must recognise that. I say again, because the Bill has been through the other place, that changes have been made as a result of that feedback: we have removed a number of Henry VIII powers; we have introduced a consultation requirement; we have provided for additional affirmative resolution procedures; and we have said that we will publish a code of conduct that sets out the statutory and non-statutory controls to ensure that regulation is proportionate, evidence-based and developed through consultation. Because of the process that we have been through, we have responded to the kind of concerns that I was wisely articulating in relation to primary legislation.

Perhaps it will be of use to the House if I say a little about that journey and the work of the other place in this regard. I wish to thank in particular my ministerial colleague, Lord Leong, for his great efforts in taking the Bill through the other place. I also thank the many Members and Committees of the other House for their assistance in creating what I believe is strong and effective legislation—legislation that will benefit millions of UK businesses, tens of millions of consumers, and, of course, all those who enjoy a pint or two at the pub.

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[Jonathan Reynolds]

I am sorry that we have not convinced the right hon. Gentleman, but I am certain that the Government need powers in this area. We need to be able to respond to fast-moving changes in technology and regulation. The public would expect me, as Secretary of State, as well as my Department and the Government, to have these powers to keep them safe. Perhaps we have not convinced him at this stage, but he can look at proceedings in the other place and in Committee.

[Jerome Mayhew]

rose—

[Jonathan Reynolds]

I will give way one more time before we come to the amendments that were made in the Lords.

[Jerome Mayhew]

I am genuinely grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. He says that he has failed to persuade Opposition Members in this place, but does he accept that he has also failed to persuade the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee in the other place? That Committee, which is chaired by Labour, said last month:

“We remain of the view”

that

“the delegation to Ministers of law-making powers in this Bill involves legislative power shifting to an unacceptable extent from the…legislature to the Executive.”

Why does he think the Committee remains against his view?

[Jonathan Reynolds]

I find that when political parties go into opposition, all of a sudden they seem less keen on the Government having decisive powers to take action in a whole range of areas. We have listened carefully to the criticism from the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, and significant changes have been made to the legislation, which I am happy to take the hon. Member through. They relate to the number of Henry VIII powers, the consultation requirement and the additional affirmative resolution procedure. We are always seeking feedback.

I will now go through some of the other amendments that were made in the other place.

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[Kirsteen Sullivan]

I do not think that we want to rerun the arguments relating to Brexit, which is what this debate has largely been about so far. The Bill has clearly been introduced to address gaps that have left consumers exposed to great harms.

The prominence of online marketplaces is an established trend in our society. We all know from the pandemic how important essential—and sometimes non-essential—online purchases can be to our daily lives. They have become commonplace, and that trend is only set to continue. By the end of the decade, online purchases will be worth £156 billion. Nevertheless, many products are poorly regulated, faulty and—too often—dangerous. Whether it is the carbon monoxide alarms that do not work that have been used to kit out a cheaply renovated student flat, the faulty chainsaw attachments used by a neighbour or the faulty e-scooter sitting in a back garden, these faulty products have come about because the pace of change online has been poorly matched by regulations. We are now in a situation where regulations in the online world do not match the protections in the real world. Quite simply, if a product is too dangerous or fails the standards for those sold in shops, it should not be available in online marketplaces. As a society, we need to be protected in our increasing reliance on and use of the digital world; otherwise, the lack of online protections will have yet more devastating real-life impacts.

[Jerome Mayhew]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Kirsteen Sullivan]

I am about to conclude.

This Bill is a welcome step to alter the regulatory landscape. More importantly, it will ensure basic product safety and better oversight of products such as lithium batteries. The Bill will reduce the risks associated with thermal runaway and protect our communities from potential harm. As online marketplaces continue to expand, it is essential to extend these regulations to the digital realm to respond to the evolving challenges of modern technology and safeguard public safety.

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[Ms Creasy]

I tried in vain to make exactly such arguments to the right hon. Member when he was a Minister telling me that European legislation was not good enough for this country. [Interruption.] I now ask him to let me finish my speech, because I want common sense in this legislation, as I think Ministers do. We need to stand up to those who puff and spout about Europe as though somehow it is a bad thing to make it possible for British businesses to trade with our nearest neighbours post Brexit. For the avoidance of doubt, this is not an argument about rejoining the European Union.

[Jerome Mayhew]

rose—

[Ms Creasy]

I will, if I may, continue with my speech, but I shall take an intervention a bit later.

Our colleagues in Northern Ireland know the practical consequences of divergence—the obsession with the concept that somehow we have always to be different, which is somehow believed to be sovereignty. They will know what the “not for EU labels” mean. They will know, too, the impact that that has had on them and their colleagues. Neil Johnston, director of the Northern Ireland Retail Consortium, recently told the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee about just that. He described how suppliers have to have separate print runs for labelling, and how the requirements in shops for posters and edge-of-shelf labelling are massively burdensome for small businesses. We end up with a sausage roll that we cannot take across the border between Castlederg and Castlefin simply because of the way that the previous Government undertook Brexit.

[Ms Creasy]

I hope the right hon. Member can understand that my point is about divergence—about what happens when we try to ask businesses to run two different regulatory regimes out of a mistaken ideology that somehow we cannot find a way forward. That is what this piece of legislation will do. The hon. Member for Beaconsfield wanted to tell us that British businesses were better off as a result of the “Brexit freedoms”. Well, the numbers and statistics tell us the exact opposite. I am talking about not just the fall in GDP or the fall in trade that is predicted, but the thousands of businesses—16,400 of them—which have given up exporting to the European Union because of the additional paperwork and the additional regulatory regime.

[Jerome Mayhew]

I am so pleased to have eventually got through to the hon. Lady. She heard the Minister at the Dispatch Box say that this was not about dynamic realignment. Am I right in understanding that her view of this legislation is that it is 100% about EU dynamic realignment?

[Ms Creasy]

The hon. Member is completely wrong. I hope that he will give me a chance to make my speech before getting too excited about the word Europe.

He should try to understand what we are talking about here, which is British businesses and the regulatory certainty that they need from their Governments. My goodness, if we think how a Tory hard Brexit has hit British businesses, we should also consider how it has hit small businesses, which simply could not afford to comply with multiple regulatory regimes. We do know that we live in uncertain times, and that the threat of tariffs will kill what little business our firms might have left.

As the OBR pointed out to us last week, if global trade disputes escalate to include 20 percentage point rises in tariffs between the USA and the rest of the world, it will reduce GDP by a peak of 1% and reduce our current surplus. In that environment, we owe it to British businesses to talk common sense and to talk about what they actually want, which is a reduction in the Brexit red tape that they have had to deal with. We have been here before—on the practical insanity that Brexit generates. There was the obsession with blue passports, which came at the expense of being able to trade and keep a business going.

We have also been here before with the previous Government, which is why all those Conservative Members who were here before 2024 need to hang their heads in shame at some of the arguments that they are making about this. The previous Government wanted us to have our own UK charter mark. They wanted British businesses to run two separate charter mark arrangements. Undertaking testing requirements for both the UKCA and the European CE to allow a business to be able to sell in both markets was costing businesses hundreds of thousands of pounds. The costs could go as high as £200,000 per product range. I am actually quoting from the previous Government’s own impact assessment of the legislation, and I am happy to send that document to the hon. Member for Broadland and Fakenham (Jerome Mayhew), who is chuntering from the Opposition Benches.

UK conformity assessment marking covered goods worth £109 billion. It is little wonder that after four years, and I believe the hon. Member for Broadland and Fakenham might have been on that very Committee when it happened, those obsessed with the Brexit freedoms were hit with cold, hard reality and had to climb down and say that British companies that had met European standards had also met the British charter mark. They had to roll over the charter mark, because if they had not, their own impact assessment would have shown that it cost British businesses up to £1.6 billion in the decade. That is the Brexit bonus of which Opposition Members are so proud—billions of extra cost to British businesses because they are trying to fill in two forms at once to sell the same item to different sets of consumers.

The Bill is about so much more than just kitemarking. We need to be clear that it does not mean that we have automatic access to the EU market. It means that British businesses can see what the regulatory landscape might look like ahead of them. That is very important in these uncertain times. It also prevents the UK becoming a dumping ground for goods that are no longer considered safe in the European Union. I certainly believe that my constituents need to be confident that we will not be flooded with cheap goods that are bad for them.

It also does not mean that we have to align automatically, and I hope that answers the question from the hon. Member for Broadland and Fakenham. I am not here arguing for automatic alignment. After all, there are examples of where we have taken a different approach. The vaping legislation was something that Conservative Members opposed, but it put us ahead of European product legislation. The Bill has protections for the British pint. The Lords wrote those in.

It is also clear that choosing not to participate does not mean that UK consumers are not affected. We saw that with mobile phone charging cables. Even though we are too small a market to influence Apple, the European Union acting together made Apple stop selling us multiple cables. As somebody who was carrying around multiple pieces of equipment, I am very grateful for that.

We may also want to look at examples where we might learn from our colleagues. Right now the European Union has been taking the lead on carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons—basically what is in a synthetic football pitch. Our kids right now in the United Kingdom play on pitches that have dangerous chemicals in them, but our European colleagues’ kids are not playing on those. When we talk about alignment, sometimes we are talking about sharing good practice on how to make our kids safer—the consumer regulations product safety that we were talking about.

I suspect that is why the previous Government, in the end, with all their obsession with Brexit freedoms and with all the powers they had, did not diverge very much. Indeed, under their watch, there were only five cases of active diversion. There were 15 cases of passive divergence, where basically they did not update regulations. For all the huffing and puffing, when faced with the cold, hard reality of having different regulatory regimes for goods in this country from those of our next door neighbours, where we might also want to sell, the previous Government took the better approach; they did not look to make British businesses try to double up on their paperwork. Indeed, where we have diverged there are clearly problems being stored up. Anybody watching the court case about sandeels knows what is coming down the line.

This Government are not going to mess British business around in the way that the previous Government did with their huffing and puffing about whether previous Governments in other countries were friend or foe. We need to make trade work. British businesses need less paperwork. That means being clear about where we will diverge, where we will align, why that makes a difference and what that means for product standards.

I think we agree across the House that we want high standards. That is delivered not by being not European, or pro-European, but by looking at what the regulatory regimes are. That is why it matters that we have paused some of the current proposals of divergence—on a new recycling label regime, on the “not for EU” labelling, and on the new checks on agrifood imports. We are looking at what works for British businesses so that we can make it easier for them to trade. That is why I wanted to speak in this debate.

What we need to do in the Bill—I hope the Minister will be open to this—is be clear about the direction of travel and the proper, right way and point for Parliament to be part of that process. If we are going to diverge, we should be clear why that would be in the British interest and how we as a Parliament will have that conversation. Where we have information, we should update our constituents, who might have businesses with products that take 18 to 36 months to develop. They need to know the regulatory regime, for example of the toys they want to make, and which markets they can sell into. That is why it matters that we have parliamentary scrutiny.

I welcome sinners who repenteth about the value of that, but I do not want to see British business faced with the idea of us having to consult on absolutely everything. I do not have an erratic fear of the Europeans somehow holding us back if they help us ensure that our kids are not playing football on pitches that have carcinogenic chemicals on them. That is common-sense British politics, and that is what the Bill needs to deliver.

Regulatory uncertainty undermines economic growth. If economic growth is our primary ambition, we need to reduce the amount of times we ask British businesses to be part of consultations, because they need to have confidence about where regulation is going. That is why it matters that we say, “We are not going to start diverging for the sake of it, but only because we can see there is a national interest in it.”

I will finish on this point. It matters to so many of our growth ambitions that construction materials are also covered under the Bill. Construction costs are due to rise much further here than in the European Union. Many of us who want our hospitals rebuilt and house building to happen know that if we spend our time giving uncertainty to British businesses about which way the regulations will go, we will not get the investment that we want. The cold, hard reality of businesses’ decision making is that they do not want to invest on a risk. My question to the Minister is: how can we give British business certainty about the direction of travel and ensure that we have the right consultation and engagement process for Parliament so that, where there are points where we would diverge—like we did on vaping—we can do that, too? It is not an either/or. Frankly, we have to get over the idea that if something is European, it is somehow taking us back. Nine years after we voted to leave the European Union, and six years after the legislation to do that, what the EU is doing still affects our British businesses.

We have a choice in this House. We can continue to peddle fantasies—I am sorry that the shadow Secretary of State is no longer in his place; he seemed not even to know about the capitulation that his Government must have made in his eye over the charter mark—but we owe it to British businesses who are being hammered by Tory Brexit and facing economic uncertainty not to add to the pile of paperwork in their in-trays as the Opposition would. I hope that when the Minister sets out that direction of travel, he will be open to ideas about how we can secure that. British businesses may have stopped listening to Opposition Members, but they will listen to us if we get this right.

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[Jerome Mayhew (Broadland and Fakenham) (Con)]

I do not think I can; I thought that was an absolutely brilliant speech. I feel like a party-pooper, because I am going to drag the debate back to the Product Regulation and Metrology Bill, and I can only apologise. I was going to assert boldly that I was the only Member of this House who had sat on a standards committee and drafted European regulations, but I stand corrected. There are now two of us.

At first glance, the Bill looks tiny. There are just four clauses on product regulations and four substantive clauses on metrology. There is a reason why it is so tiny: it does not actually say anything. There is no description of the changes anticipated by this legislation. There are no examples of what needs to be addressed. There is no indication of the direction behind any future decisions—nothing. Members, particularly those on the Government Benches, have referred to e-bikes and e-scooters, electrical safety, defective toys and lithium-ion batteries, to name just a few, but not a single one of those things is in the Bill. They could be. This could be a regulation Bill trying to fix the problems that have been identified, but none of that is there.

Worse than that, there is no explanation for the silence. The Bill simply makes a request of this House—of us, as parliamentarians—by saying, “Please give me, the Minister, the power to change primary legislation through regulations, including the power to create new and novel criminal offences.” This is the very definition of a skeleton Bill, where almost all the substance is left to regulations. That is contrary to an established convention in this House and the other place that the principal aspects of policy should be in a Bill, and only its detailed implementation left to delegated legislation. That is an established principle of our legislature. If we wish to depart from that, there needs to be a very good reason.

In exceptional circumstances, there are good reasons, but are there exceptional circumstances here? The issue was picked up immediately in what proved to be a hostile reception in the other place on Second Reading on 8 October last year. That was followed by a review on 15 October by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, which is not some right-wing conspiracy theory group. This is not “Brexit or die”; it is chaired by Labour. It is chaired by Baroness Ramsey, and it is a cross-party Committee. By the way, in another role, she is the senior adviser to the Labour party on standards and ethics, yet her report has been entirely ignored by this Government, because it was damning in its conclusions. It said that Government guidance was that skeleton legislation should be used only in the most exceptional circumstances, but that test was “failed” by this draft legislation. As a result, that cross-party Committee, chaired by Labour, made the recommendation that clauses 1, 2, 3, 5, 6 and 9 all be removed. Those are the substantive clauses right through the Bill, on both sides. That is a stinging indictment of this category of draft legislation.

However, the Committee members were so concerned that they did not leave it at that. The following day, they took the exceptional step of summoning the Minister and his officials to give oral evidence. That is very rare, and it was the first time for three years that it had happened. The Committee members were clearly unimpressed by the answers—the attempted explanations —that they were given, because in a subsequent report, on 28 October, they reported that the Minister and his officials had

“failed to provide a convincing justification”.

As a result of that second damning indictment of the Government’s approach, there was some movement: the removal of some Henry VIII powers, and the addition of a duty to consult, at least in the first instance. However, other Henry VIII powers remain, and the duty to consult refers only to the first instance, not to any secondary attempts.

The Committee then produced a third report, on the Bill in its current form. It said that

“the delegation to Ministers of law-making powers in this Bill involves legislative power shifting to an unacceptable extent from the democratically appointed legislature to the Executive”,

and also that

“the Government have failed to provide a convincing justification for the inclusion of skeleton clauses in the Bill”.

Actually, I think the Government did understand what they were doing, because the Bill gives Ministers the power to make politically contentious decisions about the degree to which domestic law on product regulation and, indeed, on metrology should be aligned with EU laws. That is the real reason behind the Bill: the fear of EU alignment by the back door.

[Sir John Hayes]

My experience in this place—I am mindful of what my hon. Friend has said already—is that there are two types of Bill to beware of. The first is the Bill whose provisions are so permissive, so broad, lacking the tailored approach that I described earlier, as to allow law to be applied in a way that is not expected by those who debate it as it passes through the House. The second is the Bill that makes specific provision for delegated legislation—for subsequent action by the Government. Those two types of legislation are legislation to beware of, and I say that to Members on both sides of the House, having seen Governments of all kinds introduce such Bills which became, in the end, bad laws.

[Jerome Mayhew]

Of course I agree with my right hon. Friend, and that comes to the nub of what I want to say. Yes, inevitably we are party politicians. We have the official Opposition, we have the Government, and we have those who sit on the left-hand side of the official Opposition. Above that, however, we are parliamentarians, and some of us are quite new. I may look old, and indeed I am, but I was first elected in 2019, and an awful lot of Members in the Chamber who may be voting tonight are even less experienced than me. It takes a while to begin to understand the difference between the role of the legislature and the role of the Executive, and my profound concern is that we are at risk of handing very significant powers from ourselves, the legislature, to the Executive.

[Michael Wheeler]

Having heard these comments several times, I wonder whether the hon. Member will accept that wisdom is not necessarily proportional to the amount of time spent in the Chamber.

[Jerome Mayhew]

The conventions of the House, and the conventions of the legislature, cannot be brushed aside by a flip comment like that. There are reasons why we have conventions. There is a separation of powers between the Executive and the legislature, and the power to create legislation lies with us. There are grounds, sometimes, on which we can give it to Ministers, but there must be really sensible reasons for that to be done, and there simply are not in this instance.

[Graham Stringer]

I have been following the hon. Member’s arguments closely. It is certainly the case that, with or without wisdom, the House is capable of making poor decisions. I have voted for measures and against them on occasion, and the House has made poor decisions. However, it is much more likely that the House will get it right, rather than a delegated legislation Committee dealing with a statutory instrument where a Minister comes along and reads out a brief that she or he often does not understand, as is revealed under questioning—if, indeed, questioning takes place. The argument for the Bill is really to do with speed and capacity. We do not meet to vote on Thursdays, but we often do on Mondays. There is plenty of time for the House to do this.

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[Jerome Mayhew]

I entirely agree. I did an analysis, and 48.3% of sitting days since the general election have been on one-line Whips, so there are no grounds for the Government to assert that they do not have time to put forward fresh legislation. It simply is not the case, and they do not have a legislative agenda that they are progressing with any urgency. There is plenty of room, and if we need to regulate, we can do it.

We have a big decision to take as parliamentarians. We are being asked by the Government to nod through a blank cheque—a blank cheque that is in breach of our parliamentary conventions. It is against the express advice of the cross-party Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee not once, not twice, but three times. I say to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, that any parliamentarian worthy of the name will vote against this Bill.

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[Laurence Turner]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention, although I do not agree with his characterisation of the speeches we have heard today. I think hon. Members have brought a wide range of perspectives, and that even though there has been some disagreement across the House—and, on occasion, on the same Benches—all Members have made their points sincerely.

I have read the reports the right hon. Gentleman references and the Minister’s evidence. My reading of that report is that the Committee held a very strong view on the principle of skeleton delegated legislation, but the point it made is that the case must be made for the use of such powers. My view is that the case has been made in this instance because of the seriousness of the matters we are discussing.

[Jerome Mayhew]

I refer the hon. Gentleman to the conclusions of the fourth report by the expert Committee, which states:

“We remain of the view…that the Government have failed to provide a convincing justification for the inclusion of skeleton clauses in this Bill that give Ministers such wide powers to re-write in regulations the substance of the regulatory regimes for products and metrology.”

He is wrong in his assessment, is he not?

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[Jim Allister]

One critical thing about the Bill is that, under the Sewel convention, it does not extend to secondary legislation. It does not extend to statutory instruments. The Bill drives a coach and horses through the Sewel convention as far as devolution is concerned, because it heaps all the powers into statutory instruments. One might expect such a bold move to realign the United Kingdom with EU law to be an up-front piece of legislation. I do not think that that is too much to ask—that it should be plain and clear for all to see. Instead, it is to be conveyed in these statutory instruments. And statutory instruments, as we know, are those that, in the main, pass through unnoticed. We have all been to Delegated Legislation Committees. We know that they are farcical in that the Minister comes in with a brief, which is simply rigidly read, and Members nod the motion through. It is a farcical way to make legislation of any sort.

[Jerome Mayhew]

Much of this debate has been about whether this Bill leads us to dynamic alignment. The Government’s position is that it does not and that this is all a mirage and a fantasy. If that is the case, does the hon. and learned Member agree that a simple amendment to this Bill to make that clear would go a long way to reassuring Members.

[Jim Allister]

Absolutely. If the Government are not—as many of us suspect—following a deliberate approach of circumventing debate in this House on key realignment issues, and is seeking rather to channel it through statutory instruments, then call our bluff, change this Bill in that regard. But this idea of skeleton legislation, which sets up the powers that have been taken from Parliament and given to the Executive, is something which, historically, this party of Government have railed against.

Indeed, within a week of Second Reading in the other place, the Attorney General gave the Bingham lecture. He said:

“excessive reliance on delegated powers, Henry VIII clauses, or skeleton legislation, upsets the proper balance between Parliament and the executive. This not only strikes at the rule of law values…but also at the cardinal principles of accessibility and legal certainty. In my view, the new Government offers an opportunity for a reset in the way that Government thinks about these issues. This means, in particular, a much sharper focus on whether taking delegated powers is justified in a given case, and more careful consideration of appropriate safeguards.”

That was the Attorney General. Where did that go to?

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[Graham Stuart]

I will press on a little, but I may come back to the hon. Lady.

I understand that, following the loveless landslide that brought the Government to power, the Government, and Government Members, have done an about-face. They now delight in more powers for the Executive, so much so that the Bill’s very first subsection gives the same Secretary of State I just referenced the power to make regulations anywhere in the UK, without consulting Parliaments in Westminster, Holyrood, Cardiff Bay or Stormont, on more or less anything he likes.

I was so pleased that the hon. and learned Member for North Antrim raised the devolution question. I was a Minister for eight years, and such is the complexity of the devolution settlement now that even with thousands of civil servants working on primary legislation, Ministers can come to the House and suddenly it gets pointed out to them that they are in breach of the Sewel convention and ignoring how Northern Ireland has a slightly different environmental or energy regulatory environment from Scotland or Wales. They find that the situation is more complex than they first thought. Now, we are giving powers to Ministers who will not have to go through any of that rigmarole. They will not get to find out how they are trampling on the devolution settlement, and that is a serious issue.

We on the Opposition Benches can make the arguments, but what we must really do is engage Government Members and get them to recognise that they are not here just to back the Government. They need to question these things, and not just ask whether the powers could be used for good. The hon. Member for Birmingham Northfield gave a brilliant speech with examples of the speeding up and pace of technological change—I think he spoke about the drones in Ukraine. Even though Opposition Members may maintain that the system that we had worked perfectly well, he made the case that perhaps we need something speedier going forward, and I can see that he made a strong argument. None the less, is the answer just to hand to Ministers, in this skeleton Bill, all the powers in the world? I suggest that it is not.

I know the Minister and the Secretary of State are decent people, and I hope that we will see, as the legislation proceeds through this House, ways to curb some of the powers while allowing us to have a regulatory system that can speedily respond to inappropriate products. None of us wants to see parliamentary pride getting in the way of an effective system; we have to find a way of making things work. This Bill, however, goes too far the other way. That is why the cross-party experts on the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee have looked at it and said that they do not feel that the case has been made to justify such massive powers.

Some parallels were raised by the hon. Member for Walthamstow, and I think it is fair enough to say, “Look at the way that Henry VIII powers and delegated powers were taken by the Government in the last Parliament.” Quite rightly, people questioned it, but that was about implementing Brexit; it really was something enormous that had to be done at a reasonable speed. Those of us involved were cognisant of the fact that we did not want it to set a precedent; we did not want Government to take the unique conditions of implementing Brexit and take it as a new way of governing. To the comment from the hon. Member for Erewash about rebuilding the world that the ancient Egyptians had, they were very good at centralising authority and I do not think that that is an entirely good thing. That is exactly what the Bill does, so I agree with him on that.

I am sure the Secretary of State is an excellent judge of things such as the safe operation of a laptop, say, for a trainee solicitor, but he will now have the power to regulate any product for sale in the UK on the basis of safety or functionality. The immense power given to him will allow him to decide what is and is not sold in the UK, without consulting this place and by merely providing a written statement. The Bill goes further, with Ministers acquiring the power to give inspectors the right to enter somebody’s home to seize any product that the Minister has decided, on the basis of non-compliance. That can be imposed on manufacturers, marketers, installers, importers or people who run an online marketplace, the definition of which, by the way, can be altered on a ministerial whim and at any point.

We have heard about dangerous and often unpopular electric bikes and scooters, but the powers in the Bill allow a future Secretary of State—we have had some eccentric ones in the past—to decide to ban bicycles because he considers them to be dangerous. He might look at the figures on that. After publishing a statement, he could instruct anyone he likes to enter the house of every bike owner and every bike shop to seize every bike in the United Kingdom. The Secretary of State could effectively end cycling in the UK without coming to Parliament. He could create legions of cycle inspectors who could enter people’s homes or businesses and seize their property before disposing of it. And the Government want to hide this act under the innocuous name of the Product Regulation and Metrology Bill. It is a massive power to give to the Secretary of State.

I say this to the many new Labour Members: I am not very keen on any Government, even the one of which I was a member. It was Lord Acton who said:

“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Well, there is an element of absolute power in this Bill, but we have an opportunity both to recognise the powerful case made by the hon. Member for Birmingham Northfield for an appropriate system and by his colleagues talking about different challenges, and to make sure that we limit and reduce those powers as the Bill goes through the House. I know that my cycle example is a little extreme, but it is also true. It would not require the Government to return to this House; they would be able to do it.

The Prime Minister has told us that the No. 1 mission of this Government is growth, yet his Ministers, not satisfied with taking the fastest growing economy in the entire G7 and bringing it to a shuddering halt, have introduced what may be the most tediously named but potentially dangerous Bill in the history of Parliament. We can look at what the Government have done for business so far. They have ended the rate relief for hospitality, made part-time workers too expensive to hire, hiked the cost of employing people through next week’s jobs tax, strengthened the trade unions and made it impossible to fire new workers. I would not want to exaggerate this Bill’s role, but in a crowded field, it takes the biscuit in many ways. Businesses are struggling to cope with all these things already, and now we will have greater business uncertainty caused by the fact that Ministers can, on a whim, choose which products can and cannot be sold. This will provide the exact opposite of the certainty that Labour Members suggested the Bill could bring, in a way that has no logic behind it.

[Jerome Mayhew]

Every single one of the measures in that infamous list that my right hon. Friend just went through required a vote in this House, and Labour Members had to put their name to each proposed legislative change. They will not have to do that under this legislation, will they?

[Graham Stuart]

They will not. The Secretary of State—not the current wonderful, benign, insightful and genial Secretary of State, but a future rather less palatable one—could wake up one day and impose new regulations on business that effectively strangle and bring red tape to every business in the land. Remember how close we were in 2017 to having a Government that would have been very different from the one that is opposite us today, or indeed from the Conservatives.

Why are the Government doing this? I cannot look into a man’s soul, but I have an idea, because Labour spent years fighting the UK’s attempts to remove the burden of regulation on business after we left the EU. At every turn, Labour tried to cling to nurse rather than let businesses innovate and sell their goods. This Government are seeking to undermine and erode the freedoms we have won over the last few years. Indeed, that is in black and white in the Bill. The Secretary of State may reimpose EU law on products without the requirement to come to this place and ask our permission to do so.

I am not saying that this is the worst thing the Government have done. As I have said, there is quite a packed list, including cutting the winter fuel payment for pensioners, the farm tax, the jobs tax, imposing stamp duty on first-time buyers, which comes in, I think, today—[Interruption.] Suddenly someone wants to buy a house. There is also the hospitality tax. I could go on, but executive powers are at their most pernicious when they have no limits. This legislation is not about metrology or about the better regulation of products; it is about giving the Government the power to do what they like, when they like, for reasons they do not have to explain, and then impose it as they see fit. The fact that we might like, and even trust, the current Secretary of State is no reason to give powers like this to Ministers about whom we know nothing now. I hope that Labour Members will join us in opposing this Bill.