Member

With his interesting amendment, the noble Lord, Lord Foster, has raised an important and quite difficult subject. The Bill is intended to protect consumers from unsafe products regardless of the product’s origin or where a business is based. The powers in the Bill can be used to introduce requirements on online marketplaces based overseas where they are marketing products to UK consumers, but the problem is enforcement. That is a challenge and, standing here today, I just do not have an easy answer. Essentially, we think that the Bill—again, this is the advantage of flexibility—allows us to explore options for taking action against businesses operating from overseas. While we cannot readily enforce in other territories, we will seek to ensure that businesses selling non-compliant and dangerous goods cannot continue to do so in the UK market. The reality is that this is work in progress, and discussions about it are taking place in government. I thank the noble Lord for his input, and we are giving great consideration to this issue.