The UK parliament’s Environmental Audit Committee launches its second inquiry on the future of environmental law and policies. It will focus on the scope of REACH in the country. The new inquiry, which has a submissions deadline of 20 January, has invited responses on questions including:
- What scope is there for the UK to pursue a divergent approach to chemicals regulation from the EU, once Brexit is complete?
- What principles should a UK chemicals regulation regime follow?
- What are the likely practical implications of having a UK-only chemicals regulatory policy for the environment, public safety and UK industry?
A survey in November of UK trade bodies, representing downstream industrial sectors, showed a range of attitudes on whether the UK should continue to implement REACH and other EU chemical legislation post Brexit, or adopt its own national policy.
Three possible scenarios
If the UK leaves the EU as a result of the June 2016 EU referendum, a number of scenarios as to what happens with chemicals regulation are possible:
- The UK could join the EEA (European Economic Area) or agree a FTA (Free Trade Agreement) with the EU which would include REACH. In these circumstances chemicals regulation in the UK would not change and there would be no chemical-related issues to disrupt the trade of goods with the rest of Europe.
- The UK could agree an FTA with the EU without REACH, or could leave the EU without an agreement – in both cases REACH would cease to apply.
- The UK Government has proposed a ‘Great Repeal Bill‘ to transfer EU laws into UK laws, but the way in which REACH works, with an EU-level Agency ECHA and EU-level decision making, means that there is no simple way of transferring it into UK law.
Prime Minister Theresa May has said that leaving the EU will involve converting the body of EU law into UK law, under the above-mentioned Great Repeal Bill. But the committee notes that the UK government ‘has said that up to a third of EU environmental law cannot simply be ‘copy-pasted’ into UK law. [It] will require additional work to ensure that the UK maintains the current level of environmental protection.’
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