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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment he has made of the potential effect on the number of jobs in the chemicals sector on Teesside of the UK diverging from REACH regulations.

When we leave the EU we will bring Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) into UK law, retaining what it sets out to achieve including a high level of protection of human health and the environment.

The nature of our future trading relationship with the EU is a matter to be settled during the next phase of negotiations.

The Government published “EU Exit: Long-term economic impacts” in November 2018. This paper provides estimates of the economic impact of a range of future trading relationships with the EU by sector. One of the drivers of this estimate of impact is the cost of potential regulatory divergence.