Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the effectiveness of the regulation of the sale of concentrated hydrochloric acid online.

Hydrochloric acid is a reportable substance under Part 4 of Schedule 1A to the Poisons Act 1972 (as amended by the Deregulation Act 2015). This means that retailers are required to report any suspicious transactions, significant losses and thefts to the national contact point.

The Home Office uses a range of methods to measure the effectiveness of these controls, including monitoring numbers of suspicious activity reports, and the number that lead to further investigation. Comparing this information with the information available before the controls were in place indicates that the controls have made it easier for authorities to detect attempts to purchase high risk chemicals for illicit purposes.

The substances controlled by the Poisons Act 1972 and the means of evaluating efficacy are continuously reviewed and updated to manage the current threat.