Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Fox and Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle

Committee stage
Wednesday 20th November 2024 Grand Committee

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, with the explicit kind invitation of the noble Lord, Lord Russell, I rise to provide an environmental perspective and broadly support Amendments 17 and 127. Since it is the first time I have spoken in Committee, I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, to his new role. Given the range of subjects I cover, we have discussed many things before and we will have new subjects to cover. I also apologise to the Minister: I was aware of the long time that he devoted to consultation; like the noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor, however, transport interfered with my attendance. There is a lot of it around, I am afraid.

I will comment broadly on the amendments introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Frost, and others on this side of the Committee. I am not in favour of all those amendments. I suspect it will not surprise many people to hear that but I suggest respectfully to the noble Lord that he might be picking the wrong battlefield when it comes to tethered bottle tops. I am not sure that being the noble Lord in favour of litter is something that he would like to adopt, given that if you look, for example, at a marine conservation study from 2023, bottle tops were the third most littered item found on beaches. Indeed, the NGO Seas At Risk found it was the third most common plastic item in the seas, causing damage to wildlife. So I suggest a small, practical and sensible measure. If the noble Lord is finding it difficult to manage these new bottle tops, there is a TikToker whose handle is @andreilifehack. He has 8 million followers and a neat little trick of how to manage a tethered bottle top. I should be happy to share that link with the noble Lord.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Russell, I am going to take a moderate, practical approach to this. Picking up the point he made about the advantages to businesses, we particularly look at small and medium enterprises in the UK, which have suffered enormously and lost a huge amount of trade following Brexit. Regulatory confusion and uncertainty does not help them, whereas larger businesses may be able to cope. The certainty that his amendment could help to provide would be useful to those small and medium-sized enterprises.

Picking up on environmental health and, indeed, more broadly, the one-health aspect of this and being pragmatic—the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton, focused on chemical regulation and as the noble Lord, Lord Fox, has amendments on that later in the Bill, I am not going to get into the detail of that now—harmful chemicals and industrial processes are damaging public health in the UK. We have huge problems. The noble Lord, Lord Browne, referred to the state of our rivers, then there is air pollution and the contamination levels in our food. All these things have big impacts on public as well as environmental health. Again being pragmatic and thinking about the fact that both the two largest parties in your Lordships’ House often reflect on the number of people who are not in employment because of ill health and who are not contributing to the economy as a result, taking steps to improve public health, and environmental health as part of that, is an extremely pragmatic step. As the noble Lord, Lord Browne, said, we are trailing significantly behind the EU in important areas of that.

I said I would be brief, so I will stop there because I have more to say on these areas in the next group.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

As noble Lords can probably imagine, I have been looking forward to this group for ages, and I thank noble Lords for not disappointing. I put my name to Amendments 17 and 127 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Russell, and tabled my own Amendment 94. I think the valedictory remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Browne, about leaving this Bill may have been premature because Amendment 16, which is group 9, explicitly deals with the REACH issue, which I know he is so passionate about. I would like him to join me in probing the REACH elements of this, so I hope he can put off his exit from the Bill.

The Prime Minister, the Chancellor and others have stated that they wish to re-engage with our largest market, which is the EU. Their aim, and our aim on these Benches, is to remove friction to make life easier for British business. Thereby costs will be kept to a minimum, markets will be more accessible and growth, which we all agree is vital for our future, can be more easily achieved. I was delighted today when the Treasury spokesperson, the noble Lord, Lord Livermore, endorsed the role of this Bill in helping the Government make those moves to re-engage with the EU. It was reassuring that he sees the importance of this Bill in that process. That is a very good mark to put on what we are doing.

We heard some excellent speeches from the noble Lords, Lord Russell, Lord Browne and Lord Kirkhope, in favour of the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Russell. The UK Government are introducing legislation to guide the future regulation of standards for thousands of products when they are sold in the UK market. It should go without saying that creating different standards for UK businesses hoping to sell in both the UK and the EU works counter to this. Consistent standards that apply across both markets will give business the ability and certainty to sell in both those markets.

Never mind the dolphins. The noble Lord, Lord Frost, brought up the issue of tethered bottle tops. As far as I am aware, there is no regulation in this country to require tethered bottle tops. The reason we have them is because business knows how costly it would be to have two forms of a drink being sold in one market here and one market there. Business understands, even if some noble Lords do not, the true cost of having two different regulations. When it can do without them, it does, and the one it chooses is that of the biggest market, which is very rarely in the United Kingdom.

This legislation is an opportunity for the Government, if they move in the right direction, to reduce the red tape and the bureaucracy that the current version of Brexit has created for British business. We should be under no illusion that Brexit has made it much harder for businesses to export into the European Union.

The wording of this amendment does not bind the hands of Government. As noble Lords have observed, there is absolutely the opportunity to diverge and move away from the regulations in the European Union, if that is to the advantage of the United Kingdom. This is a common-sense amendment that provides regulatory certainty for UK businesses by requiring a default of alignment with EU regulations and a process for parliamentary scrutiny, if or when Ministers determine that divergence from such regulation would be in the best interests of the UK. That is what business tells us it wants—and I hope that the questions that the noble Lord, Lord Russell, asked will continue with that. It also seems to be what the public wants. A poll published today in the i newspaper says that when people were asked where was more important to Britain economically, 57% opted for Europe, with 34% opting for the US, for example. There are lots of good reasons for the Government to support these amendments, because they provide a foundation for economic growth by ensuring that businesses can plan and invest with confidence about where the regulatory regime is going and what kind of regulations are going to apply in the United Kingdom.

Before I come very briefly to Amendment 94, unlike the noble Lord, Lord Browne, I could not help but be lured into addressing some of the comments made by the noble Lords seated just behind me. The comments of the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, were very interesting. His comments about the environment and how appropriate it is to take into consideration things such as deforestation were interesting, and I shall be interested to see whether the Opposition Front Bench endorse the comments that he made, or whether they will distance themselves from them—because I think that is quite important.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 5 I will also speak to Amendments 28, 30, 50, 115 and 125, which are in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Fox. I am very aware of the time and the risk of a vote being called, so I am abbreviating this on the understanding that we may be able to have discussions later.

In the interests of time I did not speak on the first group, but the noble Lord, Lord Fox, spoke about this Bill—rather than being a framework Bill or one that is filled with Henry VIII powers—as providing guard-rails. Many will see the amendments in this group as providing a set of environmental guard-rails. The noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, said that the Bill needed policy direction, and that is essentially what these amendments do.

I take the Minister’s point about there being a level of detail that is not appropriate to include in legislation rather than regulation. I spent this morning with Westminster Forum Projects talking about deposit return schemes and extended producer responsibility. I learned about RAM—recyclability assessment methodology. Those are things that certainly need to be in the regulations, but they need to be the guard-rails here.

These amendments will be classed as environmental amendments, but they are also amendments about things such as the right to repair and tackling utterly unnecessary planned obsolescence, which is deeply costly to consumers. These are also amendments that start to address the cost of living crisis and are real principles for people today. I was going to go through the amendments in considerable detail, but the arguments for right to repair and against planned obsolescence are really obvious so, given the time, I will address just the circular economy elements, which run as a line through these amendments.

It is worth saying that the environmental improvement plan contains a target to reduce residual waste, excluding construction waste, to 437 kilogrammes per capita by 2028, but in 2022 this figure stood at 558.8 kilogrammes. That was only 2.8% down on 2019. In three years, that was all the progress that had been made towards the target of circularity, which is only three years away.

The noble Lord, Lord Frost, who is no longer in his place, was talking about EU rules on deforestation. In 2021, UK consumption was associated with 30,000 hectares of deforestation, with all the climate and nature impacts that we understand. If we look at the climate aspect, the treatment and disposal of waste resources is separately responsible for 5% of all UK greenhouse gas emissions. The cost of that treatment and disposal of waste is borne very often by the public, when actually a few companies are profiting from the production.

I briefly mention, because I promised to do so, that the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, who is unable to be with us for this group, wanted to stress the importance of construction. Although it is excluded from that waste target, there are difficulties because so many problems with, and failures of, design are happening in construction. We all know about the safety impacts but they also have huge environmental impacts—and cost impacts, about which many of us know from working with builders.

In the interests of time, I shall stop there. I beg to move Amendment 5.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak very briefly on Amendments 30, 115 and 125, which are in my name. As the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, observed, they are designed to produce guard-rails that significantly strengthen the environmental and sustainability part of the Bill. It seems inconceivable to me that legislation of this kind would not carry these requirements.

Amendment 30, which is the substantive one, would add new subsection (2A) to Clause 2 in order to ensure that future regulations under the Act include provisions that relate to environmental impact assessments, the circular economy and granting consumers the right to repair products. On the latter, despite attempts, the tendency is to continue to find products manufactured with increasingly complex modules that defy cost-effective repair or sensible re-use, which should be an important part of the future economy. This amendment does not dot “i”s or cross “t”s, because that is the role of the actual regulation, but it sets a standard that we should be looking at for the regulation process. That is it; I could go into more detail, but I do not think I have to.

Amendments 115 and 125 are definitions that would help explain what we mean by “circular economy” and “right to repair”. I hope that His Majesty’s Government will find some sympathy with all of this group and find a wording. I am not proud about my words; I am sure that the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, is the same. Let us find a way of putting these proposals into primary legislation because these are really important issues.