It may sound like any other dry bit of legislation, the kind that makes its way through Parliament on a regular basis without many people really noticing. But despite its slightly unenticing name, the Product Regulation and Metrology Bill represents a welcome step towards closer relations with the EU and, critically, serves to negate some of challenges Brexit has thrown in the way of UK and EU businesses.

So, what is the Product Regulation and Metrology Bill?

Essentially, the bill will update the UK’s product safety and metrology framework, allowing the government to align our regulations with those of the EU when it is beneficial and appropriate. This will allow businesses wishing to operate and trade between the UK and EU to once again comply with a single set of regulations instead of two different, and sometimes conflicting, sets.

But the benefits will not only be felt by manufacturers. Customers will see the positive effects of the bill too.

Ensuring that product quality and safety are appropriately regulated and making those regulations consistent across the UK and EU, provides consumers on both sides of the Channel with a guarantee of quality, allowing them to buy with confidence.

The bill also provides for alignment with EU environmental, measurement, and eCommerce standards, reducing supply chain issues, furthering buyer confidence, and easing barriers to the smooth flow of goods between the UK and the EU.

All of which sounds like a step in the right direction from a pro-European perspective, right?

Now, you might be thinking that there is already a part of the UK that has an arrangement like this, whereby EU laws are selectively aligned with for ease of trade and commerce – Northern Ireland.

Under the much discussed and hard-negotiated Windsor Framework, this is indeed the case. But the fact that such alignment has not, thus far, extended to the rest of the UK has posed a risk of creating divergent regulatory practices within the UK internally. The Product Regulation and Metrology Bill seeks to neutralise this risk, allowing the whole UK to align with beneficial EU regulations, ensuring internal regulatory consistency.

Finally, the bill is also designed to work alongside the Retained EU Law Act, which allowed for the revocation and replacement of EU laws in the UK, provided any replacement laws we deregulatory. The Retained EU Law Act did not, however, make provisions for increasing regulation during a replacement.

The Product Regulation and Metrology bill bridges that gap, providing the legal tools for the UK to independently enhance its remaining EU regulations in order to keep in step with developments in Brussels and maintain alignment when it is beneficial to do so.

Now, of course, the full bill is more complex that what we have described above, but the end results certainly seem to be positive, benefiting business, consumers, and governments in both the UK and EU.

At the time of writing, the Product Regulation and Metrology bill is in the Committee stage in the House of Lords, so it still has a few stages to go in that chamber before being handed over to the Commons.

As a result, it could be some time until the bill is given Royal Assent and becomes UK law, but the signs are good so far. Hopefully, in time, we will be able to celebrate this very technical, but nonetheless very real, step towards the closer UK-EU relations that we so desperately need.