Lithium-ion Battery Safety Bill [HL]

Lord Foster of Bath Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 6th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

My Lords, in principle I completely support the Bill. We must, however, look at the detail more closely. For example, we have to recognise that there are large numbers of different chemistries used to make batteries—the lithium battery is only one such. I was interested to see how we label them so I went outside for a magnifying glass to look at my hearing aid batteries, to see what the chemistry was. It turns out that the label does not tell me. It tells me that they may catch fire if I throw them on to a fire. On the other hand, these might be silver zinc batteries, in which case they are completely safe and unlikely to overheat or cause fires spontaneously.

The problem with lithium is that it is the lightest metal, one of the lightest elements, and is highly volatile. It burns very easily and there is pure lithium in batteries. What happens, as the noble Lord has mentioned, is a kind of chain reaction—the thermal continuation that feeds itself. All batteries will produce heat as part of the energy that they produce, and so produce the seeds of their own eventual destruction if they get overheated.

Clearly, therefore, labelling must be considered very carefully in the Bill. How you keep your batteries might be important. There is no question, for example, that charging a bike with a lithium battery overnight without supervision might be more serious than one realises, but it might be completely safe with many other different technologies and chemistries. One of the issues, therefore, is that the chemistry has to be labelled.

I do not want to add difficulty. Every time we table an amendment to a Bill we make it more difficult to pass, and I do not want to see that happen—this is a good idea and it is important. However, we must recognise, as the noble Lord, Lord Howell, said, that there might be technologies that change things. In the lithium battery you have lithium cobalt on one side, for example—incidentally, the cobalt is there for concatenation, which is interesting given the previous debate—and on the other side at the anode you have carbon, or graphite. The ions pass across and when they reach the anode they oxidise and you get power—and that is a rechargeable battery. There is of course a separator in the middle to prevent that, although at the moment these separators are permeable, not solid, and perhaps, with better technology, one solution would be that if the separator responds to heat and becomes completely solid the battery could not continue in that sort of way. Those sorts of technologies might make a difference. We should not condemn these batteries out of hand whatever happens, because that is something that we might feel important.

There is clearly more need for education about the subject. I will not go on at great length but I want to suggest a few points. I do not know whether my hearing aids have lithium in them; they might be lithium-air, but they have not so far caused my ears to burn while I am sitting by the fire—that happens only when people talk about me.

We have not dealt with something important in the Bill. Lithium is a rare resource. It is difficult to mine and there are not many places in the world where you can mine it. There are many of these technologies, such as silver, and zinc too to some extent—all of these things are precious and we cannot renew them. The noble Lord pointed out in his speech—nobody else has properly pointed it out—that when you come to recycling it is difficult to separate the elements. The problem is that if you take, for example, a hearing aid—it is tiny and one could ask whether worth recycling, but a deaf person using a hearing aid for five years will build up quite a lot of batteries—there are no instructions as to whether we should preserve that material and find some ways of better recycling it. There is more to be done to separate the various metals, and there are large numbers of different metals in batteries that we need to consider. The chemistry needs to be thought about in the future.

I do not think it is part of the Bill, but the labelling is relevant in terms of public consciousness. Above all, we must recognise that if we continue to overuse the world’s resources, such as lithium, we will run out of what could be a valuable element in other ways. That is one of the important points in this issue.

[Lord Foster of Bath (LD)]

I just want to draw attention to the very point that the noble Lord has made about the waste of these materials. If we look at the disposal just of disposable vapes in this country alone, it is estimated that that is the equivalent of throwing away 10 tonnes of lithium each year.

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. That would make a fantastic bonfire, would it not? You would not want to pour water on it.

Some batteries do not have that kind of technology. Silver zinc is an aquatic substrate in the battery, so will not get very hot—at least it cannot burn at the sort of temperature of 700 degrees Celsius.

Finally, some years ago I tried to introduce a Private Member’s Bill about the labelling of drugs. I wanted particular labelling—which I will not go into as it is not relevant to the Bill—as I felt that it was missing. The Government at the time were well disposed towards the Bill, and we went through Committee without any problem. However, the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, took me to one side and pointed out that this might affect EU legislation. At the time of my Bill labelling any product would be subject to EU regulation, and it was clear that we would not get it through the EU. We are now, of course, free of that—I am not a Brexiteer by any means, by the way—but there is still a problem about labelling. We must ask ourselves how we can get a decent label on a small package and what we put on it, with some kind of legal advice—maybe even commercial advice—to make certain that we can sell our batteries in the EU. We are trying to expand the industry in this country, with gigafactories and so on. We need to think about it very carefully, as clearly it would be valuable, having made safe batteries, to be able to sell them globally. I commend the noble Lord and support the idea of taking this to Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Foster of Bath (LD)]

My Lords, I begin by welcoming the Minister to her new role. I am certainly delighted, as others have been, to support this Bill. I congratulate my noble friend Lord Redesdale on his excellent introduction to it and on doing so well in the ballot, since I have twice been less lucky than he has with a not dissimilar Bill.

With the help of Electrical Safety First and Mr Ron Bailey, I have been raising issues around the safety of lithium-ion batteries over the past few years. For example, during the debate on the pedicab Bill in the last Session I pointed out, echoing what my noble friend said in his speech, that lithium-ion batteries are becoming increasingly important because they store more energy —in fact, the equivalent of six hand grenades in the case of an e-scooter battery—than any other type of battery, allowing for much longer use. But, as he and other have pointed out, if those batteries are overheated through misuse, damage or using substandard chargers, they can create those fierce fires that people have referred to, with very high temperatures, and which, as the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, and others have pointed out, are extremely difficult to extinguish. I argued for the introduction of measures in the pedicab Bill not dissimilar to those in the Bill before us.

More recently, on Monday this week, during a debate on children vaping, I expressed concern about disposable vapes, which are also powered by lithium-ion batteries. In arguing for a ban on the sale of such disposable vapes, I pointed out that over 84 million are thrown away each year in the UK, most frequently into domestic waste. The same is true for many other discarded lithium-ion batteries. They get picked up by refuse vehicles, and they can then, as my noble friend Lady Brinton pointed out, be compacted, which can cause damage to some of the batteries and lead to thermal runaway fires in the vehicles. The compacting process in landfill sites can cause the same problem. As a result, as we have heard, there are over 1,200 such fires each year in the waste industry.

Indeed, my interest in the safety of lithium-ion batteries began when Zurich Insurance drew my attention to the rapidly increasing number of fires caused by lithium-ion batteries at waste and recycling plants that it insures—fires which cost millions of pounds each year and risk lives. Sadly, as we have heard, there are far too many examples of lithium-ion battery fires that have cost lives, both here and around the world. The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, referred to the devastating fire on board a ship, and over this summer 22 people died in a South Korean factory when some lithium-ion batteries exploded. On almost the same day, here, in Cambridge, a mother and her two children died in a fire after an e-bike exploded.

Damage to or inappropriate charging of batteries in e-bikes and e-scooters has become a major concern, as many noble Lords have said. As London Fire Brigade points out, fires in e-bikes and e-scooters are one of the capital’s fastest-growing fire risks:

“On average there was a fire every two days”


last year. It goes on:

“Sadly, there were 3 deaths and around 60 injuries caused by these fires”.


Again, as we have heard, many local transport bodies now ban them. Chiltern Railways has posters everywhere stating: “No e-scooters allowed on trains or stations. Lithium batteries are a fire risk”.

Electrical Safety First has produced an excellent in-depth report, Battery Breakdown, on the safety of lithium-ion batteries in e-bikes and e-scooters. It shows the huge increase in fires caused by damage to or inappropriate charging of them, the financial cost and, more significantly and tragically, the cost to life. Fire brigades around the country report similar increases in such fires and have indicated strong support for the introduction of the types of measures in my noble friend’s Bill.

Indeed, there is very widespread support for such measures. My own unsuccessful but similar Bill had support from nearly 90 national organisations, including the National Fire Chiefs Council, the Association of British Insurers, Which?, Brompton Bicycle UK and the British Burn Association. Equally importantly, support came also from numerous local organisations, from large councils such as Newcastle upon Tyne and Brent to smaller town councils, parish councils and community councils from all over the country. All wrote in support of the types of measures contained in my noble friend’s Bill.

Posters and other publicity material have been placed on hundreds of parish noticeboards across the country. Parish council magazines and local newspapers, such as the Hawick Paper in the Scottish Borders, have contained articles alerting people to the dangers. Jura Community Council in the Hebrides supported the measures and told me in a letter

“our extremely remote location can cause huge difficulties in accessing appropriate disposal facilities’,

a point raised by a number of noble Lords. The parish meeting of Redlingfield in Suffolk—population 140—supported the campaign, and, spurred on by its excellent clerk, Sue Squire, Chulmleigh Parish Council in north Devon has displayed posters about it. Deal Town Council in Kent, Dyserth Community Council in north Wales and the Alford Hub in Lincolnshire were among the 400 other local councils that wrote in support. Some had special reason for doing so. Soham Town Council explained that its support was especially because

“people in our own community have tragically died as a result of batteries catching fire”.

I have provided these examples to illustrate how widespread are the concern and the support for action, including from many noble Lords in the debate.

I am pleased that, at last, there appears to be some progress. As we have heard, this week the Government published the Product Regulation and Metrology Bill. I genuinely hope that it will address many of the issues raised in my noble friend’s Bill. Sadly, however, it is somewhat difficult to tell from the Government’s Bill as it stands, since we understand that much of the detail will come later in secondary legislation.

Can the Minister tell us whether or not the secondary legislation will cover some of the key issues? Will regulations require, prior to the sale of e-bikes, e-scooters and their batteries, independent testing and a requirement to carry relevant markings to show it has happened? Will there be regulations about the safe disposal of lithium-ion batteries? Will there be regulations covering both the safety of chargers and of conversion kits, such as those that turn pushbikes into an e-bikes, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay?

Many of these products, such as e-bikes, e-scooters, chargers and conversion kits, are purchased online. So, finally, I raise another issue I have previously raised: the safety of electrical goods purchased online. At present, we have the unacceptable situation whereby a high street shop has responsibility to ensure the safety of the electrical goods it sells, whereas online traders have no similar responsibilities. There are numerous examples of unsafe electrical goods being sold online. It is even possible to purchase online electrical products no longer available on the high street because they have been recalled by manufacturers. This cannot continue. Can the Minister assure us that the Product Regulation and Metrology Bill will ensure that online traders have the same responsibility as high street traders for the safety of the electrical goods they sell?

As my noble friend said at the start of his speech, it is not important whether the measures contained in his Bill come into being through the passage of his Bill or through the Government’s own legislation. However, bearing in mind the urgent need and huge support for such measures, I hope the Minister will assure us that we will not have to wait long for action to be taken—either through my noble friend’s Bill or the Government’s own proposals.