Draft Ecodesign for Energy-Related Products and Energy Information (Amendment) (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2025

Nick Timothy Excerpts

Monday 31st March 2025 General Committees

[Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your charismatic and generous chairship this evening, Dr Huq, and to respond to these regulations on behalf of His Majesty’s Opposition.

We agree that, by ensuring that products meet minimum requirements for energy efficiency, regulation can reduce their negative environmental impact, make them longer lasting and encourage greater recycling. Energy labelling also gives more information to consumers, helping them to make better-informed decisions about their energy usage. In principle, energy efficiency clearly helps to reduce bills and emissions. We understand that these particular regulations need to be implemented as part of the Windsor framework.

However, we offer a word of caution to Ministers. These regulations put a modest compliance cost on manufacturers that sell their goods in both Great Britain and Northern Ireland, but the Government are now considering aligning the whole of the UK with net zero laws written and decided in Brussels. We would be signing up not only to the European Union emissions trading scheme, with its significantly higher carbon price—increasing our carbon price has not been ruled out by Ministers in a succession of answers to our questions—but to a whole slew of regulations that will be enforced by the European Court of Justice.

There certainly needs to be co-operation with our European neighbours, but we must also maintain our sovereignty and flexibility in an increasingly volatile world. Brussels will, understandably, always act in the interests of the European project and its member states. That is why we must protect the interests of our citizens by putting British industry and consumers first.