Lord Foster of Bath (LD)

My Lords, this is an important group of amendments. No doubt, the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, will shortly set out his amendments but, as I understand them, by deleting bits of the Bill they provide an opportunity for us to have a debate on what is meant by a “product” and by the “use of products”. The other two amendments are in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Crawley, and my noble friend Lord Fox and have a similar purpose. My noble friend cannot be with us today because he is abroad on parliamentary business in connection with NATO. These amendments will help us to get more clarity on what is covered by a “product” and its use and will help to future-proof the legislation, in the case of Amendment 12 by ensuring that all digital and non-digital products are within scope and in the case of Amendment 13 by ensuring that all operating systems and internet-connected products are within scope. The noble Baroness, Lady Crawley, very clearly set out the arguments for why this is needed, and I fully support her, but my noble friend Lord Fox’s amendment, which is also a probing amendment, seeks to find out whether the Government’s intention is that operating systems and interconnected products will be covered by the provisions of the Bill. Some may recall that in an earlier grouping I expressed concern about what appears to be the limited way in which the Government consider products as just things. I sought to explain that we cannot always consider a product in isolation as some products are installed as part of a system, and I argued that we should take the whole system into account. My noble friend’s amendment expresses a similar point. It seeks to ensure that the Bill recognises that the operational characteristics of many products are, effectively, changeable. For instance, household products are increasing controlled by operating systems that can be and are controlled by the vendor remotely. The legislation needs to take this into account in two separate ways. The first, and most simple, is that there should be a clear obligation on the vendor to demonstrate good faith in ensuring its products’ operating systems are up to date and are protected, for example, from external malign attack. Secondly, there needs to be a process whereby material changes in the characteristics of a product continue to meet regulations that they met before the changes. Many noble Lords will already have heard my noble friend Lord Fox’s particular concern about references to the health and safety of domestic animals in the Bill. He has picked it up on several occasions. He sought to explain his amendment to me in relation to those references. He pointed out that, for example, a remote vacuum cleaner may be programmed to behave in a way that ensures that family pets are not in danger of being harmed by it. He went on to point out that a remote change might disregard this safeguard and so endanger the health and safety of domestic animals. My noble friend argues that without his amendment, or something similar, it would appear that there is no way in which the measures in the Bill could enable the policing of such remote revisions to product properties. More generally, these amendments in this group seek to probe the Government further on what they believe are covered by “products” and which uses of products are covered by the proposed legislation. I very much look forward to hearing the Minister’s response on those issues and to hearing the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, explain his amendments more effectively than I have sought to do.