REACH etc. (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Tuesday 8th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I will start on a positive note. I welcome the agreement in principle that the UK and EU have reached on the Northern Ireland protocol dealing with Northern Ireland border checks. Can my noble friend say what impact that will have on the regulations before us today?

I thank my noble friend for bringing the regulations before us and for his comprehensive explanation of them, but the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, has done a great service to the House by moving her amendment to the Motion, highlighting many of the issues raised and unresolved in the 34th report of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. I urge my noble friend to answer those concerns when he sums up the debate.

On 19 November, the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee reported that it had not seen an impact assessment. My noble friend said that the department produced one in 2019. When might he publish that and might he revise the conclusion reached in paragraph 12.1 of the Explanatory Memorandum to the regulations:

“There will be positive impacts on business, charities or voluntary bodies”?


I would like to see what those impacts are. The memorandum goes on to say:

“This instrument will mitigate potential disruption to chemical supply chains for GB companies.”


I do hope that that is indeed the case.

The amendment to the Motion states that the additional costs and administrative burdens for United Kingdom businesses are a matter of regret, as is creating

“unacceptable risks around the availability of chemical safety data.”

We know, as others have said, that the chemicals industry is the second biggest manufacturing industry after food and drink. More than 50% of the companies in the British Coatings Federation are UK-owned and 70% are SMEs. They have a highly integrated supply chain with the EU, so there is significant EU-UK trade, and it is obviously important for human and environmental health.

I am fairly agnostic about REACH, but will quote some of the evidence we heard under our excellent chair the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, in the EU Environment Sub-Committee, on which I am privileged to serve. The Royal Society of Chemistry said that there is a

“lack of capacity of fully scientifically trained staff at the necessary levels to be able to fully operate a UK REACH.”

Therefore, it has to be asked whether the Chemicals Regulation Division will have the capacity to deal with a high workload for UK REACH from 1 January.

The Chemicals Industries Association said that there is a requirement for “hiring of new staff” who are very “specialised”, namely

“toxicologists, ecotoxicologists, experts in risk assessments, economists, chemists and so on.”

The Chemical Business Association said that

“The HSE has virtually complete control over the operation of the UK’s new regulatory regime”,


yet the whole

“Industry has doubts about the competence and the capability of the HSE to discharge this role.”


CHEM Trust said that there is a

“massive risk that the UK system has much less information and expertise in it.”

I fear that the dual regime we will have, with many in the chemicals sector wanting to register for both UK REACH and ECHA, will damage the ability of the UK chemicals industry to compete, and threaten the viability of future product lines, as we were told in the EU Environment Sub-Committee. I hope my noble friend puts my mind at rest. I ask him to answer two questions. The money that we established for the cost of this exercise alone will be approximately £1 billion. Would that not be better spent on improving, maker safer and more environmentally friendly the chemicals that the industry is producing? He will be aware that many in the chemicals industry want to move their production outside GB to access the wider EU market. What will that cost and how does he hope to prevent such a move?