Today, 21 July 2025, this Act received Royal Assent.
This signifies that the legislation has been through all the applicable UK Parliamentary stages since its introduction on 4 September 2024, and the King has formally agreed to turn the Bill into an Act (i.e. it becomes law).
The legislation is an enabling Act, and detailed laws will be enacted as secondary, or delegated, legislation (referred to as a statutory instrument or regulations). This will be made through the affirmative procedure, so the legislature must actively approve the enactment of the secondary legislation. This may be compared with the negative legislative procedure which applies to most secondary legislation in which a draft statutory instrument becomes law unless actively voted down (annulled) within a set period.
The affirmative procedure will require dedicated Parliamentary time to debate the introduction of Regulations. The timeframe for the introduction of secondary legislation is therefore difficult to predict. On 10 July 2025 during a debate in the House of Lords, Lord Leong provided an indication of how things might develop.
He stated, ‘I have been told by the officials that, the minute the Bill gets Royal Assent, a number of regulations will have to be placed before the House, to do with noise and various other aspects of regulation. My officials also tell me that, in any one year, there will not be more than six to 10 regulations, so we will not get an avalanche of regulation. This includes emergency powers and widening the scope of any existing criminal offences.’
Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [HL] – Hansard – UK Parliament (column 1510)
The Act enables the making of regulations for the purposes of –
‘reducing or mitigating risks presented by products, ensuring that products operate efficiently or effectively and ensuring that products designed for weighing or measuring operate accurately’ (section 1).
The secondary legislation will be known as product regulations and may include product requirements.
One aspect of the new law will be the power to make product requirements relating to the marketing of products through an online marketplace. These may be imposed those who control access to an online marketplace or who control the contents of those marketplaces. This is intended to close a potential lacuna in the current law regarding the uncertainty about the legal obligations of those operating online marketplaces in respect of the sale and supply of unsafe products and the post-sale protection of consumers from the effects of unsafe products.
An online marketplace is defined in section 12 as ‘a service or feature of a service on— (a) a website or part of a website, (b) a mobile application, or (c) any other platform by means of which information is made available over the internet, which facilitates the marketing of products in the United Kingdom by that means.
That definition may be amended or altered to meet any future changes in how this type of facility operates.
There will be a delay until the first statutory instruments become law, but it is expected that they will play a positive role in protecting consumers from unsafe products in many different situations.
Please do not hesitate to contact me for further information about the impact of this new Act and its Regulations or any other food and consumer product related safety matters in England and Wales or the Republic of Ireland.
Ian Thomas can be contacted at ian@ianthomasassociates.com
He also practises from Gough Square Chambers, London – ian.thomas@goughsq.co.uk
This article is provided for information only and does not constitute legal advice. Formal legal advice should always be obtained before taking or refraining from taking any action.
Any comment or views expressed in this article are personal.