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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, pursuant to the Answer of 26 February 2020 to Question 18441 on Per- and Polyfluorinated Alkyl Substances and with reference to the delay in publishing the Government’s Chemicals Strategy, if he will take steps to introduce a restriction on those chemicals as a group in line with the EU REACH restriction proposal ahead of that strategy.

Per- and polyfluorinated alkyl substances (PFAS) constitute a group of thousands of chemicals that are widely used in consumer and industrial products.

A number of PFAS are already banned or highly restricted. There are existing restrictions on the use of certain PFAS under the Stockholm Convention, to which the UK is a signatory, and under the REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals) regulations.

At the end of the Transition Period the UK will put in place its own independent chemicals regulatory framework, UK REACH. Existing restrictions under REACH will be brought into UK law and therefore will continue to apply in the UK. Our commitments as a signatory to the Stockholm Convention will also continue to apply.

Future UK decisions to control the environmental and human health impacts of substances will be taken under our independent regime and will be based on rigorous assessment of the scientific evidence, including looking at approaches taken by chemical regimes across the world.

Defra continues to work with regulators to improve the understanding of the emissions and risks of PFAS in the UK.