Product Safety and Metrology etc. (Amendment) Regulations 2024

Lord Fox Excerpts

Monday 20th May 2024 Grand Committee

To conclude, recognition of the EU requirements, including CE marking, in Great Britain is due to end on 31 December 2024 for the product regulations in this instrument. The instrument removes this deadline. The main objective of this instrument is to provide businesses with choice, certainty and clarity, giving UK manufacturers the flexibility to use either UKCA or CE for placing products on the Great British market. I beg to move.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for this important announcement. I do not think that the Minister was in your Lordships’ House when we discussed the retained EU law Bill. If he was, he was very wise not to be on the Front Bench at the time. As your Lordships will recall, we were marched forcibly three-quarters of the way up the hill only to be marched back down again.

This statutory instrument is very much indicative of the position that we arrived at after we had marched back down the hill and is infinitely more sensible than where we would have been had we enacted the original retained EU law Bill, and for that the Government and Ministers need some credit.

I have a slight concern—I may have misunderstood. My understanding is that the deadline for recognition of CE is pushed to one side and that CE will be recognised indefinitely, except the Government retain the right to impose non-CE regulations if they decide that they want to do so. That leaves an air of uncertainty, so it would be interesting to hear a response to that.

The Minister hinted at the overall future of CA. Industry has been pushing hard not to have a dual standard, and the department has done well to bow to that. However, the point that was not being made—which we were trying to make at the time—was that it would be expensive. It is good to hear that it would have cost half a billion pounds for industry to conform to that and it is glad that it did not have to do so. Why are we retaining CA? How much resource will the Government commit to the process of having a separate standard, even though the market will inevitably drive most of the players into the CE camp for accreditation? I would like some more clarity around the future of CA.

The Minister mentioned the product safety review. I think we would all like to know when it will be published, as it was promised some time ago and is still not among us. It would be really interesting to know when it will be. I have one final question around Northern Ireland. My assumption is that this solves any potential cross-border issues between the Republic and Northern Ireland, but could the Minister confirm that?

[Lord Leong (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing this SI and setting out its purpose and the noble Lord, Lord Fox, for his contribution. I, too, was not in the House when the retained EU law Bill was debated, although I read sections of Hansard in preparation for today’s debate.

It would be churlish of me not to welcome this instrument, which effectively extends indefinitely the looming deadline of 31 December 2024—a deadline already extended twice since it was first legislated for in 2020. Business will welcome this move. It will save it time and money by not having to comply with two different and, in some cases, largely completely overlapping regulatory regimes. Consumers will welcome this move too. It removes the potential double whammy of higher prices and less choice for GB consumers that would have resulted from some manufacturers deciding it was not worth their while or the cost to meet the additional bureaucracy of the UKCA regime.

Of course, the Government have welcomed their own move. It is estimated that this SI will save businesses more than £500 million in the next decade, as the Minister stated. At the risk of being churlish, I must observe that attempts to present this as an example of their being a great friend of business stretch credulity somewhat. One would not herald the captain’s decision to change course at the last minute to avoid sailing into an iceberg that everyone else knew had been looming for a long time as a “titanic success”.

This instrument will mean that businesses can now use either CE or UKCA markers when placing goods on the GB market—although not, of course, in Northern Ireland because of its unique situation. The Venn diagram of the CE regime and the UKCA regime will become concentric circles, with the former completely enclosing the later. Despite this, paragraph 6.8 of the Explanatory Memorandum states:

“The UKCA requirements which are not, however, treated as being satisfied by the above steps are the manufacturer’s obligations to … Draw up a UK Declaration of Conformity … and … Apply UKCA product marking”.


Perhaps the Minister can explain why this remains necessary for goods which are sold in the GB market. Is this not a textbook example of meaningless rubber-stamping?

Not unrelated to this, what is the Minister’s response to conformity assessment bodies that have raised concerns with the Department for Business and Trade that demand for their services in respect of the UKCA mark will fall due to this statutory instrument? How does he intend to work with the sector to support a domestic route to market for relevant UKCA marked products?

Finally, as the Minister knows, SMEs are always at the forefront of my concerns. They will have been disproportionately affected by the costs of now unnecessary preparation for conformity to a regime that was due to come into force in less than eight months’ time. While we welcome this SI, can the Minister say if there has been any assessment of the costs that will already have been incurred across different sectors, especially those with longer lead times, and SMEs in particular? There seems little value in trumpeting potential savings if the businesses that may have benefited have already scaled down, or even closed down, their export capacity.

While we welcome this sensible SI, I do hope the Minister can illuminate the Committee with answers to my questions.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Fox (LD)]

I asked about the quantum of continued public investment in CA, and whether the Minister can give an idea of how much investment will be going into what may become a dwindling standard going forward.

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

The noble Lord also asked about the date of review. Those are two technical issues on which, if he does not mind, I will write.

I beg to move.