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

Baroness Altmann Excerpts

Tuesday 8th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Altmann (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Minister for his explanation of these regulations and for his clear delivery to the House of what are clearly regulations that may be of significant concern. In particular, he has assured us, that Defra is putting in resources and that the HSE is recruiting. However, concerns have been expressed about the adequacy of resources for the HSE, which does a tremendous job, and the required oversight, when one compares the budget of the ECHA, with €100 million, and the HSE, with £13 million. What are the targets for recruitment to the HSE? How are we locating the required personnel? Where are they coming from? Can my noble friend say how much the adequacy of the resourcing has been assessed and whether there are any reports that may give us some comfort?

I also encourage my noble friend to relay the message this House has clearly given over the last two to three years, that data on safety and data sharing are essential for public safety. I appreciate that the JCSI report and the concerns raised, as my noble friend already mentioned, may not be directly relevant to this SI. However, clearly, the issues raised are enormously important, and its broader concerns about the potential £1 billion cost to our valuable UK chemicals industry and the readiness of the HSE to conduct its role are serious matters.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, and the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, rightly said, the risks to our chemicals industry, public safety and indeed economic performance are being imposed for no added value. I have pointed this out many times in the past four years in the various debates on this issue. We are trying to reinvent the wheel, but we do not have the resources to make sure that it is as robust as the wheel we are replacing.

Like my noble friend Lord Trenchard, I regret the need for us to have a separate REACH programme for Northern Ireland and GB—but for rather different reasons. We will have our own GB REACH, but Northern Ireland will be under the EU REACH regime. Both will operate independently, with exporters and importers between the EU, the EEA and Northern Ireland—with Great Britain on the other side—having to ensure that their relevant duties are met under both regimes. Can my noble friend the Minister outline the differences that we anticipate between the two regimes and how firms will be prepared for any such divergence?

The Government have introduced the Northern Ireland notification system, which is light-touch. I congratulate my noble friend the Minister on the decision to make this fee free, but could the option of equivalence possibly be revived? I recognise that becoming an independent sovereign nation offers theoretical opportunities to sweep away red tape, allowing free markets to flourish—but not on dangerous chemicals. What safeguards will there be for the first 300 days? GB importers have to submit information on substances that they import, but who will assess the submissions and how ready is the new UK REACH IT system to receive and assess them?

Finally, can my noble friend comment on the new regime, which requires no submission for consignments below 1 tonne? Also, for those between 1 and 10 tonnes, there will be no requirement to provide data safety reports or chemical safety report risk control measures— at least as far as I could see when I clicked on the requirements under the regime. What risks are potentially involved in omitting such information from consignments under 10 tonnes?

I urge the Government to reconsider their determination to abandon equivalence, and I hope that we will be able to look forward to continued success for our chemicals industry.