Three key components of a credible UK approach to chemicals regulation are, as at April 2024, currently missing.
These are the Chemicals Strategy whose publication was promised for 2023; the National Action Plan for the Sustainable Use of Pesticides, also promised for publication in 2023; and thirdly and probably most significantly, the registration deadlines for inclusion of chemical substances into the registration system known as UK REACH have been delayed until 2026, 2028 and 2030, depending upon the relevant tonnage bands.
In each case, in its January 2024 report on the UK government’s progress in achieving its declared environmental policy objectives, the Office for Environmental Protection ‘OEP’ has called for early and urgent progress.
Chemicals Strategy
In its 25 Year Environment Plan published in 2018, the UK government said that -
“We will make sure that chemicals are safely used and managed, and that the levels of harmful chemicals entering the environment (including through agriculture) are significantly reduced.”
In its Environmental Improvement Plan published in 2023, the UK government undertook to publish a Chemical Strategy in 2023 -
“to set out our priorities for addressing risks from chemicals, how we will use our regulation, and how we can encourage a move to more sustainable use of chemicals.”
Meanwhile, in December 2022, the UK government became a signatory to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, of which Target 7 commits Parties, by 2030, to “reducing the overall risk of pesticides and highly hazardous chemicals by at least a half…”.
Publication of the Chemicals Strategy is therefore overdue.
National Action Plan on Pesticides
As I have described in a separate article ‘EU Plan to halve pesticide use withdrawn in face of farmers’ opposition’, an EU Regulation which aimed to deliver the international commitment to halve pesticide use in line with the Global Biodiversity Framework was abandoned in February 2024.
However, the UK has undertaken to publish in 2023 a National Action Plan on the Sustainable Use of Pesticides – the consultation on which closed three years ago - but NGOs such as Pesticide Action Network UK report that there are currently 36 pesticides licensed for use in the UK which are banned in the EU. The UK government has, controversially, renewed ‘emergency’ authorisations for neonicotinoid pesticides four years running, and the current absence of a national plan means that even pesticides with are potentially carcinogenic, endocrine disrupting or otherwise highly toxic are still in use in the UK.
EU REACH
The UK was part of the negotiation of the EU’s REACH Regulation which was enacted in 2007, and the UK chemicals industry applied and worked with that Regulation for about 10 years before Brexit. It continues to apply in Northern Ireland.
REACH stands for the Registration, Evaluation and Authorisation of Chemicals. If you want to place a chemical substance on the EU market, it is up to you to produce sufficient data to establish its safety: or if another party has already done that, to purchase access to the data necessary to show that. The EU REACH Regulation contains the key provision of ‘no data, no market’. The dossiers of evidence on the safety of a chemical substance are made up of the different kinds of studies needed to establish that, with shared access provisions to minimise duplication of animal testing.
The system is far from perfect, and is hard to adapt to groups of chemicals. It should have been further streamlined in 2023, but current signs are that the European Commission is unwilling to undertake extensive reform ahead of European Parliament elections. However, the central principle of ‘producer responsibility’ for the safety of chemical substances placed on the market is very important, because the alternative is to set a safety test in statute and to leave it to an under-resourced regulator to struggle with the resulting backlogs.
UK REACH
When the UK voted for Brexit, large parts of the UK chemicals industry urged the then government of Theresa May either to remain within EU REACH; or to seek to negotiate access to EU REACH Registrations and data; or to seek to maintain a “high level of regulatory alignment” with EU REACH. The UK chemicals industry has to apply EU REACH in any event when trading with the EU, and it saw no great advantage in also having to operate a different and diverging system in the UK.
However, later administrations have opted to develop and enact a UK REACH, which some in the chemicals industry estimated may cost the UK £2 billion to set up and run.
It is significant, but not surprising, that this system of regulation is not yet fully functional, and has been subject to several rounds of delayed deadlines for registration of substances, the latest being to 2026, 2028 and 2030. One major disadvantage with the UK REACH system is that it no longer has access to the full range of data within the EU REACH Registrations.
In addition, since 2021 the NGO CHEM Trust estimates that the EU has undertaken 9 Restrictions on chemicals judged to be particularly hazardous; required 5 substances to undergo Authorisation – basically much enhanced scrutiny; and the EU has proposed 31 new Substances of Very High Concern. In each case these actions have not been matched by the UK. As CHEM Trust puts it -
“…the system that the UK is in the process of implementing (UK REACH) is, in CHEM Trust’s view, weaker and less protective of health and the environment than the system it replaced. The new system is diverging from the EU system, with no identifiable benefits, but with considerable societal and economic costs.”
The report of January 2024 from the Office for Environmental Protection warns that –
“If the UK government is to achieve its stated intention of remaining a global scientific leader on chemicals management, it needs to be proactive in identifying and responding to emerging issues, while also delivering the registration phase of UK REACH. There is an urgent need to develop the evidence base on the environmental impacts of chemicals within the UK, to ensure that strategic responses are targeted and proportionate to deliver the best outcomes for people and the environment. It is essential that any divergence from EU REACH is due to robust, evidence-based decision making and applicability to the UK environment, not merely to a lack of resources and capability.”