Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [HL]

Lord Foster of Bath Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 26th February 2025 Lords Chamber

With those remarks about Amendment 28, I beg to move Amendment 3.

[Lord Foster of Bath (LD)]

My Lords, before turning to my Amendment 7, I pick up the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, in relation to his Amendment 28. Perhaps to his surprise, I accept that this is a case where there may be dynamic alignment between us. As he rightly pointed out, in Committee I tabled amendments in relation to the need for a liability approach and a redress mechanism. In fact, I went further and suggested that we need to do things such as remove the anonymity of sellers on online platforms so that such a redress mechanism would be possible. Like the noble Lord, I certainly hope that the Minister—who, as he says, has been enormously helpful—will be able to explain how the Government intend to handle this issue. It is my understanding that it may not be possible to do it through this legislation but that alternative routes will be found. I very much hope that is the case.

I similarly hope there will be a positive response to Amendment 7 in my name and those of my noble friend Lord Fox and the noble Earl, Lord Lindsay. In your Lordships’ House I have frequently raised my concern about the safety of lithium-ion batteries and the urgent need for tighter reform. In doing so, I have pointed to significant support for such action from a wide range of bodies including Electrical Safety First, local fire brigades, many local councils, insurance companies and many others. They have all pointed to the need for tighter regulation in this area.

One of the sponsors of the amendment, the noble Earl, Lord Lindsay, is the president of the Chartered Trading Standards Institute, which is equally concerned about this issue. Its concerns, like mine, have arisen from the tragic loss of life we have seen and the huge amount of damage to property from fires caused by, for example, poorly manufactured lithium-ion batteries or faulty charging systems. It is worth reminding ourselves, I hope for the last time, that the London Fire Brigade has to respond to such a fire every two days. It is now the fastest-rising cause of fires throughout the city. More than 180 parliamentary constituencies have had fires caused by lithium-ion batteries in the last two or three years. Work needs to be done.

I am delighted that Electrical Safety First, in its very good report Battery Breakdown, has provided a great deal of technical information about not only the fires but their causes, and has provided some sensible solutions and ways forward. I am therefore delighted that in the debate on the previous group of amendments, the Minister made absolutely clear that there is now a commitment to detailed consultation before new statutory instruments are brought forward on this matter and lots of others that will come forward. It is right that the technical expertise that Electrical Safety First, for example, has demonstrated is made use of.

Lithium-ion batteries are clearly not the only high-risk products that need to be identified and regulated appropriately. Fireworks are a good example. But many are not covered by existing product safety regulations or covered adequately by the General Product Safety Regulations. I am also concerned that we need not only to cover a wide range of products but to have future-proofing for the legislation to be flexible enough to take into account new products that come on to the market in future.

Sadly, at the moment there is no systematic approach to the identification and regulation of such high-risk products. Hence my amendment relates to

“the marketing or use of certain products, or categories or groups of product, that present a high risk (known or emerging) to consumer health and safety”.

I am particularly grateful to the Minister and his officials for meeting with me, Electrical Safety First and the London Fire Brigade to discuss establishing such a proactive system for assessing and regulating high-risk products and emerging technologies. I am the first to accept that there are more ways than one of skinning the cat and that there may be alternative ways, other than my amendment, of achieving what I wish to achieve.

My noble friend Lord Fox’s Amendment 9 would require the Secretary of State to publish a statement, before SIs are laid, outlining how product risks will be identified and assessed, including those posing a high hazard, such as lithium-ion batteries. I am willing to accept that, if his amendment is accepted by the Government, and is backed by the appropriate statement and a code of practice in relation to the identification and regulation of higher-risk products, it may well provide a way forward and ensure the flexibility and transparency that my amendment has sought.

I will listen with great interest to my noble friend Lord Fox, and in particular to the response from the Minister. I very much hope that today’s outcome will mean that, at last, action will be taken to tackle the very real dangers to public health and safety caused by inadequately regulated high-risk products, including lithium-ion batteries.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, I am looking forward to the novelty of my noble friend Lord Foster listening to me.

I will explain how Amendment 9, in my name, supports Amendment 7, in the names of my noble friend Lord Foster, the noble Earl, Lord Lindsay, and me. At the heart of both amendments is the desire to ensure that there has been sufficient scrutiny of the regulations that are designed to make products safe; I use that word advisedly, in support of the noble Lord Lansley, because “safe” is a good word to find in there somewhere, and I hope that through these discussions we will find a way. In my experience, the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, is relatively tenacious, so I suspect that something may emerge.

We need a process that takes into consideration all high-risk and higher-risk products. Lithium-ion batteries are a stark and horrific example when they go wrong, as set out eloquently by my noble friend, but there are other products, some of which we do not yet know about. Legislation has to be broad enough to be able to take those into consideration.

Amendment 9 also addresses the important elements of parliamentary scrutiny that we discussed in the last group. We have heard the concerns. If applied properly, this will go a long way towards ameliorating many of them. If we get it working properly, it will provide greater genuine scrutiny than the affirmative process tends to do, because it will edit secondary legislation before it is laid—in other words, it will have gone through a process.

Amendment 61, tabled by the Minister and signed by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, undertakes that the Secretary of State will consult when the Secretary of State thinks it is appropriate. My Amendment 9 seeks to move this on to a more structured footing. It causes the Secretary of State to issue a statement that sets out the consultation process that the Secretary of State must undertake before tabling secondary legislation.

In some trivial cases, that will not be much consultation, but in other cases a great deal of work could be required, such as for an entirely new product, an entirely new use of an old product, or the reregulation of something that has proved problematic. All these would need to be addressed and assessed, to decide what level of risk we are dealing with. Higher-risk products would need a greater scrutiny process in order to reduce and mitigate risk, and make them as safe as possible.

As a result of this amendment, the Secretary of State would have to notify Parliament of the process for the identification and assessment of risks in products. I thank the Minister and his team again for the discussions we have had on this. We have had a number of meetings and each time we have moved forward in this process; together, we have been able to get to something that can work. I am happy that, rather than enshrining a particular technology in primary legislation, we are putting in place a process, and one that can evolve, if it needs to, going forward.

I hope that the Minister will set out further details of how this process will work and what the statement will include. I hope that he will take into consideration the concerns that have been demonstrated by my noble friends Lady Brinton and Lord Foster, as well as many other noble Lords during Committee. I should say, as an aside, that I was pleased to see the code of conduct, which is another brick in the wall, but this is the process by which that puts people’s noses to the grindstone and starts to apply it.