My Lords, I thank the Minister for this important announcement. I do not think that the Minister was in your Lordships’ House when we discussed the retained EU law Bill. If he was, he was very wise not to be on the Front Bench at the time. As your Lordships will recall, we were marched forcibly three-quarters of the way up the hill only to be marched back down again.
This statutory instrument is very much indicative of the position that we arrived at after we had marched back down the hill and is infinitely more sensible than where we would have been had we enacted the original retained EU law Bill, and for that the Government and Ministers need some credit.
I have a slight concern—I may have misunderstood. My understanding is that the deadline for recognition of CE is pushed to one side and that CE will be recognised indefinitely, except the Government retain the right to impose non-CE regulations if they decide that they want to do so. That leaves an air of uncertainty, so it would be interesting to hear a response to that.
The Minister hinted at the overall future of CA. Industry has been pushing hard not to have a dual standard, and the department has done well to bow to that. However, the point that was not being made—which we were trying to make at the time—was that it would be expensive. It is good to hear that it would have cost half a billion pounds for industry to conform to that and it is glad that it did not have to do so. Why are we retaining CA? How much resource will the Government commit to the process of having a separate standard, even though the market will inevitably drive most of the players into the CE camp for accreditation? I would like some more clarity around the future of CA.
The Minister mentioned the product safety review. I think we would all like to know when it will be published, as it was promised some time ago and is still not among us. It would be really interesting to know when it will be. I have one final question around Northern Ireland. My assumption is that this solves any potential cross-border issues between the Republic and Northern Ireland, but could the Minister confirm that?