Draft Chemicals (Health and Safety) (Amendment, Consequential and Transitional Provision) Regulations 2026

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Tuesday 21st April 2026 General Committees

[The Minister for Social Security and Disability (Sir Stephen Timms)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the draft Chemicals (Health and Safety) (Amendment, Consequential and Transitional Provision) Regulations 2026.

I am delighted to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I welcome all Members to the Committee. I am very pleased to introduce this instrument, which was laid before the House on 24 February.

The draft regulations are important to keep our post-Brexit chemicals regime robust, proportionate and fit for the long term. They amend three pieces of chemicals legislation that we assimilated from the European Union, putting right things that could not be put right at the point of EU exit due to the limited powers available then under the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. I am satisfied that they are compatible with the European convention on human rights.

The draft regulations maintain high standards of protection for human health and the environment, making sure that the regulatory system works efficiently for businesses, and supporting economic growth. In combination with the commitment of the Health and Safety Executive to aligning with the European Union’s regulatory decisions other than in exceptional circumstances, the draft regulations create a framework for adopting EU chemical hazard classifications more quickly in Great Britain. Chemicals stakeholder groups across the board broadly share the wish to stay as aligned with the European Union as possible, to support trade and to maintain the high standards of protection that we share with our closest trading partners, and this statutory instrument reflects those wishes.

It is very important that this legislation has been laid now, because the powers provided for in the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023 expire in June, and no other suitable powers are available. The changes being made here are about keeping on the market things that are currently available. New things that are not currently available will still be subject to existing classification and approval requirements, and will be permitted in Great Britain only if the HSE has undertaken an evaluation of them, as is the case at present. There will be a fast track for classification evaluations, but only if the substance has already been subject to classification by a regime that adopts the United Nations globally harmonised system on the same basis as the UK—which means, at present, only the European Union’s. Substances approved elsewhere will not be eligible for fast-tracked evaluation in the UK.

The measures strike an important balance, giving more certainty and flexibility, with a more proportionate system for chemicals suppliers and the regulator, while protecting the natural environment from the risk of chemical pollution, protecting people who use and work with hazardous chemical substances, and retaining the benefits of important biocidal products, such as those used to provide clean drinking water.

The Health and Safety Executive’s chemicals supply framework is overseen through three regimes. First, there is the Great Britain biocidal products regulation, BPR, which controls the placing on the market and use of biocidal products—disinfectants, insecticides, and so on. Secondly, there is the Great Britain classification, labelling and packaging—CLP—regulation, which provides for the identification and communication of chemical hazards, adopting the UN globally harmonised system of classification and labelling. Thirdly, there is the GB prior informed consent—PIC—regulation, which governs the export and import of some hazardous chemicals.

Those regulations were carried over from EU law under the 2023 Act, which enables sensible amendments to keep those regimes operating effectively. The regulations before the Committee apply to England, Wales and Scotland, whose Ministers earlier this year consented to the making of the regulations. In Northern Ireland, EU chemicals legislation continues to apply under the Windsor framework.

The chemicals supply framework that we inherited from the European Union provided a high level of protection, but there are some structural and operational problems in applying it in a single country. We used, for example, to share access to the testing resources of all European Union countries; now we just have access to our own. Without these regulations, we would very quickly run into serious problems. Up to 173 active substances used in essential biocidal products would very soon lose approval and have to be removed from the market.

Those products include insecticides used to remove disease vectors from aircraft, disinfectants for infection control in hospitals, anti-fouling coatings needed by ships at sea, wood preservatives that protect businesses and homes, and other biocides that are important for public health. There would also be inadequate powers to issue temporary permits for critical products, so that it would no longer be possible for essential products such as aviation fuel preservatives and chemicals used to disinfect public drinking water supplies permitted under those powers to be supplied and used legally.

Businesses would continue to face unnecessary administrative burdens such as notification requirements that no longer serve any purpose, and the ability of the Health and Safety Executive to prioritise more quickly and flexibly chemical hazard assessments relevant to the Great Britain market would remain limited. At the moment, the HSE has by law to consider EU risk assessment committee classification proposals, including those that are irrelevant to this country. Exporters of hazardous chemicals would continue to have to carry out pointless tasks such as obtaining a special reference identification number that customs authorities do not use. I also want to make clear that there would be no corresponding benefits at all to health or to the environment.

Taking them one by one, the BRP extends the expiry date for the up to 173 approved active substances to 31 July 2031, provided that renewal applications are submitted. That will prevent them from lapsing through no fault of the suppliers and will avoid very severe disruption. It also reforms emergency provision so that essential biocidal products such as aviation fuel preservatives and drinking water disinfectants can remain available until an authorisation decision is made, where the need for use is long term. Of course, at some point it may be that a decision will be made that these products should not be available, but we do not want that to happen between now and June, because then they would become non-available.

The regulation clarifies and extends data protection rules to ensure that businesses investing in scientific data can recover costs consistently across all relevant approval routes. On 9 March, the Government announced that the biocides regime would be in scope of a new UK-European Union sanitary and phytosanitary—SPS—agreement as part of the reset negotiations for the relationship between us and the European Union. We do not know the outcome of those negotiations, but the direction of travel, as the Government have made clear, is that the UK will follow a model of dynamic alignment with the European Union for biocide products.

The measures maintain important disease prevention and public health protections while enabling SPS agreement negotiations to conclude and any agreement to be implemented. The changes do not allow the introduction of new biocidal products that have not been evaluated and approved under the rigorous biocides regulatory framework, but rather maintain the availability of existing biocidal active substances and products that are already permitted under the current rules. The changes deliver certainty and continuity, not deregulation.

The regulation on classification, labelling and packaging introduces a streamlined procedure for seeking the consent of devolved Governments to update the mandatory classification and labelling list—the MCL list—by removing duplicative actions. It removes the obligation to automatically consider all initial EU hazard classification proposals—even those for products that nobody is interested in using in the UK—so that the HSE can prioritise what matters for this country and introduce a bespoke GB work plan, setting out the classification priorities for the HSE over a three-year period. The plan will be subject to annual review and agreed following consultation with the devolved Governments.

The regulation will also allow the Health and Safety Executive to respond to changes resulting from later European Union decisions; flexibility that the current regime does not allow. It creates a faster evaluation pathway for adopting EU classification proposals other than in exceptional circumstances. It relocates technical notes to the HSE website so that updates will no longer require legislation, making technical guidance more up-to-date and accessible, and revokes unnecessary notification requirements, eliminating the need for businesses to submit data that is no longer needed.

The changes simplify regulation and introduce greater flexibility to direct limited resources to hazard classification evaluations that are relevant in Britain. They maintain high standards of protection, and do not in any way change the legal requirement for the Health and Safety Executive to evaluate chemicals for mandatory classification on the basis of their being carcinogenic, mutagenic or toxic for reproduction. It will also be possible to legally require the assessment of other types of hazards, such as those in the new EU hazard classes, on a case-by-case basis, until the future legislation is introduced. That allows us to adopt EU measures if we need to and maintain coherent trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

The regulation on the export and import of hazardous chemicals removes the redundant requirement for exports of small quantities of chemicals for use in research, analysis or emergency situations from Great Britain to have special reference identification numbers. It harmonises conditions for granting waivers where importing countries fail to respond to consent requests, removing a barrier to legitimate trade. It makes the Health and Safety Executive, as the designated national authority, responsible for reviewing and updating the GB list, reducing administrative delays and ensuring faster implementation of international obligations. It also aligns our updates more closely with the Rotterdam and Stockholm conventions, giving exporters greater clarity on prohibited substances. All those changes will streamline export procedures and maintain our strong commitment to our international obligations. They will not affect the import of chemicals to this country.

I want to comment on the situation regarding the UK internal market. Under the terms of the Windsor framework, EU chemicals regulations continue to apply in Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland’s place within the UK internal market is important. The more efficient regulatory process and the more timely decision making, which enable alignment with decisions made in the European Union, are expected to have minimal impact on trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland within the UK internal market. There may be exceptional circumstances in which a different regulatory decision is made in Great Britain, but the potential impact on the supply of chemicals to Northern Ireland will continue to be a consideration in making such decisions.

Regulatory divergence has been a big concern following EU exit. In December 2024, the Northern Ireland Assembly applied to trigger the Stormont brake to ask the UK Government to prevent the application of new measures adopted into EU classification, labelling and packaging legislation. It was decided that the conditions for application of the brake were not met, but my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland has committed to addressing the impact of regulatory divergence and to consider how to apply a consistent classification, labelling and packaging regime across the United Kingdom.

The powers in the 2023 Act, to which I have referred a couple of times, have not permitted us to make changes to introduce a consistent regime for classification, labelling and packaging now, in this statutory instrument. However, the HSE has committed to further work, throughout this year and next, on how to make updates to deliver a consistent classification and labelling regime in Great Britain and Northern Ireland, within the UK internal market, using powers in the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Stephen Timms]

I am grateful for the Committee’s support for this statutory instrument. I will have a go at answering the questions raised. Is there a possibility that any of these 173 substances will be banned at some point? Did I understand that correctly?

[Daisy Cooper]

I had two separate questions. The first was whether any of the 173 active substances have faced sustained calls to be banned already. I recognise that none are banned, but have any of them faced calls to be banned because of potential damage to biodiversity or human health?

[Sir Stephen Timms]

I cannot say how many of the 173 have had such calls made in relation to them, but my guess is that some of them probably have because of the nature of the substances. As the hon. Lady says, they all have current approval. The statutory instrument just ensures that they carry on being approved beyond June. However, science is developing our understanding of the impacts of these substances on the environment and our health, and there may be a case to make about some of them. As I said, I do not have the information for the 173, but it would not surprise me if there were significant calls for some of them to be considered for removal. The point is that we do not want that to happen by accident because we did not have the powers to enable them to continue being used.

In terms of the exports that we are addressing in the third of these measures, the UK is a very responsible supplier, and those who supply from the UK are well regulated and behave conscientiously. As I set out earlier, the SI makes sure that if something is ordered to be exported from the UK, and there is no problem with it and there is no response when one has been requested from authorities, the export can continue. That is if there is no response. Clearly, if the response is, “No, this is not approved here”, or something similar, that product would not be supplied. We just want to ensure that what could be an impediment to legitimate trade is not imposed.

I am delighted that my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West and Islwyn (Ruth Jones) has had the opportunity to contribute to the debate, given her a long-standing interest in this area. I did not catch all six of the questions, so perhaps she and I should correspond separately about some of them. She asked why all six new EU classes are not covered here. The question is what will happen at UN level, because our commitment is to align properly with the UN globally harmonised system. There is a question about how the six EU classes will relate to the UN system, and I do not think that we quite know the answer yet. Perhaps I can send my hon. Friend a fuller response on that point.

[Ruth Jones]

I would very much welcome that opportunity to talk to the Minister outside this Committee. In terms of the UN alignment, that is fine, but what happens when the UN has countries that have lower and weaker chemical regulations than the EU and the UK? What happens with the alignment then? Do we align down or up?

[Sir Stephen Timms]

No, we are only aligning with the very highest standards worldwide. The question is: what is the framework for that? We are adopting the UN framework, and we think that is the right one. There is still a question about what the EU will do in relation to the UN classification, but I would be very happy to discuss that further with my hon. Friend. It is not the case that, as she was concerned about, we might permit some things because it is a good idea on industrial production grounds, even if it is not a good idea in terms of human health, animal health or the environment. We are maintaining in these regulations—and indeed in future regulations in this area we are determined to maintain—the very highest standards of protection for human health and for the environment. There is no weakening there at all.

On my hon. Friend’s point about whether we should be aligning more closely, as I have indicated, it is our view that our chemicals regulatory arrangements should be aligned with EU arrangements in the future. This instrument is a step in that direction. There will no doubt need to be further debate and discussion once the current negotiations are concluded, but it is interesting to me that across the whole spectrum, from those whose primary focus is on maintaining human health and safety and the environment to those who are concerned about how much we can export from the UK and how much we can manufacture here and sell elsewhere, pretty much everybody agrees that we should be very closely aligned with the EU.

There are, as I said earlier, some areas where, given that we have quite constrained testing resources, we do not want to be required to test every product that is tested in Europe, if it is a product that is of no use or interest in the UK. There will therefore be instances in which our arrangements are not absolutely identical to the EU arrangements, but we want to align for very good commercial and also environmental and health reasons.

The regulations that the Committee is considering are a practical and necessary set of amendments. They prevent disruption to critical biocidal products that safeguard public health; they reduce unnecessary burdens on business while keeping protections in place; they enable the regulator to focus its resources on the hazards that matter to Great Britain; they strengthen the coherence, efficiency and future readiness of the chemicals regulatory system; they maintain the protection to human health, animal health and the environment; and they make the regulatory process more efficient by delivering a proportionate regulatory environment aligned with the country’s needs. I commend them to the Committee.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That the Committee has considered the draft Chemicals (Health and Safety) (Amendment, Consequential and Transitional Provision) Regulations 2026.