The government has been accused of being 'ill-prepared' to take on the regulation of chemicals and maintain chemical trade after Brexit.
This is according to the House of Lords EU Energy and Environment Sub-Committee, which has written to Defra highlighting renewed concerns.
The Committee’s report 'Brexit: chemical regulation', published in November 2018, warned that unless the government can negotiate continued UK participation in REACH, the EU’s chemical regulation system, chemicals registered by UK companies won’t be valid for sale in the EU.
This means the UK will have incomplete safety information about chemicals being used in the UK after Brexit.
The chemicals sector is the UK's second biggest manufacturing industry, with an annual turnover of £32bn.
For decades, it has been managed by the EU's regulatory regime for chemicals, known as REACH, which is in turn managed by the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA).
At European level, the ECHA is one of the key agencies responsible for governing pesticides, along with the European Food Safety Agency (EFSA). For example, the body declared glyphosate to be non-carcinogenic.
And although the government has now identified the body that will be in charge of chemical regulation, the overall response is “vague and insufficient”, the Committee said.
Lord Teverson, Chair of the Sub-Committee, said: “Last year we were hugely concerned about the scale of work that needed to be done to maintain adequate chemical regulation in light of Brexit, and frankly the Minister’s response to our report has done little to alleviate our concerns.
“It seems Brexit could leave us without a functioning and populated UK chemicals database, without an independent and transparent process for risk assessments, and without access to the thousands of chemicals produced by EU-led companies.
“I hope the Minister can provide further assurances on the measures that are being put in place, otherwise we risk a severe impact on the UK chemical and manufacturing industries, and potentially on human and environmental health,” he said.
