My Lords, I thank the Minister for his response and noble Lords who have taken part in this time-constrained debate. I take some encouragement from the expressions of at least general support. Like the noble Lord, Lord Fox, I look forward to further discussions with the Minister on this issue. That is part of the reason why I tabled a number of amendments taking different approaches and going into different parts of the Bill because of the different ways of approaching it. We are very open to anything that might put in some kind of guard-rail.
If I may say so, the Minister gave a classic Civil Service response: “But it is covered by other legislation”. I point him to the figures I cited about how little progress has been made on waste reduction towards a target that is only three years away. What we are doing now is clearly not enough, and it is not working.
We are talking about the product regulation Bill, and on the point about right to repair and cosmetics, there are obviously different rules to be applied to different products. That is true of any Bill that covers product regulation.
I wish briefly to pick up the points made the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, who suggested that these amendments might produce a further burden on consumers. If consumers found that their fridge lasted longer, for the kind of period that fridges used to last, that would be not a burden but a considerable advantage. If they were able to fix their mobile phone instead of having
to pay a multinational company a large sum of money for a new one, that would certainly not be a burden on consumers. It would perhaps be a rebalancing of the Government acting in the interests of consumers rather than those of giant multinational producers.
We can see clearly that this is a debate that will continue, but in the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 5.