1.This Bill was introduced in the House of Lords on 4 September. Its Second Reading took place on 8 October. On 15 October we published a report setting out our concerns about the delegated powers in the Bill,1 and on 16 October we held an evidence session at which we discussed those concerns with Lord Leong CBE (Government whip), Justin Madders MP (Minister for Employment Rights, Competition and Markets), Helen Le Mottee (Deputy Director (Legal) for Products, Business and Better Regulation) and Tony Thomas (Deputy Director for Product Safety Policy). A transcript of that evidence session is available online.2
2.In the evidence session, the Ministers and their officials provided helpful additional information about:
3.That additional information could helpfully have been included in the Delegated Powers Memorandum provided by the Department for Business and Trade.3
4.We recognise the need for this Bill to delegate some legislative powers. However, as we said in our Report of 15 October:
5.We remain deeply concerned that:
6.In our view, the delegation to Ministers of law-making powers in this Bill involves legislative power shifting to an unacceptable extent from the democratically appointed legislature to the Executive.
7.We remain of the view expressed in our Report of 15 October that the Government have failed to provide a convincing justification for the inclusion of skeleton clauses in this Bill that give Ministers such wide powers to re-write in regulations the substance of the regulatory regimes for products and metrology.
1 DPRRC, 2nd Report (Session 2024–25, HL Paper 17).
2 Oral evidence taken before the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee on 16 October 2024 (Session 2024–25), Q 1-13
3 Memorandum on the Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [HL] from the Department for Business and Trade to the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee (30 August 2024): https://bills.parliament.uk/publications/56126/documents/5044
4 DPRRC, Democracy Denied? The urgent need to rebalance power between Parliament and the Executive (12th Report, Session 2021–22, HL Paper 106)