Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [Lords]

Laurence Turner Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 1st April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Reynolds]

rose—

[Laurence Turner (Birmingham Northfield) (Lab)]

rose—

[Andrew Griffith]

I will give way to the hon. Member for Birmingham Northfield (Laurence Turner).

[Laurence Turner]

I thank the shadow Minister for giving way, and I hope he will also give way to my right hon. Friend on the Front Bench. Will he tell the House what possible motive he thinks a Labour Government would have for scrapping the pint?

[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.

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[Laurence Turner (Birmingham Northfield) (Lab)]

As has been said, on the face of it this is a short Bill, but when we look beneath the surface, it is even more exciting than the bare title of the Product Regulation and Metrology Bill suggests. Most of us go through our days without giving much thought to the measurement of the units that govern our everyday lives—I confess that, until very recently, I was one of them—but so many of our scientific and medical advances have succeeded or failed on the most precise margins, as my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Adam Thompson) so brilliantly set out. It was a real privilege to be in the Chamber to listen to his speech.

In the city of Birmingham, best known throughout much of its history as the workshop of the world, many millions of hours must have been sweated out to meet the finest of measurements and tolerances. I suspect my hon. Friend is capable of accurately estimating just how many hours that would have taken. However, I note in passing that one of just two remaining proof houses, which fell under the scope of the Gun Barrel Proof Act 1868 and succeeding Acts—they attracted a lot of attention in the other place—is in Digbeth in the city of Birmingham.

At the start of my hon. Friend’s speech, he raised the question of when exactly the word “metrology” entered common parlance. I do not know what that date was, but I note that when the National Physical Laboratory was created in 1900, it was established with a metrology division. One of the early guiding forces, Mr J. E. Sears, later found a second career as a scales manufacturer, again in the good city of Birmingham. Today, when pharmaceutical manufacturing jobs are starting to return to my constituency, 20 years on from the collapse of MG Rover, I know some of the exacting standards that those manufacturers must meet.

We need only look at the number of Weights and Measures Acts passed by this House down the years to understand the importance of these questions for our role as legislators. I fear that I am about to commit an unwise act by referencing Magna Carta in this place, as that text has been the subject of one or two interesting emails that I suspect a number of hon. Members have also received, but it is telling that it stipulated:

“There is to be a single measure for wine throughout our realm, and a single measure for ale, and a single measure for Corn… And it shall be the same for weights as for measures.”

In the other place, and it is fair to say in this place as well, the arguments over the Bill have come down to a simple point: are delegated powers and statutory instruments the right processes for adapting to a rapidly changing landscape for product safety and international measurement standards? It is worth remembering two things. First, the theory that we could make sufficient updates through primary legislation can be tested against the history of legislation in this place. For example, some of the provisions in the Consumer Protection Act 1987 have been overtaken by events, and it has proved hard in practice to bring forward the necessary changes to that legislation.

Secondly, as has been said, this work was initiated by the last Government, who at the time made the case for delegated powers persuasively. As the 2021 response to the 2019 call for evidence stated:

“Over time, the limited powers we retained in domestic legislation became less effective. Rather than update these, the UK relied on powers in the European Communities Act (ECA) 1972 to introduce new harmonised legislation to deal with product safety and metrology.”

Those powers have now expired. Governments of all colours must deal with

“A complex, forever changing landscape”

and current legislation does

“not allow for many of the changes necessary to keep pace with technological advances and modern hazards.”

A good example of the ever-changing metrological field can be drawn from the 2019 changes to the international system of quantities, which altered in subtle ways the definition of the kilogram, the amp, the kelvin and the mole, with implications across a very wide range of regulations. I think it is sensible to update those definitions swiftly by regulations. We have heard examples of some of the unsafe products that are on sale at the moment. It is worth noting that the Bill is not simply about definitions, but enforcement. Clause 3 will enable some of those stretched resources, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) referred, to go further. I also note that through the Transport Committee I received representations from Brompton Bicycle, a very good British manufacturing success story, which said that UK product safety regulations and enforcement have failed to keep pace with the development of e-bike technology. Unsafe, poor quality e-bike products are entering the hands of UK consumers with sometimes devastating consequences.

[Matt Rodda (Reading Central) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent point. Many constituents around the country will appreciate the specific points he makes about the changing product environment, and the way that product design and development is moving very quickly. I have a large number of residents who are concerned about e-bikes being ridden irresponsibly, home-made kits attached to bicycles, and cyclists often speeding on pavements. That is an interesting example of how the Bill could be very effective, so I thank him for his work on that.

[Laurence Turner]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I know that was one of the areas to which he paid a lot of attention in the transport brief. I am sure that as the Committee continues to look into this area, it will build on that work. As he says, this is an issue that comes up time and again in my constituency. We might not ever be able to get every single one of those vehicles off the road, but we need the powers to bring more of them off our streets where they pose a threat to people’s safety.

To illustrate the seriousness of the challenges the Government face and the need sometimes for very swift progress, we need only to look to the scale of technological advancements in the field of hybrid warfare and the implications of those advancements for dual-use civilian technologies. I note that clause 1(4)(d) draws specific attention to products that can

“cause, or be susceptible to, electromagnetic disturbance.”

In Ukraine, the two adversaries are locked into a cycle of innovation and reaction in drone warfare and electronic countermeasures that are escalating at a blinding speed. Some of those developments have implications for the potential misuse of civilian drones in this country. To suggest that primary legislation is capable of keeping pace with that is not realistic.

Similarly, in respect of intangible products, again an issue on which the House of Lords spent a large amount of welcome scrutiny time, there is a case that primary legislation cannot cover enough eventualities in good time, especially in the age of artificially generated code. I think back to the Volkswagen emissions scandal 10 years ago, when so-called “defeat devices” were intangible in nature.

[Graham Stuart]

The hon. Gentleman is making a brilliant speech and he has focused on some of the key issues in ways that not every speech has. He makes a powerful case, but why does he think that those arguments have not persuaded, in three different attempts in three different reports, the cross-party Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, which provides expert insight into precisely such proposed legislation?

[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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[Laurence Turner]

No. With respect, I think the hon. Gentleman has misunderstood my point. The Committee has every right to express that view; we also have the right to express our view as legislators in this place as to whether the case has been made. As I say, I think the case has been made that primary legislation is not a sufficient vehicle in this instance. I will just say to the hon. Gentleman that there are numerous precedents under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, for example, for regulating dangerous products; the difference is that primary legislation does not cover all the eventualities for products of the kind we are discussing today.

I will finish by talking about the pint. I note, in passing, that the first legislation to clearly regulate the pint—the Act for the ascertaining the Measures for retailing Ale and Beer of 1698—did not see it as necessary to define the actual quantity; perhaps it was left to royal prerogative to define. The history books do clearly show that the pint is safe, so to speak, in Labour’s hands: in his memoir of his time at head of the No. 10 policy unit, the noble Lord Donoughue details how Harold Wilson intervened to save the pint; and it was a Labour Government in 2008 who secured the metric opt-out that preserved the inch, the troy ounce and, of course, the pint.

I know that hon. and right hon. Members on the Opposition Benches have spent a lot of time chasing away phantoms on this particular issue, and I hope that they feel that was a good use of their time and that we see more of it in this Parliament. For the Government Benches, however, I look forward to following the progress of this important Bill and to voting for it tonight, and perhaps also to raising a pint—or, as clause 5(5) has it, 0.56826125 cubic decimetres—to the Bill’s good health as it completes its remaining stages in this House.