Product Safety and Metrology Bill
- This Bill will preserve the UK's status as a global leader in
product regulation, supporting businesses and protecting
consumers. It will ensure the UK is better placed to address
modern day safety issues, harness opportunities that deliver
economic growth, and ensure a level playing field between the
high street and online marketplaces.
- The majority of the UK's product safety and metrology
framework is derived from EU law developed over the past four
decades. As technology and regulation continues to develop, we
need new powers to address current or future threats and hazards,
and ensure a continued supply of safe goods on our market and so
this Bill will enable us to make the sovereign choice to mirror
or diverge from updated EU rules, so that we can maintain high
product safety while supporting businesses and economic growth.
What does the Bill do?
- This Bill will support growth, provide regulatory stability
and deliver more protection for consumers by:
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responding to new product risks and
opportunities to enable the UK to keep pace with
technological advances, such as AI, and address challenges,
such as the fire risk associated with e-bikes and lithium-ion
batteries. Without these powers, we will not be able to
effectively regulate these high-risk products and protect
consumers and workers.
-
identifying new and emerging business models
in the supply chain, ensuring the responsibilities of those
involved in the supply of products, such as online
marketplaces, are clear, enabling Government to better
protect consumers, so they can have confidence in the
products they buy and whom they buy them from. Without these
powers it will remain far too easy for unscrupulous overseas
suppliers to place unsafe goods on the UK market through
online marketplaces.
-
ensuring that the law can be updated to
recognise new or updated EU product regulations, including
the CE marking, where appropriate to prevent additional costs
for businesses and provide regulatory stability. This
legislation will also ensure the UK can end recognition of EU
product regulations, where it is in the best interests of UK
businesses and consumers.
-
enabling improvements to compliance and
enforcement reflecting the challenges of modern,
digital borders. This Bill will enable the Government and its
regulators to tackle non-compliance, target interventions by
allowing greater sharing of data between regulators and
market surveillance authorities, and future-proof
the nature and capacity of the Regulator,
ensuring it can provide national leadership on
product safety and metrology issues.
-
updating the legal metrology framework,
which governs the accuracy of weights and measures for
purchased goods. This plays a role in product legislation,
giving consumers and business confidence in what they are
buying. This will allow for technological progress, including
in support of net zero aims and infrastructure, for example
enabling innovation whilst ensuring energy meters continue to
be accurate in their readings.
- As most product safety legislation falls within scope of the
Windsor Framework, EU changes to product regulation only apply in
Northern Ireland, resulting in divergence within the UK internal
market as EU laws are updated. This Bill gives the Government
specific powers to make changes to GB legislation to manage
divergence and take a UK-wide approach, where it is in our
interests to do so.
Territorial extent and application
- The Bill will extend and apply UK-wide.
Key facts
- Products in scope of the Bill are used by every person in the
country, covering nearly all manufactured products. We estimate
that there are at least 220,000 UK businesses currently affected
by product safety legislation, with an estimated market turnover
of just under £280 billion. The regulations cover a broad range
of products from consumer products like toys, fireworks,
cosmetics and machinery, as well as metrology, which is essential
for safe operation of critical national infrastructure.
- Current law recognises existing EU product regulations
(including the CE marking) for a range of products in GB.
However, the EU is undertaking a range of updates and reforms to
their regulations (for instance to improve safety or respond to
technological developments) over the next few years, which the UK
does not have sufficient powers to respond to.
- There is an urgent need to legislate to respond to emerging
threats to consumer safety, for example to address issues such as
incidents from ingesting button batteries, and e-bike fires where
there was a 78 per cent increase in e-bike fires in 2023 compared
to 2022 in London according to the London Fire Brigade.
