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Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [HL]

My Lords, I want to speak briefly to Amendment 20 in this group, which is in my name. It is an opportunity to restate an argument, which I will not dwell on at length but which noble Lords may recall from Committee: there is an inherent advantage and desirability that, when we are determining product requirements and regulations, we should, wherever possible, do so by reference to international standards and agreements.

This is of course something that the Government, like the previous Government, are committed to, not least under the latest statement of public policy in relation to standardisation, which was published this year. It gives very useful examples of how this country, the British Standards Institution, some of the organisations to which we contribute and the innovations that we have led have been the basis of the establishment of many of those international standards. I am convinced that it is not absolutely necessary to put it into the legislation in order for this to be the case. I hope that, in response to this debate, the Minister will again restate the Government’s intention that international standards should be the basis.

However, I wanted the opportunity to add one further thought. If we were to arrive at a point where EU legislation or regulations diverged, in our view, from an international standard or agreement or from sound science—for example, the precision breeding legislation and statutory instruments that have just been brought forward, which technically diverge from where the European Union is now; I hope, declaring an interest in the European Union context, that the EU will change its legislation to bring it much closer

to us, rather than the other way round—there should be a presumption that adherence to international standards would be the priority. We should look to that as the basis on which we set our standards and not treat the decisions made by the European Union as ones to which we should necessarily incline.

7 pm

On Amendment 13, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Russell, that I am very familiar with the British Chambers of Commerce. I was once, in a different century, its deputy director-general, and I have no doubt that what its members say is an accurate reflection of its interests. However, it is not necessarily the basis on which one writes laws. We should be very clear that the place we want to arrive at is where we enter into mutual recognition agreements with as many like-minded countries as possible. Those would be mutual recognition of conformity assessments, because the relevant EU law we are talking about is, in essence, about the principles for conformity assessment. We should do that with the European Union, America, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and so on. As a consequence, we would enter into what would be regarded as positive a third-country trading relationship with the European Union as possible.

What I hope we will not do is make permanent what the previous Government thought was an expedient measure: to recognise CE marking unilaterally. We should not make that permanent; our presumption should be that, at some point in the future, CE marking would be recognised by this country because UKCA marking would be recognised by the European Union and there would be a mutual recognition agreement to cover it.

Therefore, I cannot support my noble friend, because I worry that his amendment will not just unilaterally disarm our conformity assessment provisions with the European Union; it will it unilaterally disarm our conformity assessment processes with a wide range of potential countries. That is not the path that we should go down. In this legislation, we should try to stick, for now, to the principles that we will seek to adhere to international standards, we will build the UK conformity assessment regime, and we will negotiate to secure mutual recognition with other countries on that basis.