REACH etc. (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 — House of Lords, 2019-03-26
Topic: Environment
Robin Teverson (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I have tabled an amendment to this Motion, and speak very much as the chair of your Lordships’ EU Energy and Environment Sub-Committee. We deal with Defra issues. We issued a report on Brexit and the chemicals industry which has not yet been debated on the Floor of the House, so that is why I want to bring up some of these issues here I will give a little background about the chemicals industry, because it is key to this debate. It is the second-largest manufacturing industry in the UK, after food processing. It has a total gross value added of something like £12 billion. It is extremely dependent on trade: some 60% of its output goes to the EU and some 80% of our chemicals imports come from there. It employs half a million people. Not just the chemicals industry but a huge proportion of industries in this country use chemicals in their supply chains. Therefore, it is not just the chemicals industry that is affected by this but all those other businesses that use chemicals in their processes, particularly those that are downstream in the manufacturing process. They do not import, export or manufacture chemicals themselves but they use them, so they are affected by the REACH regulations I will be more critical than I usually am, as chair of the committee. The committee found—and felt very strongly, if I am honest—that Defra was not on the front foot on this issue. Understandably, Defra focuses on agriculture, fisheries, flooding and stuff looked at by the Environment Agency; the EA obviously has a role in this. When we had Ministers and senior department officials in front of us, we felt very strongly that they did not understand the gravity, timescale and effect on industry of coming out of REACH. That is not the case now, but perhaps this SI is an example of trying to catch up and lay a statutory instrument that is sufficient for the industry’s needs, but not being able to do that quickly enough I will talk a little about the European Chemicals Agency. To give your Lordships an idea, it has 500 staff, a budget of around £100 million, and 21,000 registered substances, of which only about 5,000 are registered by UK companies and organisations. That is a serious operation. What I want to come back to is that all of its functions will now have to be replicated in the United Kingdom. That is essential after Brexit. There will still be 21,000 chemicals that the UK will want to use, which will have to be authorised, recorded and checked up on, to make sure that the regulations are applied The committee very much welcomed the Prime Minister’s view that we should remain part of the European Chemicals Agency. We agreed with that very strongly. But of course that is not possible if we are not in the single market or a member of the EU or EEA. That is just not on offer. We asked many times what the Government have managed to negotiate further with the EU on this. They are not able to, because the EU will not do that. It is not in the Government’s power to arrange that pre-Brexit, unfortunately. That is the situation: we cannot be part of the chemicals agency and the REACH regime if we are not part of the single market The committee was also struck by the absolute unanimity of the whole industry, NGOs and the scientific community—far more than on any other subject we have looked at, whether fisheries, biosecurity or food supplies—that we should try still to be part of the European Chemicals Agency; or, if not, we should have total alignment with its decisions, however we manage to do that.