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

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Tuesday 8th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I very much hope that, in rebuilding REACH to our own specifications, the Government will take advantage of all the innovation that has been taking place in the computational prediction of toxicity so that we end up with a cheaper, faster system that hurts many fewer laboratory animals. I would like to see the UK develop as a centre of excellence for such technology, with the need to recreate REACH providing a flow of business that allows such excellence to develop.

I also hope that we will avoid some of the idiocies of the European system. I do not share the approbation of the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, for that system. To use a particular chemical as an example, ammonium sulphamate is an extremely useful herbicide because it decays into fertiliser and has no toxic residues. The European Union’s pesticides review led to herbicides containing this chemical becoming unlicensed in 2008, because the Irish rapporteur refused to review the data supplied unless it contained details of animal testing on dogs. As there was already substantial animal data in the package supplied, the data holder felt that further tests without substantiation would cause unnecessary animal suffering.

I find that attitude extraordinary, as I do the European Union’s attitude to, say, asulam, which is a much more dangerous chemical but which has incredibly useful properties. It kills bracken and dock but almost nothing else, so if you are trying to prevent a really precious collection of plants from invasion by bracken, it is so much better than any of the alternatives—but the European Union has proved extremely difficult in allowing it to be licensed, in a way that has not happened at all in the United States. And of course the greatest example of European idiocy has been its attitude to glyphosate. So I really hope we will get to a situation where we can take a much more rational and holistic attitude to chemicals than appears to have been possible in the European Union.

In terms of making this a process which works and which we can be confident protects our citizens, for low-use chemicals which are not known to be particularly dangerous, surely we can just look across the water and say, “What they do in the EU? What do they do in the US? Have they raised substantial concerns about these chemicals?” If not, let us just rely on all the work that has been done in the EU, the US and elsewhere, and not obsess about repeating tests, particularly if we are requiring tests on animals, and allow the system in the UK to evolve at a sensible pace, which does not require a lot of people to relicense chemicals at great cost when there is no obvious benefit to us or to them.