Lord Foster of Bath (LD)

Amendment 41 was tabled by my noble friend Lady Brinton but, as I have explained, she is unable to be with us today. Her amendment and others in this group, including my own and those of my noble friend Lord Redesdale, seek to address an issue that I have frequently raised in your Lordships’ House: safety issues in connection with lithium-ion batteries. Indeed, I have already done so on a number of occasions in earlier groups, particularly in the previous group, where I used lithium-ion batteries as an example of why we need specific regulations regarding high-risk products. Whenever I have discussed these issues, I have always recognised the vital importance of lithium-ion batteries. They currently provide a crucial role in our drive towards low carbon or zero carbon. After all, they can store more energy than any other commercially available battery at present. However, they have their dangers. If incorrectly constructed—an issue that is picked up by Amendment 46 from the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, which I support—or if they are damaged or misused, not least through incorrect charging, there can be a thermal runaway, reaching enormously high temperatures of many hundreds of degrees. These fires give off toxic and dangerous gases and, as I pointed out in an earlier discussion, they cannot be put out by using water. Amendment 44 recognises that this is a framework Bill and new regulations are going to come at a later stage, but it argues that the particular urgency relating to the dangers, especially of fire and explosion, of unregulated lithium batteries, which are often purchased from abroad, requires urgent action from the Government. It therefore proposes that the Secretary of State must lay regulations relating to lithium-ion batteries within six months of the passing of this Act, and that in the period prior to doing so the Secretary of State will have consulted all the statutory consultees, including the fire service and relevant consumer industry bodies and manufacturing and trade bodies. My Amendment 49 seeks to place a duty on online marketplaces to take all reasonable steps to ensure that products containing lithium-ion batteries sold on their platforms comply with the UK safety standards that will be developed.