Consumer Products (Control of Biocides) Bill [HL]

Lord Browne of Ladyton Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 17th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to support this Bill, and to have the opportunity not merely to applaud its intentions and drafting but to pay tribute to its sponsor, the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle.

When I read the Bill, I was reminded of an interview with Bill Frankland, the pioneering immunologist, who recalled his time in 1936 studying under Sir Alexander Fleming at Imperial College. Fleming, who was born and educated at both primary and secondary level in my former constituency, in Ayrshire in the west of Scotland, recounted in a lecture his discovery of penicillin. He ended it with a warning that penicillin would change the face of medicine, but that

“doctors will overuse it … bacteria have to survive—they are very, very clever—they will become resistant to it”.

If the father of antibiotic medicine was making this case at that distance, how much more urgent is it that we act today and as fast as possible? We are, as the noble Baroness made clear in her excellent opening speech, in a perilous situation. Antibiotics are one of the most extraordinary and transformative products of human ingenuity, but their efficacy is being undermined, not merely by the extraordinary adaptive qualities of bacteria but by the failure of humans effectively to regulate their own behaviour.

Despite its less than poetic title, the Bill is about human behaviour where collective and individual rights find themselves in conflict. Peer-reviewed scientific literature has shown us repeatedly that the use of antibacterial soap containing biocides offers no advantage whatever to the average consumer compared with normal soap, but marketing has convinced consumers that it is in some way preferable.

That is why Clause 6 is important. It aims purely to align perception with reality and ensure that implicit but misleading claims that a consumer product containing biocides is more effective than one without should be an offence, unless the biocidal consumer products advisory board, to be created under Clause 3, deems that claim true and verifiable.

It cannot be right that commercial imperatives that mandate the inclusion of unnecessary biocides in commercial products are allowed to trump the interest of everyone on the planet to ensure that antimicrobial resistance is controlled. I do not set myself up as a scientific expert of any sort, but it is precisely because I am not a scientist that I believe we should take precautionary measures in the face of uncertainty, even from scientists whose insight into the impact of biocides dwarfs my own.

Crucially, once antimicrobial resistance is established, it is irreversible. That fact only reinforces my belief that the precautionary principle that animates the Bill should be adhered to. Even the US, which often takes a more buccaneering approach to questions of capitalism than we do in the United Kingdom, has begun banning the use of biocides in washes and soaps, with the FDA having issued guidance not to buy antimicrobial soaps, as we have heard.

In my contribution to the debate on the Private Member’s Bill that preceded this one, I was forced to have recourse to humility, conceding that other noble Lords from all sides of the House had more expertise and direct experience of the matter in question than I did. I may be breaking a personal record in conceding that twice in a row. I therefore look forward to listening to the remainder of the debate and becoming better informed.

I started this short contribution with a reference to Alexander Fleming. I will make a further one. In 2008, on the 80th anniversary of the discovery of penicillin, I invited Professor Hugh Pennington, the emeritus professor of bacteriology at the University of Aberdeen and then the leading bacteriologist in the country, to speak to schoolchildren in my constituency. He told them that life on this planet is a competition between the bugs and us—humans. The bugs have been around for 3.5 billion years; we have been around for only 300,000 years. We are likely to lose if we are not careful.

In short, because this Bill is on the side of Homo sapiens, I support its aims and, whether in this form or the form of future government Bills, I very much look forward to seeing them given legislative expression as soon as possible.