Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)

My Lords, before I move my Motion, I have just returned from Northern Ireland and want to say how shocked people are in Northern Ireland at the terrible atrocity that took place last night. This is not the time to discuss it, but we do need answers and there will have to be proper inquiry. I am sure we want to send all our best wishes to the victim and his family. Some regulations are very technical in nature, and the effects are not felt widely by the public immediately, but the regulations before us today have a very clear and practical effect that will impact the lives of most households in the country, particularly families. Very simply, this regulation bans the sale of new conventional tumble dryers—that is, convector and vented tumble dryers—from January 2027. From then on, the only new tumble dryers that people in England, Wales and Scotland will be able to buy will be heat-pump tumble dryers. Quite apart from the nanny state restriction of choice because of the Government’s obsession with net zero, the legislation is problematic. While some people may say that they might be cheaper to run—there are real disputes about that—there is no doubt that heat pump tumble dryers are markedly more expensive to buy than conventional tumble dryers. The last thing that people need at the moment, I would have thought, is those extra costs. The most important thing to me on this is that heat pump tumble dryers work only at ambient temperatures, so they will not work in garages or outhouses in winter, unless and until people start to heat those rooms that previously went unheated. I am not sure how the Minister can say how that is an environmental win. If we are to understand this SI, we have to look at it in the wider context and at what happened in March last year. Legislation was then published that banned shops in Northern Ireland buying in any new conventional convector or vented tumble dryers from 1 July that year; they were given until March this year to clear their existing stock. Since then, the only new tumble dryers that Northern Ireland shops have been able to buy in are heat pump tumble dryers. Yesterday, a shop in Northern Ireland explained that it has 11 brand new condenser tumble dryers that it will have to scrap, because to sell them would be illegal. How is that going to be good for the environment? The Explanatory Notes for last year’s regulations explained simply that: “Northern Ireland continues to apply EU rules on ecodesign and energy labelling, as per the terms of the Windsor Framework”. So in Northern Ireland we were bound by EU net-zero legislation under the Windsor Framework, which effectively partitions the United Kingdom, keeping Northern Ireland in the EU. The whole point of leaving the EU—as I thought, certainly—would be to make our own laws without being overruled by a majority of other countries. Speaking about the matter in this House on 26 March last year, I highlighted how the EU legislation on tumble dryers was being imposed without even consulting people in Northern Ireland or businesses. It had to be imposed because the Windsor Framework required it. I said then that it demonstrated how the failure to deliver leaving the European Union for Northern Ireland “is actually undermining Brexit for the whole of the United Kingdom, aligning Great Britain—drip, drip, drip—with Northern Ireland and thus the European Union”.—[Official Report, 26/3/25; col. 1778.] In fact, the Minister in the other place said that exactly. She said that “it is very likely that Great Britain will seek to meet similar standards … Our intention is to apply the measures on a UK-wide basis and maintain the UK’s internal market”.—[Official Report, Commons, First Delegated Legislation Committee, 31/3/25; col. 4.] In this context, we should be clear that the reason why the sale of new vented and condenser tumble dryers is being banned in England, Wales and Scotland is that the EU has already banned it in Northern Ireland and having the ban in one part of the UK but not the other does not work if we are to maintain any semblance of a common market across the whole UK. But of course we must see that what is really going on is an object lesson in relation to the problems with the Government’s much more ambitious dynamic alignment project to avoid divergence with Northern Ireland, as set out in the European partnership Bill. This approach is fatally flawed for Great Britain, as it is for Northern Ireland. Rather than respecting the once-in-a-generation referendum, the legislation before us today, set out in the broader context of the European partnership Bill, is part of a larger effort to not only undermine that vote, in the sense of using divergence problems flowing from the denial of leaving in one part of the UK to undermine Brexit across the rest of the country. It is actually almost worse than rejoining the EU. The Minister might tell me—I expect he will—that I should be pleased that we now have a Government committed to bringing GB into alignment with the EU, because this will help mitigate GB-Northern Ireland border difficulties. Quite apart from the fact that it will not mitigate the customs border in any way, while an SPS deal might reduce frictions it will not remove the SPS border because their proposed SPS deal is a GB deal and not a UK deal. I hope the Minister will explain that, because what we need is a more profound and patriotic way of looking at this. In this context, if anyone thinks that the answer to the injustice of the disenfranchisement now of the people of Northern Ireland is to have that same disenfranchisement for the people of the rest of the United Kingdom, I am not quite sure that they have not lost the plot. The difficulty with this particular set of regulations has been further compounded by the fact that the Government have brought them forward on the proposed basis that they become law by default, with no parliamentary debate or vote, under the negative assent procedure. The only reason we are having this debate today is my Motion. Even in the democratically elected House next door—the other place—there is now a prayer standing in the name of some 46 Members, including the leader of the Opposition, the right honourable Kemi Badenoch. It still has not been given time for a debate. Six parties have signed it including, I am pleased to see, a Labour MP. Finally, I want to point out that there is now a very real shortage of new tumble dryers in Northern Ireland, because Northern Ireland is having to get its heat-pump tumble dryers from Great Britain, yet a significant portion of those tumble dryers currently being sold in Great Britain are not allowed to be sold in Northern Ireland. There seems to be confusion about why this is, with some suggesting that to be legal in Northern Ireland they must contain a certain kind of gas, while others have suggested that there are some heat-pump tumble dryers on the market in GB that do not meet the 80% condenser efficiency minimum required by the EU regulation. Whatever the reason, though, the advice last week was that the new heat-pump tumble dryers meeting the Northern Ireland specification will not be ready to be shipped to Northern Ireland from GB until the autumn. I have five specific short questions for the Minister. Will the GB market be ready to provide the requisite number of heat-pump tumble dryers—