---

Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [HL]

My Lords, I found the introduction to these amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and the clarification from the noble Baroness, Lady Crawley, very revealing. It is a reminder that you can have a product made somewhere that comes into this country and then gets badged by lots of different people, but it is the same basic product with the same problems. The two examples that come to mind are the tumble dryers, when there was a fault in how they were constructed, and magnetic toys, which eventually got withdrawn. Several children ended up inhaling or swallowing small magnets that were in those toys, which were marketed under lots of different guises—but the basic product that came in included these little magnetic particles.

It has been a really interesting debate, because you can see that there is a point at which the trading standards people have the powers to intervene. I hope that, in responding, the Minister will able to describe to us how the powers are strong enough at the point of entry, rather than the trading standards people having to go after one label, then another and then another. That will be very heavy on workload and will not deal with the problem of an unsafe product being produced elsewhere and brought into the country.