My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register, drawing particular attention to my chairmanship of Buckthorn Partners, which is active in the energy transition space. While the regulations are welcome and specific to the narrow issue of ensuring continuity after the end of the transition period, this debate provides a useful, albeit brief, opportunity to highlight the importance of government returning to this issue as soon as parliamentary time permits, since the system we are transposing into UK law is far from perfect and needs further consideration in terms of its objectives, ease of use and effectiveness in the welcome move towards substantial government support for energy transition.
To put my questions to the Minister in context, it is important to set the regulations in context. It is many years since I was a Minister for Energy in another place. During that time, significant developments have taken place in the context of ecodesign which have led to a European framework. The first major initiative in the sector was the European ecolabel, a voluntary scheme established to encourage businesses to market products and services that were kinder to the environment, with products and services awarded the right to carry the European flower logo. Ecodesign competitions followed. Ecodesign aspects were integrated into ISO standards, and framework conditions developed by the EU moved initially from waste management strategies and packaging to other end-of-life directives which aimed to follow the three Rs—reduce, reuse and recycle.
Educational initiatives were launched and now hundreds of ecodesign-related labels have come into existence across the world. The European Commission established integrated product policies to support the sustainable consumption and production action plans which underpin the regulations before us today.
Nevertheless, despite this remarkable increase in worthy activity, many issues remain. There has been a great deal of talk about environmental product development but, in many cases, too little change in practice. To remedy this, we will need to address the definition of each phase of a product lifespan from not just the producer’s perspective but the user’s. Just
as much importance should be attached to the use as well as the after-use phases in the selection of ecodesign criteria. Do the Government intend to address this in the wider context of the 10-point plan for a green industrial revolution announced last month, particularly under point 7, greener buildings, where a target milestone was set for the launch of a world-class energy-related products policy framework? The document states:
“We will push for products to use less energy, resources, and materials, saving carbon and helping households and businesses to reduce their energy bills with minimum effort.”
The target milestone for this objective is set for 2021. When does the Minister expect this work to begin and will the House have the opportunity to debate ecodesign and energy information standards in this context? If so, this measure should be seen, as I believe it is, as a stepping stone to the design and development of more whole-life standards, thus enabling the UK to take the lead in ecodesign labelling.
Only last week, the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government published the social housing White Paper, The Charter for Social Housing Residents, which focused on providing tenants in social housing with more information so that they can hold landlords to account. This is yet another example of the welcome incoming tide of green, sustainable change to everything we do in production lines, in our economy at large and in society. Energy information and ecodesign will need to keep abreast of these changes and be embodied in life-cycle principles. At the moment, too many of the ecodesign criteria are independent of one another, which increases the complexity of ecodesign labelling’s inner logic. There is no effective connection between the production and end-of-life phase.
I appreciate that this is not the time to do more, and I urge the Government simply to ensure that in 2021 they look carefully at the current system. Clean production, zero emissions, renewable resources, non-toxic resources, compressibility, short-distance eco-transports and limited eco-friendly to no packaging are all important production-phase criteria for ecodesign. At the point of sale, we need to introduce regional businesses, upgradeability, durability, shared-use potential, repairability, guarantees and maintenance, recyclability and compostability. For today, the two must be considered together. I urge the Government to recognise the challenge and to ensure that, as far as possible, investments made in ecodesign bring returns in the sense of ecological advantage.
Elsewhere, the blind spots of ecodesign are well understood and deserve urgent consideration so that we can seek to lead the world in the area of responsible environmental practice. Ecodesign is an instrument for increasing the potential ecological performance of a product, applying specific criteria, some of them with high interrelationships. Both the selection of the criteria and the realisation of the potential ecological advantages are beyond the reach of ecodesign. Future ecodesign strategies should wherever possible encompass the entire lifecycle of a product in the design phase, from the manufacturer to the consumer.
Ecodesign is an instrument; it is not a strategy. It is a welcome instrument which concerns environmental improvements; it is not an appropriate tool for setting
these goals. Government needs to integrate ecodesign into a wider strategy, which can be achieved only by close collaboration with industry and by recognising the importance of continuing dialogue in Europe with our friends.
My questions on the regulations are brief and as follows. Is the Minister satisfied that the complex rules regarding Northern Ireland are workable, in particular the need for all products listed in the categories we are considering today to comply with relevant EU legislation, including the EU flag and QR codes that link to the required product information on the EPREL database? What rules will be expected to apply to goods placed first in the Northern Ireland market which are then sold elsewhere in Great Britain? Will EU labelling on those products not create the very confusion that the Minister is seeking to avoid in the rest of Great Britain, given the contents of EU labels, flags and EU languages on such products? In that context, who will undertake enforcement of these regulations, and is my noble friend the Minister persuaded that they will be sufficiently well resourced to undertake these responsibilities?
In addition to the point my noble friend made about the time constraint, what else did the Government learn from the informal consultation phase on the regulations which he can share with the Committee? Is a year enough time to allow the permissible CE mark for some goods to continue in place of the UKCA mark? Does everyone involved understand the need to act within that allotted timeframe, and are Ministers confident that it is sufficient when taking into account the need to link QR codes to the required product information on publicly accessible websites?
I look forward to hearing from my noble friend and, in the meantime, very much welcome the Government's objective to provide for the continuity and ease necessary after the transition period.
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