Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [Lords]

Michael Wheeler Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 4th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Justin Madders]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government will be primarily responsible for enforcement at the local level, but the Bill also increases the powers of local trading standards to enforce measures.

The Bill affects the whole of the UK. We have worked closely and constructively with devolved Governments on policy development through regular engagement and throughout the Bill’s passage at both ministerial and official level. I therefore thank the devolved Governments, Ministers and their teams for working so constructively with us.

In Committee, we tabled an amendment that placed a statutory requirement on the Secretary of State to obtain the consent of the devolved Governments where regulations contain provisions within their devolved competence. We believe that provides for the most effective and appropriate role for the devolved Governments in a way that respects the individual devolution settlements. I am pleased to report that the Senedd passed a legislative consent motion for the Bill yesterday. I have also had constructive discussions with the Scottish Government and the Northern Ireland Executive, and both have recommended legislative consent to their respective legislatures. We will continue to work collaboratively with those bodies to develop product regulation that best supports businesses and consumers across the whole of the UK.

I will provide a quick recap of some of the changes made to the Bill by the Government since it was introduced last year, in addition to the devolution amendment, because there has been some misconception about what the Bill does and does not do. We have added a statutory consultation mechanism to ensure that stakeholders can shape product and metrology regulations. We have extended the affirmative procedure to parts of the Bill to further boost parliamentary scrutiny; for the avoidance of doubt, they are detailed in clause 13(4). The affirmative procedure therefore now applies to: the creation of criminal offences; the first use of regulations covering online marketplaces; the first time duties are imposed on a new supply chain actor; regulations conferring powers of entry, search or inspection; regulations to disapply requirements in response to an emergency; regulations covering the sharing of information between persons; regulations on cost recovery, which I have already referred to in my response to the intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central; regulations amending or repealing the Gun Barrel Proof Acts; regulations on consequential amendments to primary legislation; and regulations amending the definition of online marketplaces. As Members will be aware from the responses on Report, there were a number of reasons that we want flexibility with regard to online marketplaces, which we believe will develop in ways that we cannot predict.

I can confirm that aviation safety products are exempted from the Bill as they are covered in existing legislation.

The Government have published a code of conduct that sets out the statutory and non-statutory guardrails to ensure that regulation made under this legislation is proportionate and well designed. It is also worth addressing the criticism that this is a skeletal Bill and pointing out that the proportion of skeletal Bills tripled in 2016-2023 compared with 1991-2015. Indeed, in the former period, some 19 separate Bills were described as skeletal by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee.

[Michael Wheeler (Worsley and Eccles) (Lab)]

Does the Minister agree that, far from being a skeletal Bill, this legislation provides an adaptable framework for product regulation and consumer safety?

[Justin Madders]

My hon. Friend is right; indeed, this goes well beyond the measures in place when we were in the EU when it comes to parliamentary involvement. I will briefly refer to contributions made by hon. Members during the passage of the Bill.

I thank my counterpart in the other place, Lord Leong, for shepherding the Bill through the Lords, with support from Lord Hunt of Kings Heath. I also thank the hon. Member for West Worcestershire, who has been alongside us throughout the passage of this Bill in the Public Bill Committee. The hon. Members for Wokingham (Clive Jones), for Chippenham and for Richmond Park, who represented the Liberal Democrats in Committee and in the Chamber, are a trio that we will never forget. I hope that the short passage of this Bill is not a reflection of the high turnover in Liberal Democrat spokespeople—they have engaged with the Bill in a constructive manner.

I thank hon. Members who engaged in the Bill Committee and the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall and Bloxwich (Valerie Vaz), who chaired that Committee with great expertise. It is probably worth mentioning my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central again. He has championed the ceramics industry both today and on Second Reading, and we recognise his great contributions.

Finally, I pay special tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Adam Thompson), who, as the first elected metrologist to this House, has brought a deeply technical and knowledgeable perspective to our debates, which we all appreciate—although I do not think we could ever be asked to take a quiz on the finer details of his work.