Product Safety, Metrology and Mutual Recognition Agreement (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 — House of Lords, 2019-10-07
Topic: Mixed Topics
Christopher Fox (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, once again I associate myself with the comments of the noble Lord, Lord McNicol, about the necessity for this debate, but now that it is here it is important to get it right so I am happy to have it I refer noble Lords to my entry in the register of interests. I am not actually sure whether I have any interests which coincide with this instrument, but it seems impossible for there not to be, given that it covers ear-plugs to aftershave and toy trains to industrial pumps via explosives. The breadth of this SI is its weakness, because it is trying to bring together a compendium of things that need to be cleared up. I have complete respect for the team that has worked hard on trying to do this, because it really has a very broad remit. It seems unlikely to me that there is not another issue or two in here, so I welcome the Minister’s undertaking to continue to be vigilant on it. Perhaps he could undertake, in the event that further issues are uncovered, that further versions of this will be brought forward The point made by the noble Lord, Lord McNicol, about stakeholder involvement is absolutely right. The threshold of monetary value used is not always the right threshold when we are dealing with statutory instruments of this complexity; the problems and issues it creates for business are hard to monetise, and in this case the Government would have been best advised to err on the side of involving as many people as possible. I suspect that there is still a need to do that I shall make a couple of general comments and then focus on one particular issue—I am very pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner, is in his place, because it crosses over into the next instrument, and he will guess what it is about. My first point concerns the Explanatory Memorandum, which talks at paragraph 2.3 about manufacturers having to have either self-certification or third-party conformity assessment. It is not clear whether that is a change from the current situation—in other words, what was acceptable for self-assessment, will that remain, or will people either have to have increased or indeed, decreased third-party conformity assessment as a result of this change My second point mirrors exactly what the noble Lord, Lord McNicol, said about paragraph 2.6 of the Explanatory Memorandum and, "substantially the same essential requirements" That means that not all of them are, yet there is no list of what is materially different. I think noble Lords should be aware, in detail, of what is actually the difference between this andwhat it seeks to replace I come to the issue I want to talk in some detail about. Regulation 8 talks about CMR chemicals; those which are, "carcinogenic, mutagenic or toxic to reproduction" Much of the change the regulation makes is around labelling, but the reference to Schedule 34 talks about "historic animal testing data" and starts to stray into issues that the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner, will know we have discussed around REACH and the rollover use of historic data. It seems strange to me that we are trying to cover similar issues in two separate statutory instruments. What consultation has gone on between BEIS and DEFRA in the drawing up of this, and why should it all not be covered in one instrument That also causes me to raise, yet again, that in essence the SI brought by DEFRA, the REACH etc. (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) (No. 2) Regulations 2019, which has yet to be tabled, has very severe financial consequences for the chemicals and cosmetics industries in this country. In the case of the chemicals industry, the relationship is managed, I think, by BEIS, rather than by DEFRA, so it seems to me that there is a lot of crossover here which is not necessarily finding its way through in the statutory instrument So there is work to do. First, it must be explained how this has come about as a separate part of a different SI, whereas it is not part of the one that dealt with that the substantive issues of chemical regulation. What awareness does BEIS have of the scale of costs that will be imposed on the chemicals industry by the implementation of the chemical regulation statutory instrument brought by DEFRA? We need an overall look at the process of delivering a sensible statutory instrument that is able properly to use existing data. There are extreme issues around the portability of potential data that seem to have been overlooked and will cause problems for the industry, and indeed for consumers who use the chemicals that are made by the chemicals, cosmetics and consumer chemicals industries Therefore, I ask the Minister—who I see is talking to his colleague—to undertake to do something that actually brings these together and gives us some clarity.