Baroness Lawlor (Con)

My Lords, in moving my Amendment 43A, I of course support the amendments from my noble friends Lord Sharpe and Lord Frost in this group, to one of which I have added my name. My amendment would require the Government to place before Parliament a report on whether scientific—which includes technical—evidence supports a regulation covered by the Bill, because assessment of risk and for safety should be based on objective evidence, technical and scientific. The regulations for sanitary and phytosanitary, SPS, explicitly mention scientific evidence, whereas reference to science is not typically found in regulations on technical barriers to trade, or in the chapters in FTAs. They are often implied by wording: for example, a requirement that regulations on risk are based on documented and objective evidence. For international trade agreements, such evidence is assumed. Either our goods conform with internationally agreed standards or, if they derogate, they should draw on scientific and technical evidence to show that they conform to an agreed standard. There are good reasons for this. Such objective evidence and assessment is not only needed to assess risk objectively but is implied in the WTO framework, on which many trade agreements are based. They have to be WTO-compliant. The WTO’s own Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade, TBT, requires that, where appropriate, parties “specify technical regulations based on product requirements in terms of performance rather than design or descriptive characteristics”, one aim being to ensure that regulations, standards, testing and certification procedures followed by WTO members do not create “unnecessary obstacles” to trade. That is certainly one of this country’s enduring free trade objects. My amendment would promote a number of benefits and aims. It would help to focus attention on real risk, on the basis of provable evidence and that alone. It would make for transparency: those who produce, market or buy a product could know where they stand and trust the measures assessing risk. It would avoid saddling producers and consumers with costs for unnecessary, overburdensome obligations that result from the political attempt to tie the UK to unproven regulations, which may flout WTO international trade law, to protect their own products against competition from another trading partner. In products, the contents of which may include some agricultural content, it will help the UK to keep its eye on the evidence and purpose. I commend my noble friend Lord Sharpe’s amendment, which would specifically require that a statement on the need and purpose for such regulations be made. I have already mentioned one example in Committee, which is the difference between UK REACH and EU REACH regulations. The stated purpose is vital to the difference in how one is more burdensome than the other. My amendment would also reflect the way the UK has moved to make the most of international trade opportunities in our trade treaties, with, for example, the CPTPP. The UK can help shape these, as a leader of the oldest rules-based international trade order, while trading globally as one of the world’s oldest and most successful free-trade economies. Above all, it would avoid obliging businesses to follow the EU’s code-based precautionary principle. That may be unrelated to evidence and often driven by officials, while being costly to producers and raising prices sky-high for consumers, making some countries uncompetitive in world markets and the product not safer but, in many instances, less safe. I therefore beg to move.