Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether his Department has plans to create a separate UK chemical database as a result of the UK’s departure from the membership of the European Chemical Agency.

On the 1 January, legislation to bring EU REACH into UK law came into force. This means that businesses wishing to sell or distribute chemicals domestically now need to comply with UK REACH as part of our domestic chemicals regulatory framework

UK REACH retains the fundamental approach and core principles of EU REACH, including the core principle of “no data no market”. This means that businesses that wish to access the GB market will need to supply relevant data to the Health and Safety Executive in order to support the registration of a substance.

Under EU REACH, data is owned by individual businesses and industry consortia. For GB businesses who do not own the data they need, obtaining it is a matter of commercial negotiation between themselves and the businesses that do hold that information. Industry has some time to make these arrangements. This is because we have put in place provisions for the deadlines for the full submission of data to underpin registration dossiers to be staggered, according to the quantity and hazard profile of a substance, over a period of 2, 4 or 6 years from 28 October 2021.