Chemicals (Health and Safety) and Genetically Modified Organisms (Contained Use) (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Wednesday 9th December 2020 Grand Committee

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann. I share her concerns about the Health and Safety Executive’s resourcing—something that there has been considerable public concern about in the context of Covid-19 and the many other threats that we see, particularly to workplace and public safety.

I feel that I should warn the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, who will follow me in this debate—as she did in the debate on the previous statutory instrument, where she made a particularly excellent contribution—that I plan to be brief. I have two brief sets of questions.

My first question relates to the Explanatory Memorandum to the statutory instrument that this statutory instrument amends. It states:

“Each Administration of GB will continue to be able to make its own decisions about the release of GMOs in its territory. The existing processes for each Administration reaching its own decisions at national level will continue as now.”


I am aware that, as we speak, the internal market Bill is still the subject of debate and negotiation, we might say, in the Chamber, but I wonder whether the Minister can tell me how the rights to control the release of genetically modified organisms and the sale of products containing genetically modified organisms will relate to that Bill and the rules being made around it. Also, of course, there is the inevitable complication of how this will affect products going between Northern Ireland and Great Britain.

Also, that Explanatory Memorandum talks about the release of genetically modified organisms. Of course, no one can control the spread of genetically modified organisms and the genes that they contain; it is worth highlighting that point given that we share extensive borders. No Administration on these islands can control the spread of those genes or, potentially, those organisms.

Briefly, my second point addresses the biocidal products side of this statutory instrument. I note in particular research published last month in the peer-reviewed Science of the Total Environment journal that refers to the insecticides part of this statutory instrument. This research showed that two products—fipronil and imidacloprid—widely used in flea treatments for domestic animals, particularly dogs and cats, were showing up in very high levels in our rivers. Fipronil showed up in 99% of samples in 20 rivers, and in one case it was measured at 38 times the safe level. Are the Government looking at this issue, and indeed many other broader issues, as a matter of urgency?

One issue that is increasingly being thrown up by the science is what is known as the cocktail effect: the potential impact that the mixing of different chemicals, and interactions between antimicrobial resistance and different chemicals, might have on antimicrobial resistance, on human bodies and on the environment in general. It is very much rising up the agenda.