Hansard

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer, for the opportunity to debate the motion on legislative consent for the Product Regulation and Metrology Bill.

The bill is primarily an enabling or framework bill, which gives the UK Secretary of State powers to regulate products in a range of sectors for certain purposes. Those include reducing or mitigating risks associated with products, ensuring that products operate efficiently and effectively, and reducing or mitigating the environmental impact of products where the European Union makes such provision.

The bill also creates powers in relation to metrology, which is the science of measurement. That, however, is fully reserved, so those powers are not covered by the legislative consent process.

Much of the UK’s existing product regulation framework is derived from EU law, and the UK Government deems the creation of the powers in the bill to be necessary to close the regulatory gaps that have been caused by the UK’s exit from the EU.

The stated aim of the bill is to support economic growth, provide regulatory stability and deliver more protection for consumers. That includes enabling the UK Government to respond to new and emerging products being marketed, as well as to new business models in the supply chain, such as online marketplaces.

The UK Government has stated its wish to protect consumers by reducing the number of unsafe goods that are sold online. For example, there are fire safety concerns around products entering the UK market at times, such as e-bikes that have unsuitable lithium-ion batteries, which members will be familiar with. The Scottish Government agrees with the UK Government that regulatory stability is important for business confidence and that the correct regulatory framework should be in place to ensure consumer safety and support growth in our economy.

However, as I am sure members would expect me to say, it is essential that the UK Government’s regulatory framework adequately respects the devolution settlement and the legislative confidence of the Scottish Parliament. The bill was announced as part of the King’s speech on 17 July 2024 and was introduced soon after, on 4 September. Unfortunately, that rushed timetable allowed for limited engagement at the official level, and agreement in principle was not sought from Scottish ministers prior to the bill being introduced to the UK Parliament. That meant that the Scottish Government’s concerns about how devolved matters were covered in the bill were not reflected in its drafting.

Our primary concern was the proposal to grant powers to UK ministers to regulate products in areas of devolved competence without the oversight of Scottish ministers or the Scottish Parliament. For that reason, the Scottish Government lodged a legislative consent memorandum in the Scottish Parliament on 24 September 2024 and recommended that Parliament refuse to consent to the bill.

In February 2025, a UK Government amendment that extended the scope of the bill’s powers was introduced in the House of Lords. As the amendment did not address the Scottish Government’s fundamental concerns with the bill, our recommendation remained unchanged, as expressed in the supplementary legislative consent memorandum that was lodged on 3 March. My officials and I then continued to engage with the UK Government to secure changes to the bill that would allow us to change the recommendation.

In past months, I have met Lord Leong and minister Justin Madders to discuss the Scottish Government’s concerns. As a result of that engagement, the UK Government tabled an amendment on 15 May that provides that the UK ministers may use the powers in the bill to materially change devolved law only with the prior consent of Scottish ministers.

That is a key improvement to the bill, although we would have liked the UK Government to have gone further. For instance, it was not willing to remove certain devolved product categories from the scope of the bill, and neither was it willing to provide Scottish ministers with concurrent powers to regulate products to reduce their environmental impact, which is an area of interest for the Scottish Government and Parliament.

No adequate reason has been given for the decisions to deny those asks. That is, of course, regrettable. On our ask in relation to concurrent powers, I assure the Parliament that we have some similar existing powers in this area to take action should they be required. An example would be the powers in the Environmental Protection Act 1990 that were recently used to ban the sale and supply of single-use vapes. That makes the UK Government’s refusal to include those concurrent powers in the bill a bit more puzzling.

However, that does not detract from the fact that the addition of the consent mechanism has removed our primary concern with the bill, which now better respects the devolution settlement. That amendment also means that the UK Government will be unable to use the powers in the bill to actively diverge from the EU in areas of devolved competence where doing so would not be within Scotland’s interests. It therefore represents a significant improvement on the bill as introduced, which enabled the Scottish Government to lodge a second supplementary legislative consent memorandum on 29 May recommending that the Scottish Parliament provide its consent to the bill.

I thank the Economy and Fair Work Committee for inviting me to discuss the bill in December 2024 and on 18 June, just a couple of weeks ago. I welcome the report that was published by the committee yesterday, which recommends that the Parliament agree to consent to the bill. The Welsh Government and the Northern Ireland Executive had initially expressed similar concerns about the bill to those that were expressed by the Scottish Government. However, the Scottish Parliament will be interested to note that both the Welsh and Northern Irish have voted to grant consent to the bill as amended.

I move,

That the Parliament agrees that all relevant provisions of the Product Regulation and Metrology Bill, introduced in the House of Lords on 4 September 2024, so far as these matters fall within the legislative competence of the Scottish Parliament, should be considered by the UK Parliament.