Product Safety: Freezers and Refrigerators

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Tuesday 8th May 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, all fires are potentially disastrous and it is right that the noble Baroness should highlight that point. The number of fires that have been caused by fridge freezers is very small indeed—something like 2% of all domestic fires—and the number is declining. We are aware of the concerns, which she rightly highlights, about products with plastic rather than metal backing. That is why we are looking at strengthening standards in that area. As I made clear, I think that our standards are already very high, and all the fridges meet those standards. The Which? report, rightly highlighted by the noble Baroness and her noble friend, said that we should possibly look at strengthening those standards. That is what we are doing.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, in view of what has been said, I am very glad that the Government have set up a new Office for Product Safety and Standards, and am grateful for my invitation to visit it. On from fridges, what is being done with the many hundreds of thousands of outstanding Whirlpool tumble driers, which also pose a fire safety risk? I believe that the Minister must be on the consumer’s side in these matters.

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I think I have used the expression, “The consumer is always right” on other occasions. We are on the consumer’s side. My noble friend will be aware that my honourable friend Andrew Griffiths has already had discussions with Whirlpool and made his concerns clear. This question is related not just to fridge freezers but, as my noble friend is well aware from her experience as a Minister in this department, and I am grateful for the work she did, to other items as well. We want to look at all the standards and make sure that we continue to have the right standards and that they are as stringent as possible.

Nuclear Safeguards Bill

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 1st March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

My Lords, I support this and the other amendment in the group. One of the concerns we have, as expressed on the first day in Committee and at Second Reading, is about disclosure of the actions and steps that have been taken by the Government to meet the undoubtedly genuine, real and merited concerns that have been expressed about the process of leaving Euratom and this Bill.

In that context, I thank the Minister very fully for the letter he wrote to me on 28 February, which has been placed in the Library, relating to the activities that have taken place between the Government and the IAEA, the European Commission and various third countries, which he named in the letter. He has provided a wealth of information which enables us to understand more about the part of the process with which it deals. The amendments seek disclosure about other parts of the process.

Although I support the amendments, I do not regard it as necessary for statutory provisions to be created to provide the information that is set out. What I do regard as essential is a similar generous and helpful approach by the Minister in which the items set out in the two amendments are the subject of an undertaking that the Government will keep the whole of Parliament fully informed about the process and progress of discussion of the items referred to. That is not an unreasonable demand, but is the least the House can reasonably expect.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I agree about the importance of consultation, as noble Lords will know, and also about the proper resourcing of the ONR. However, I am nervous about the precedent set by proposed subsection (9)(b) in the amendment. It would be very difficult if this was established as a new approach to SIs. As the Minister knows, resources are sometimes constrained when you bring in new legislation, but that is not a reason not to proceed with regulations. I recall milk quotas, where a vast amount of administrative work was involved—but that did not mean to say that it was not right to proceed with that part of EU policy at that time.

It is also not clear how many people will need to be involved in resourcing work. I accept that this is a problem in the nuclear area, but I would guard against putting that sort of provision into legislation—although it might be that the amendment is purely exploratory. I very much agree that we need comfort on resourcing for the ONR, and I thought that the Minister gave us some comfort when he last spoke.

I have another question for the Minister about transition. The draft withdrawal agreement published yesterday covers Euratom—slightly to my surprise, because I believed and hoped it would be in a separate instrument. But that is as it is; it is in the draft document. I am interested to know, since the document also covers transition, whether that means that Euratom will be part of any transition agreement likely to be agreed in the coming weeks and months. Confirmation of that would be helpful because it bears on some of the other concerns we have had about the process of bringing nuclear safeguards into UK law—and of course the resourcing and the time for the ONR to do a proper job are critical.

[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

My Lords, I discern from the letter sent on 20 February by the Minister to the Lords who have participated in the various stages of the Bill so far that the Government intend to impose most of the costs of a nuclear safeguarding regime on the civil nuclear industry. It is clear that the regime will deal mainly with matters that are remote from the everyday concerns of the civil industry. Therefore, it seems inappropriate that it should be asked to bear most of the costs. Be that as it may, it is appropriate that it should be consulted regarding provisions of statutory regulations. This is not what is being called for directly in the amendments. However, unless the Government signal clearly that they intend to consult the industry, this is something they should be enjoined to do by an amendment to be brought forward on Report.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Henley]

Obviously the noble Lord is right that assets belonging to Euratom are in there. I do not think I am giving away any secrets if I say that on my visit I saw physical things that were Euratom assets; there will also be software and other things. I am sure that deals will be done as part of the negotiations, and some of those will be transferred over. I do not think I can go any further at the Dispatch Box and I would not want to, but if there is anything more that I can say in a letter then I shall. I will make sure that my letter goes to all noble Lords by whatever means in this inclement weather—we will get it to the noble Lord—and place copies in the Library, which is where people like to find them.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

Email is also very useful these days.

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, we have discovered email. I can use all possible methods.

I have given the assurance that I will ensure that noble Lords are kept informed. As I think I have made clear, I do not think the amendments are necessary or, for that matter, particularly helpful, and I hope the noble Lord will accept that we will do our bit to keep all noble Lords appropriately informed of these matters and will make the precise Written Statements that are necessary at the appropriate moment. With that, I hope the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, will feel able to withdraw her amendment.

Nuclear Safeguards Bill

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Thursday 22nd February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, underline the desirability of an implementation period in this area as in other Brexit areas. For clarity, I want to ask a question arising from what the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, said. Are energy officials and Energy Ministers able to get on with this? The assumption that I have been working on is that the timetable is tight in this nuclear area and that discussions therefore need to go ahead with the IAEA, Euratom and the other nuclear states. Is that work in hand? Is there a plan for it? It would be helpful if the Minister were able to respond on that.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

I want briefly to speak in support of Amendment 14, which bears my name. While avoiding repeating what the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, has said, I want to pick out subsection (2)(c) of the proposed new clause, which refers to, “relevant research projects”. The noble Lord, Lord Broers, spoke eloquently in a previous debate about the importance of research in this area. As your Lordships and, I am sure, the Minister know, the UK benefits enormously from the long-term research funding and its membership of the Fusion for Energy programme, which flow through the Euratom relationship. I think the supply chain has been awarded some £0.5 billion to date and expects more, and the UK Atomic Energy Authority receives significant sums—around £50 million. On a broader level, as a leading participant in Euratom and the research element of it, the United Kingdom has been able authoritatively to drive research priorities. What does the Minister envisage our authority being following this process? Will it have risen or sunk as a result of our ability to drive and influence research in the nuclear field?

My noble friend Lord Teverson illustrated how hard and tough the Table Office has been on the wording of the amendments. In many cases—certainly, in other conversations—the Minister has ruled out of order a lot of what we have talked about. However, on Amendment 14, which covers some of these areas, the Table Office has been clear that this is in spec with the Bill and our debate today.

Nuclear Safeguards Bill

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 22nd February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I have some sympathy for the questions raised in this debate and I start by associating myself with support for the nuclear industry and for nuclear R&D. As the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, said, the nuclear industry was founded in this country.

I support the Bill, as I think that we need to plan for the withdrawal from Euratom in a responsible way. The Bill is relatively clear, and we have seen the draft implementing regulations, which are very helpful—I thank the Minister for that. As in other Brexit areas, the Government need to put EU provisions into UK law because many people in this country have told us that that is what they want. I believe that, as a scrutinising Chamber, we need to progress matters technically and that we should provide the powers that the Energy Ministers need to negotiate the necessary nuclear agreements and to strengthen the ONR.

However, I want to make one point which perhaps builds a little on what has been said by my noble friend Lord Trenchard. If we crash out of the EU in March 2019 or, alternatively, at the end of an agreed implementation period, will the Minister consider informing the EU at that point that we would like to reverse the bespoke Article 50 for Euratom and put up with a little bit of potential ECJ involvement—at least until an association agreement with Euratom is arranged or a relevant trade agreement with the EU is finalised? Once the air clears, the two sides will be bound to return to the negotiating table and will no doubt start to agree things on important areas such as nuclear.

I am not sure that my concern calls for an amendment to the Bill but we must avoid any risk of enhanced nuclear non-proliferation and the industry disruption and damage that would go with it. Therefore, if we could find a way of retaining some flexibility in the event of a bad outcome, that could be helpful, and I shall be grateful if the Minister has anything to say by way of reassurance. I had thought that perhaps we should not go ahead with this Bill but, by looking at it carefully, I have been persuaded that we need to get on with it.

[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

My Lords, these amendments propose an associate membership of Euratom. In effect, they propose a deferment of our severance from Euratom and possibly even an indefinite deferment.

There is a marked contrast between the bland assurances we have received from the Government that everything regarding nuclear safeguards will be in place by March 2019 and the anxieties expressed by other parties, including, in a professionally restrained manner, the ONR, which is due to assume the duties of nuclear safeguarding. It has indicated that it is struggling to meet the deadline. The regime that it might have in place by March will be decidedly understaffed, and surely the danger that the deadline will be missed fully justifies the provisions of these amendments.

There are also anxieties regarding the ability to establish the necessary nuclear co-operation agreements with third parties in a timely manner. Such agreements depend on the existence of a nuclear safeguarding regime that is compliant with the requirements of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and it will take some time to achieve this. We are fearful that the requirement that a nuclear co-operation agreement with the USA be ratified by the Senate will give rise to a lengthy hiatus during which our nuclear industry may be deprived of some essential supplies.

There is also the matter of medical isotopes, which it is appropriate to raise at this juncture. The Minister has told us that the Government take their continued availability most seriously and assures us that this issue is quite distinct from nuclear safeguarding. Well, it is not a matter that is separate from our membership of Euratom. Euratom appears to have played a significant role in ensuring their continued and timely availability when they have been extremely scarce. By leaving Euratom prematurely we shall be prejudicing the security of our supplies, and this is a good reason for deferring our departure.

Nuclear Safeguards Bill

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 7th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome this Bill, and I am glad that it is shorter and clearer than most other comparable Bills. As this is the Second Reading debate, I will touch on three areas: EU aspects of what is planned; prospects for nuclear; and then I will ask some detailed questions about the Bill itself.

I resisted the temptation to add to the enormous numbers speaking last week on the withdrawal Bill. I should, however, state clearly that I am in the camp of those who voted remain, but unlike the noble Lord, Lord Fox, now believe that, following the democratic vote in the referendum, we should get on with Brexit. Given the attitude of the EU negotiators, I am, sadly, increasingly doubtful about the prospect of reaching a broad-based deal with the EU. The clearly expressed attitude of the EU negotiators that the UK’s preferred outcome is not possible for them needs to be reflected in a more realistic UK position in the negotiations, based on the fact that our future is outside the EU, not half inside it. But that is, in the main, for another day. However, it means that, as a contingency, we need to work very hard now to be ready for a bare-bones deal, which will keep the aeroplanes flying, the interconnectors working, and so on.

Turning to the nuclear area, as a former Energy Minister, my judgment is that we need to pass this Bill quickly and get on with the negotiations with the IAEA and other nuclear powers. Moreover, I would not yet completely rule out the possibility of extending Article 50 in the case of Euratom if unforeseen problems arise. My view is that this would have no real implications for Brexit overall. I would be amazed, indeed, if the EU would have a problem, given the potential dangers of nuclear material and the mutuality of interest in proper nuclear safeguards across Europe.

I turn to the prospects for the nuclear industry, and endorse what was said by the noble Lords, Lord Grantchester and Lord Fox, about the importance of nuclear fusion research. I speak today partly because of my support for nuclear power, which of course started in this country in the 1950s at Calder Hall, another British innovation. Nuclear is still responsible for more than one-fifth of UK electricity generation, and we know that most of this is produced in reactors whose life will probably be over by the 2030s. Renewable energy has been growing, but in some weeks we produce tiny amounts of energy from wind and solar because of the intermittency problem—blame the UK weather.

I am therefore a believer in what I like to describe as a portfolio approach to energy. Security of supply is vital, and diversification is as important for energy as it is for financial investment if we are to avoid disasters in future generations. Nuclear, which is virtually zero carbon, has to play a key part internationally and in the UK, which is why the safeguards against proliferation, which are at the heart of today’s Bill, are so important. I take this opportunity to ask the Minister to update us very soon on nuclear investments that secure a baseload capacity for the future. What is the state of play on Hinkley? Have we found a way of securing investment in the other five power stations for which we have proposals across the UK? What has happened to the plans for small modular reactors? We know they work technically, as they have been used by the Royal Navy for years. To my mind, they offer export potential in a post-Brexit world, especially given our strong record on nuclear safeguards and security—the subject of today’s Bill. The Government have rightly earmarked substantial funds for UK infrastructure. I believe that some of this should go to securing nuclear investment as part of a sustainable energy portfolio and to ensure that power cuts do not blight our old age.

I am supportive of the Bill, and glad to see the use of affirmative resolution SIs in key areas. It is helpful that we have been given sight of the regulations in draft that will be made under the Act later this year. That inspires real confidence. I commend the Minister and his colleague in the other place, Richard Harrington, for this, and indeed for the briefing meetings that have been arranged to get us all up to speed. This making available of draft regulations early could usefully be adopted more widely in the Brexit context. That could increase understanding in a complex and difficult area, and I shall come back to it as an idea on another day.

There are, however, some questions which I hope to explore in Committee, if today’s debate does not assuage my concerns. First, I would like to understand how the proposals relate to nuclear waste. This is an important UK operation, with Sellafield pioneering innovation in safe disposal to the benefit of its large Cumbrian workforce, and government plans, out for consultation, for a new geological disposal facility. The government memorandum on delegated powers says that there are about 100 UK facilities or other duty holders subject to Euratom standards and safeguards. What and where are these? I also associate myself with the questions about the movement of medical isotopes raised by the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, and others. This issue must be addressed here, or in another Brexit Bill— and it is good to hear the Minister saying that he is focusing on the issue.

Secondly, on resourcing, according to the memorandum ONR has five areas of responsibility; it looks after safety, site health and safety, security, safeguards and transport, following its separation from the Health and Safety Executive in 2014. I would like to understand how well that change has worked and be reassured that the resourcing is adequate for the future, with enough expertise and enough money, and without over-the-top fees on nuclear operators. It is a tight timeframe, so this issue of resourcing matters a lot.

Thirdly, is the ONR geared up for a crisis? We would not want to find out that it was not after the event. Learning from Grenfell, can the ONR secure rapid back-up help from the Government, the police and security services and other agencies?

Finally, I note that there is no review clause in the Bill. Given that, what are the arrangements for reporting to Parliament on an area of such importance, both within and beyond the Brexit period? The Bill does not provide for an annual report. Is this provided for elsewhere? Perhaps the Minister can reassure us and agree that the safeguards work will be properly covered in any annual report.

Better Regulation

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Thursday 7th December 2017 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

To move that this House takes note of Her Majesty’s Government’s plans to ensure that regulation is balanced, cost-effective, easy to understand, and properly enforced.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I am sponsoring this debate because regulation plays an important part in all our lives, both for good and, unfortunately, sometimes for ill. In recent decades, successive Governments have recognised the cost of regulation and sought to minimise it while still gaining the associated benefit. Recent initiatives are very well explained in the report that the House of Lords Library has helpfully produced for this debate. I thank the Library for it most warmly; it will prove invaluable, and not only for this debate.

To be clear, I fully agree that important steps have been taken in recent years to ensure regulation is justified and proportionate. Despite this, as is often the case in human affairs, we need to run to stand still. Even so, and despite the apparent political consensus I have described in favour of reducing the burden of regulation, I sometimes detect a common view that regulation is virtuous in principle and that those of us concerned to reduce it are somehow working for an ignoble cause. I believe that to be profoundly mistaken. Regulation in general is, I agree, a necessity. But specific examples are frequently unnecessary; regulation often inhibits freedom and economic activity, making us all poorer. Therein lies the rub. There is nothing for it but to try to find the correct balance, and the way forward is rarely completely obvious.

Today, I do not want to run through the history of regulatory policy, but to raise concerns and to make some general observations that have occurred to me ever since, as a civil servant, I headed the deregulation task force under my noble friend Lord Heseltine. Identifying ongoing problems can be a first step to finding a remedy. In particular, I want to bring to the House’s attention the possible link which I believe exists between disappointing productivity and bad, or poorly enforced, regulation. Then I will turn to the issue of what steps we can take to improve matters. This will be especially important very soon, when we are faced with the tide of regulatory implementation arising from Brexit. We need to find a way of scrutinising it well in this House.

I start with the problem—indeed, puzzle—of low productivity, which has been extensively addressed in this House and in the other place during the Budget debates. The flatlining in productivity that we have seen since 2008 is something of a mystery, like TS Eliot’s cat. I have been reading closely the official papers on the matter from the ONS—not a task yielding a laugh a minute. A brief summary might be that the problem exists, but the exact cause or causes have not been proved. Likely culprits identified by informed observers include poor education and skills, inadequate infrastructure, insufficient housing and R&D, and the impact of digital on revenue and national income statistics.

I believe, however, that the wrong kind of regulation, an excess of it and a tendency to dream up new regulations in response to crises are also contributors. Rather than enforce existing regulations properly and learn from our mistakes in the kind of continuous improvement that I know from my time in retail, too often we see a failure to monitor existing rules and then very costly and intrusive regulation. My objection to the wrong sort of regulation is that it is inefficient, diverting of effort, irritating, time wasting and often expensive for those regulated.

My first example is Grenfell Tower. This was an appalling tragedy of a kind that should not occur. The facts are being carefully examined and there will be a forensic report, but I highlight three apparent regulatory failures from which we might learn. The most serious to my mind was to bring in for tower blocks building regulations that exempted the refitting of old blocks from the requirement to install sprinklers, as required in new blocks. The second was to require new cladding with a focus on energy saving to meet public sector climate change targets, and not to think enough about fire safety. The third was to have a Cinderella system of enforcement of the fire safety rules rather than well-trained professionals.

Cinderella enforcement has been an issue in many of the regulatory scandals of my lifetime, examples of which are Nestlé baby milk contamination, which closed the relevant Cumbrian factory for ever; local authority enforcement of BSE rules; and foot and mouth. For success you need a good enforcement system, and the Health and Safety Commission and, later, the Food Standards Agency have done a reasonable job, with trained staff and a system of simple, easy to understand guidance and a policy of issuing improvement notices before businesses face prosecution. Sadly, local environmental health and trading standards are not given the priority they should be.

Another good way to achieve compliance is to have industry schemes that act as an incentive to virtuous behaviour. An example—a good one, I hope; and I declare this and my other interests in the register—is the red tractor assurance scheme appearing on some £13 billion-worth of British agricultural produce. Had my noble friend Lord Lindsay been able to be here, he would, I know, have talked more broadly about other UKAS-accredited conformity schemes, because they have been used successfully for many years to support government regulatory policy and a risk-based approach in a wide range of important areas such as environmental management, food safety and quality, and healthcare services.

My second example is financial services. The UK’s establishment of the Financial Services Authority was, to my mind, a mistake. My experience at Tesco was despair at the micromanagement it imposed on the detailed wording of consumer products while apparently neglecting investment banking and sub-prime. Regulators should have economic spectacles: they should care about growth and innovation in the economy, but they should also be wary of wealth creation that seems too good to be true. After the crisis, all that changed and, arguably, there has been regulatory overreaction—all very well meant, no doubt—and a double banking of UK and EU regulation. This growth of regulation has been introduced in part to tackle money laundering, but it is sometimes done without regard to common sense. My husband has looked after the affairs of an elderly aunt confined to a nursing home for many years, yet he is often asked to provide proof of her existence and her bona fides.

Having said all that, the new financial services regime is much better than it was in the FSA era. The FCA and the PRA are now in effect part of the Bank of England and can attract better staff as a consequence. They are more strategic and did well in the weeks after the Brexit vote. The FCA has rightly been praised for its work on fintech, with the regulatory sandbox providing a light regulatory regime for start-ups, which has impressed internationally. They now face a new difficulty: the need to secure some form of bespoke deal in the Brexit context. Because of the importance of a Brexit deal for financial services, there is no appetite for lighter regulation. Indeed, I worry that the rules could end up being more onerous. The risk then must be that global operators will decide to move business to New York or Singapore. We need to be a force for good in regulation in the EU while we remain in it, and in supranational discussions and bodies thereafter. Our influence is important.

My third example is product safety. I have previously highlighted the case of Whirlpool tumble driers that burst into flames. Whirlpool, a US company, was in my opinion slow to take its safety responsibility seriously when it emerged that there were 5 million dangerous machines in British homes. I understand that about half have been fixed. We know from debates on the then Consumer Rights Bill in 2014 that the product recall system in this country is not up to scratch. There is a simple solution—central resource and central responsibility, not for all consumer safety, which rightly sits with local authorities, but where we have major national product recalls as faced by Peterborough with Whirlpool. We need a major, centralised enforcement effort in such cases. I was rather hoping that the Minister might agree.

My fourth example, very briefly, is Volkswagen, which was again an appalling example of poor enforcement, not the wrong basic standards or laws. We do not have time to go into this case in detail, but I wonder whether the problem was in allowing manufacturers to set the performance tests rather than requiring independent certification.

Finally, I am following the Data Protection Bill through our House at present and I predict that the scale of the new burden it imposes will eventually cause a backlash of complaint. New rules will apply to pretty well every business or private sector organisation in the country, regardless of size, which collects or holds data about identifiable individuals—that is most small businesses and charities; not a happy situation. We must do what we can to help them.

What do we do about all this? I speak as someone who has spent half my life fighting red tape, sometimes with success. When I ran the Deregulation Unit aeons ago, we had a mantra which I think we could revive: “Fewer, better, simpler”. As Winston Churchill said,

“If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law”.


The Federation of Small Businesses says that regulation is a top priority for its members. In a recent survey, two-thirds of them thought that the costs outweighed the benefits in terms of reduced profitability, productivity, innovation and so on. They are especially concerned about the flow of new regulation and a de minimis rule that might be coming in for impact assessment. I hope the Minister will be able to provide them with some reassurance.

What else can we do together to make things better? First, we should recognise that regulation, while often necessary, is a cost that hits the bottom line of businesses and diverts management effort. We should be up-front about this. We need impact assessments available to Ministers and senior officials on new rules and regulations before key decisions are taken. The assessments should be realistic and simple and should reflect dialogue and consultation with the real economy, and quote the names of companies or bodies affected and what they think. The independent Regulatory Policy Committee has done good work on economic assessments and business impact, as the NAO has acknowledged. However, it lacks political edge and is somewhat undermined by the fact that its processes do not apply to burdens coming from the EU, to tax or to the national living wage. The NAO suggests that when these are added in, the regulatory burden has actually been increasing, despite the various targets such as one in, two or three out. Perhaps proposals with increased regulatory costs might be required to be approved by a Minister, as is the case with expenditure proposals. He or she could be defined as a champion of lower regulatory costs. A good system is all the more necessary given the great tidal wave of replacement regulation coming our way with Brexit. The process needs to be refreshed, and the moment for that has come.

Secondly, and linked to that, we need to be champions of good, simple, inexpensive regulation across Europe and in international fora.

Thirdly—and this would appeal to most politicians in free countries—we should think small first. It is sometimes possible to have exemptions, such as the VAT ceiling, but we should ensure that administration for smaller firms is clear, simple and online and that charges are lower. Indeed, they often might not be worth imposing at all when you allow for the administration costs. At Tesco every invoice cost £25, so in many cases it paid to be generous. There are millions of SMEs, small charities, trusts and small public bodies such as parish councils and primary schools, who will love us if we can make the regulatory burden easier.

Fourthly, regulation must be easy to understand. The growth in complexity is good for the lawyers and consultants, but in the modern world there is no excuse for a lack of simple clear rules and information.

That brings me to my final recommendation: enforcement matters. As my tale of Grenfell Tower showed, enforcing and resourcing our regulatory systems needs to be an essential part of our deregulatory approach. Again, the Brexit changes give us an opportunity to review this aspect.

I note in closing that unfortunately, none of these ideas appears in the recently published industrial strategy. Indeed, regulation barely gets a mention, despite its importance to productivity. Robert Bork, a famous US lawyer and judge, said that:

“As government regulations grow slowly, we become used to the harness. Habit is a powerful force, and we no longer feel as intensely”,


yet what is proposed would have been “utterly intolerable” in former ages. That could be a prescient warning.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

My Lords, I am delighted to have led such a constructive and interesting debate with a lot of fine examples. In response to the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, I have no regrets at all about tackling this subject.

Indeed, there has been some important common ground on this often disputed subject: for example, on simplification; on the battle against complexity; on a risk-based approach, which we probably should say should be proportionate and balanced; on enforcement of the law—to my mind, investing in enforcement is a good investment—and on thinking small first. It is not a sexy area, in the words of the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, but it is an important one, especially in the Brexit context. I was very glad to hear from my noble friend the Minister of the progress made, not least on culture, and I look forward to hearing from him in due course on the vexed issue of tumble-driers.

Many noble Lords referred to the plans to reduce the powers and reach of the Regulatory Policy Committee. This, it seems, is still a rumour, but it is a profound disappointment to me because it is not a step in the right direction. Many others have said this, including my noble friend Lady Altmann and the noble Lords, Lord Curry, Lord Haskel and Lord Mendelsohn. However, I think that we should be generous to the Government. It may be that, in the light of this debate, they will think about what can be done at this moment of Brexit to keep the flow of unnecessary regulation in check and ensure not only that necessary safety standards but also economic impacts are taken into account in the decisions we make in the interests of prosperity and productivity.

It was a pleasure to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, and the noble Lord, Lord Whitty. I think that he is quite wrong. My fear is—and this is one of the reasons I voted to remain—that without a detailed debate in Brussels, we will actually regulate more heavily.

I have run out of time, but I would like to thank all noble Lords who have taken part in the debate. Let us hope that our efforts today will move the dial.

Motion agreed.

Designs (International Registration of Industrial Designs) Order 2017

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Wednesday 6th December 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)]

My Lords, what I will say follows closely on what the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, has said. He and I—if I dare also bring in the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe—are part of a declining band who followed the paths of the intellectual property legislation that this House has looked at over the past six or seven years. His intervention brought back fond memories of the time when we were happily discussing some of the issues that are clearly still in mind and will be in play as Brexit negotiations go on.

I make a slightly different point—also one that the Minister may wish to take back—which is that a lot of the effort that went into the earlier Bills was around the question of registered and unregistered designs. We are still in the situation alluded to by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones: a huge proportion of the designs generated in this country—for which we should be very proud—are unregistered. That is partly to do with the nature of the industries involved: where short-term designs, such as fashion designs, are being created, there is probably no incentive to register them, because they are copied and lose economic value so quickly. That design element would not necessarily qualify as a design. However—I made this point before to the noble Baroness; I am sure that she will recognise it and I do not need a response— the Government missed a trick on this. Government ought to be thinking very hard about what package of measures could be brought together to encourage people with design skills and knowledge, of whom we have so many talented examples, to register their designs, because the protections that they can get, as exemplified by this order, are significant, though they are not recognised as such. The point was well illustrated by the fact that so few responded to the consultation document; I was a bit shocked to hear how small a number it was.

Nevertheless, we are where we are. I am sure I will make myself slightly unpopular with the noble Lord, who will find a way of coming back to me—

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

Will the noble Lord give way on the subject of designs? Like him, I am very keen that design rights should be properly protected. It is such a growing part of the creative industries. The Intellectual Property Office has done some very good work. I know this because my daughter-in-law was looking to register a design and I discovered, first, that it was relatively inexpensive and, secondly, that the IPO had set up a very good IT option. The Minister may well be able to tell us more about what they were doing, but I thought that this was interesting consumer research.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

That is very good news indeed. If it is moving in that direction that picks up the point I am making. There is an unexplored case for more work here, which will bring benefits to UK plc in time.

As I was saying, I was going to grandstand a little on the instrument to ask a couple of questions that I am very confident the Minister will not be able to respond to directly. I am happy to have a letter on them. The first is specifically on the consultation exercise. The Minister touched on this in his opening speech. The comment is made that the UK does not need to keep its own register of registered design rights because after we accede to the Hague agreement, which is what we are doing today, it automatically confers protection on the UK because the UK signed up to the Designview database, operated by OHIM. However, what is the mechanism under which we will continue to have access to it after Brexit? If it is in any way tied to membership it will raise, as the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, said, considerable difficulties in negotiating a fair price and the conditional arrangements. If there are to be cost barriers that will further diminish the pressure on people who wish to register designs. It is important and clearly a useful tool for protecting design rights, but if it is inaccessible it will obviously not be of any value. WIPO and the role it plays are very valuable. The IPO does not have much of a role in this. It again seems a slightly missed opportunity to beat the drum for registration, but if the connection is directly to WIPO and we are to be affected by Brexit, clearly that is a problem.

Secondly, the Minister may be aware of a Supreme Court decision in the Trunki case, PMS v Magmatic. It raised the interesting question of whether one could register or even protect shapes of articles. In this case, the well-known Trunki is a small ride-on suitcase that children use rather irritatingly, at speed, in airport lounges, which my ankles have felt over the years—not my children, I confess; there were third parties involved. The case raised the interesting issue that our systems do not allow anyone who has a visual representation or design representation to register it. As I understand it, the Hague agreement has some flexibility about what can or cannot be registered. It would be interesting to get a sense from the officials in due course about whether they think it would be possible to use the flexibilities in the Hague agreement to allow those talented members of our design profession who design representation to register those designs. I look forward to hearing from the Minister in due course.

Unified Patent Court (Immunities and Privileges) Order 2017

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Wednesday 6th December 2017 Grand Committee

[Baroness Wilcox (Con)]

I stand here as a part of history. When I was Minister for Intellectual Property, we went to the European Community to try to get it to understand that the Chinese and Americans could have patents overnight but we were still, after 40 years, having to translate over and again the members of the European Community at that time. We worked very hard during that time. I thought we had eventually got there but it sort of floundered for a while. I am delighted to see it written down that we are going to ratify the Unified Patent Court.

Intellectual property is very important for us. It is an area in which we are recognised worldwide as doing the right thing. We have allowed the French, the Germans and the rest of them to choose which bits they would like to have a go at. At the end of the day we have come up with something that works very well. Given that we are working so hard on Brexit—I work on the European Union Select Committee, which is looking at all the Brexit paperwork—it is important that we are actually seeing something coming through. It is nice and clear, we can all hear it; we are all going to do it. This is one thing that is not going to cause us any difficulty over the next few months.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I congratulate my noble friend Lady Wilcox on her contribution to intellectual property. I was honoured to succeed her in an area where Britain is very strong. Obviously, that was a delight. I was intimately involved in the Unified Patent Court discussions in both Brussels and Luxembourg last year—after, as has been said, many, many years of discussion on its establishment and its location here in London, and the other centres. I want simply to welcome it and to congratulate the Minister and the Intellectual Property Office, which is headquartered in Newport. I wish them well in finding a sensible deal for patents in the Brexit negotiations. I have one point of clarification, which I think the Minister touched on: when does the patent court in London actually open its doors?

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister will be grateful to know that the shadow cast upon the previous debate does not extend this far. I will be a ray of sunlight in his life and he will emerge, if not hopping and skipping, possibly with a little spring in his step at the pleasure we express and the way in which this piece of legislation is coming forward.

In passing, it was unfortunate that the Minister caught what appeared to be a full blast from both barrels from my noble friend. He should have seen him in the earlier stages of that Bill, when the hapless victim was the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe. The full wrath that my noble friend Lord Mendelsohn could express at the whole approach that the Government were daring to take to this important area was expressed in many amendments that we had to discuss. The Minister got off lightly; he may not feel that. We certainly look forward to his letter when it comes.

I am going to say absolutely nothing about the substance of the statutory instrument because we agree with it and are happy for it to go through. It shines a light on the way some people manage to live their lives—in tax-free environments, free of all exemptions and penalties; some people have all the luck—but nevertheless that is the way it is done. I am glad that it is coming forward.

Like the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, whose work on this I salute—as well as that of the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, who preceded her—I am interested to learn a little more about what is actually happening on the ground. There are rumours of premises having been secured and buildings having nameplates attached to them, and so on. It would be nice to know what exactly is going to happen and what the timing is, if it is possible for the Minister to tell us.

The other thing that might be interesting to find out is whether there is yet any feel for whether there will be a sufficient caseload to warrant other centres being opened. During the passage of the original Bill we talked about the possibility that the Court of Session’s responsibility for patent determinations in Scotland might be echoed by having a similar court based there, if there was sufficient casework, because there is expertise and knowledge in Edinburgh in this area, and it would be sad if those were not able to be expressed. But these are matters that the Minister may not yet have the detail on and I am happy to have that at a later stage.

As I said, I am a ray of sunlight. We support this statutory instrument.

Small Business Commissioner (Scope and Scheme) Regulations 2017

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Wednesday 6th December 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Jones (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his pithy introduction. The regulations surely have to be welcomed. It must be good news to many thousands of SMEs. I refer to the register of interests: I am president of Flintshire Business Week and Deeside Business Forum, which sits across the England/Wales border and has some 9,000 jobs. It is based at Deeside Industrial Park, which has 260 companies at least, most of which are SMEs. There is considerable interest from companies such as these in the regulations. Do we yet have a commissioner’s name in mind? Who shall choose? Shall it be salaried? What salary might it be?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I refer to my entry in the register of interests, including my chairmanship of Red Tractor, which helps British branding, including some small businesses, to have their food assured and to sell it into the market.

There was a flurry in the Printed Paper Office this afternoon as some of us sought papers on the Small Business Commissioner. Eventually, we discovered papers entitled “Enterprise”. Of course, small business and enterprise go hand-in-hand. I share a passion for both, as noble Lords may know. It was fantastic to be involved in the passing of the parent legislation for these regulations. I welcome Mr Paul Uppal to his job—I believe he is the new Small Business Commissioner. Perhaps the Minister could kindly tell us a bit about him and why the Secretary of State has appointed him to this vital job for small business. I commend the role of the Federation of Small Businesses in ensuring that the Small Business Commissioner not only is now on the statute book but will be up and running once these regulations have been passed.

While regretting the length of the regulations—although obviously I support them strongly, brevity and simplicity are the most important features of law-making—I am sure that the Minister will keep the regulations and the rules and operation of this important new office under review so that we can ensure that it delivers better payment terms for small businesses in the way we all hope it will.

[Baroness Golding (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome these regulations because they go to show that persistence works. So many people have been asking for something like this for a long time, including myself, and now it has arrived. Considering the amounts of money that will be in dispute, are we going to be able to manage all the work on the kind of funding that will be allocated to the Small Business Commissioner?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Henley]

The noble Lord throws a bit of a dampener on the proceedings, which were going quite well before that stage. I will comment on what other noble Lords had to say before I deal with some of his complaints. I am not sure that I will deal with all of them; I will probably write to him in greater detail afterwards. Since he accepted that these regulations will go through, that the Small Business Commissioner has a role and that we have to get him on the move, the sooner we can do that, the better. I will go back to those noble Lords who at least welcomed the regulations—I think he did, but he then took them to pieces and, as I said, threw something of a dampener on the proceedings.

I will start off with the noble Lord’s friend, the noble Lord, Lord Jones, who, as I said, was much politer and kinder about the regulations. I am grateful for that, and I give him an assurance that we have now appointed Mr Paul Uppal—the announcement was made a few days ago—who is a former Member of another place. The post was advertised in the usual way and will be salaried. I am afraid that if my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe was looking to get that job, she will have to wait a little while before it is vacant again. As I said, it was advertised in the usual way. I cannot specify exactly why he was chosen as opposed to any others, as that would be invidious and not right, but he was selected after due process and we are grateful to him.

My noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe also regrets the length of this regulation; it is always difficult to get these matters right. On many other occasions I have moved that various orders be agreed and people have complained that there is not the detail in them. Unfortunately, the point behind regulations of this sort is that one can get into the details that one cannot get in the parent legislation. My noble friend is aware of the parent legislation; she took it through this House, and the noble Lord, Lord Mendelsohn, dealt with it from the Opposition Benches. They know full well that it is not right and proper to get that sort of detail into the original primary legislation, and the point behind these regulations is to get the detail in. I hope that we normally get it about right, but my noble friend Lord Cope teased me over the fact that the Explanatory Memorandum—which I stress is not, I think, part of the regulations, although I can never quite remember what its status is—states that the regulations will have no effect on business. We would obviously all like to make sure that it has an effect on business—and a beneficial effect.

I turn to the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Golding. I am grateful for her welcome, but one cannot think of passing the Enterprise Act and creating a commissioner as a magic wand that will solve all problems. This is also the general remark I would make to the noble Lord, Lord Mendelsohn, in relation to his various comments, one or two of which I will deal with in greater detail. I can think of very few occasions when legislation can solve problems overnight. There was one Bill with which I had some involvement, the Scrap Metal Dealers Bill, which did quite a lot of what it was targeted to do in the area of metal theft.

In the main, legislation can only do so much. We hope that the Enterprise Act and these regulations will make a big difference. As with so many of these things, however, it is a matter of changing people’s behaviour and the culture of the bigger businesses so that they realise what damage they are doing to others. Legislation can do a certain amount and we have provided the appropriate resources for the commissioner; at least, I think they are appropriate. The figures I have—I think these are the figures that the noble Lord, Lord Mendelsohn, asked to be confirmed—are that the set-up costs are in the order of £1 million and the annual running costs will be roughly £1.4 million, most of that going on staff costs. These must be guesses but it is estimated that there may be 390,000 enquiries and 500 complaints. We think that is adequate for the commissioner at the moment but there is scope for the Secretary of State to increase the resources available to the commissioner if appropriate. He will obviously take advice from the commissioner about what he does and try to make sure he gets it right.

I make one more remark on the commissioner and the work he has already done. My noble friend Lord Cope commented on the website, suggesting that it was not clear enough and should do more, including cross-referencing with other bodies. I am sure that the commissioner will be grateful for my noble friend’s suggestion and that it will be looked at in due course. It is always difficult to get your website exactly right; some are better than others. One can take advice, and I am sure that the advice of my noble friends will be listened to by the commissioner in due course.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

Before my noble friend sits down, I reiterate that I very much support the regulations. I also asked, I think, what arrangements there were for review, because this is a new commissioner. I expect that the department has some standard review provision for looking at how it works, and I am interested in that.

[Lord Henley]

I can give my noble friend an assurance that I was not about to sit down—unless others are desperate to get on to the other instruments—because I still had a certain amount to deal with from the noble Lord, Lord Mendelsohn, who would probably be upset if I left him at this early stage. I can, however, assure my noble friend that we will keep this under review. As I made clear, we are thinking of about £1.4 million as the budget being given to the commissioner for the annual running costs. My right honourable friend can keep that, and the size of it, under review. It is not just about money but about how they are getting on. The department will continue to keep these matters under review.

The noble Lord, Lord Mendelsohn, started off his throwing-a-dampener-on-it speech by questioning why we would use the BACS survey and saying that we should have used another survey that gave a higher figure. I will not go into details about which survey will be the best and which had the largest number of people involved in it to get the right figure. I do not know whether there is necessarily a right figure. All we can agree on is that £14.2 billion is a very high figure. The figures that the noble Lord quoted from other surveys are equally high and worrying. The important point is that something ought to be done to assist small businesses to ensure they do this properly. It is clear that the Government are taking this issue seriously from the fact that we sought parliamentary approval for the Enterprise Act and that, under that Act, we are now doing various things, of which the Small Business Commissioner and his staff are one small part. I do not think the noble Lord can accuse the Government of not taking this seriously. The important point is: we have put some resources in; we have appointed a good person to be that commissioner; and he will continue to pursue the appropriate measures available to him.

The noble Lord made the usual complaints people do about the drafting. He said it was too detailed and then that there was not enough—I was rather lost on that. The drafting went through the usual process. We consulted on it as we should. Generally, other than from the noble Lord, we have had a fairly favourable response to the drafting. I am sorry if he finds it overly legalistic. That is just the way things are drafted.

The noble Lord then asked me a rather extraordinary question: what are the unintended consequences of these regulations? If I knew what any unintended consequences were and that they would be detrimental to one or other person, or to the small business sector as a whole, I would not be moving them. I am afraid the noble Lord will have to accept that I do not have the wisdom of prophecy that he seems to think Ministers should have. I will try to improve. If I knew what the unintended consequences were, I would do something about them. We feel that the regulations will have a good effect and be one small step in helping small businesses. They will try to improve their lot and cut down the very large figure of £14.2 billion, or whatever larger figure the noble Lord would like to have.

Turning to another matter that I suppose is faintly relevant to what we are dealing with, the noble Lord asked about the evidence of the impact of the Prompt Payment Code. I can tell him that we actively monitor and enforce it. It has been successful in assisting business to recover debt, but also in highlighting best practice. That again is important as part of the necessity for the change of culture.

I appreciate that the noble Lord had other questions and that he would like further details on why we wanted BACS—