Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Ms Ferguson): I very much welcome Sarah-Jane Murphy, who is from the chemicals and industrial pollution policy branch at the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs, and Mark McGregor, head of the trade and Windsor framework branch at the Department for the Economy. When you are settled in and ready, we will take your presentation. Thank you.

Mr Mark McGregor (Department for the Economy): Thank you, Chair. Good morning. I will lead the evidence on behalf of the Departments. Thank you very much for inviting us to provide information to you on the proposal. DFE has responsibility for two of the chemicals regimes that are covered and can provide comment on a third, while DAERA has responsibility for the remaining one and shares responsibility with DFE on another.

This morning, we are considering a proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and Council on the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) amending various regulations. I will refer to it as "the proposal". The proposal will amend the following regulations. The first is regulation 1907/2006, concerning the registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals (REACH). REACH is a cross-cutting area, where DAERA and DFE share responsibility. Scientific and technical advice in the area is provided by the Health and Safety Executive of Great Britain (HSE) under an agency agreement. The second regulation is 528/2012, concerning the making available, marketing and use of biocidal products. Biocidal products are the responsibility of the Department for the Economy. They are substances or preparations containing active substances that are designed to control or destroy harmful organisms such as bacteria, funguses, pests or algae. I will refer to that regulation as the "BPR" throughout. The third regulation that is being amended is regulation 649/2012, concerning the export and import of hazardous chemicals, which I will refer to as prior informed consent (PIC). PIC is a reserved area. It governs the trade in certain hazardous chemicals that are banned or severely restricted. It places obligations on companies that wish to export those chemicals to non-EU countries or import them. The final regulation that is being amended is 2019/1021 on persistent organic pollutants (POPs). POPs are organic substances that persist in the environment, accumulate in living organisms and pose a risk to our health and the environment.

Overall, the proposal reallocates and consolidates tasks between four EU agencies, including the European Chemicals Agency. Those are internal governance matters of the EU and are assessed to have no direct impact on Northern Ireland. The proposal is linked to the EU's "one substance, one assessment" package, which aims to streamline assessments of chemicals across EU legislation, strengthen the knowledge base on chemicals and ensure early detection and action on emerging chemical risks. As part of that, significant tasks will be reallocated and consolidated between four EU agencies, including ECHA, to ensure coherent and transparent safety assessments of chemicals.

The regulation makes the following specific changes. It strengthens the capacity of the Committee for Risk Assessment (RAC) and the Committee for Socio-Economic Analysis (SEAC). It reallocates the Scientific Committee on Consumer Safety (SCCS) from the European Commission to ECHA and clarifies its remit. With that reallocation, SCCS will be a stand-alone committee of the agency, similar to RAC, SEAC and the Biocidal Products Committee (BPC). The contribution of SEAC to the work of the BPC on the assessment of active substances will also be reallocated. It will enhance cooperation across the EU agencies and across different EU chemicals regulations and formalise ad hoc agreements to form part of ECHA's mandate, such as the European Observatory for Nanomaterials, the EU chemicals legislation finder and occupational exposure limits, and participation of ECHA in the framework of EU research programmes. It will also obligate member states to nominate at least two members to RAC and two members to SEAC to respond to increased workload and provide representation at the management board. It increases the sustainability of ECHA's financial model by removing the segregation of budgets across different pieces of legislation. It also provides a legal framework to manage the task across different pieces of legislation and ensure consistency, efficiency and transparency over the chemicals assessments across legislation implemented by ECHA. Finally, on those bullet points, it will enhance ECHA's cooperation with other EU agencies to avoid divergent scientific opinions and to foster assessments in line with the "one substance, one assessment" approach.

The proposed regulation aims to update and strengthen the EU system for regulating chemicals, giving ECHA a more central and clearly defined role in the management of chemical risks and promoting a sustainable chemicals industry. As the regulation is a reorganisation of internal EU institutional and regulatory management structures, there are no anticipated direct effects or implications for Northern Ireland. It is, therefore, our initial assessment that there will be no significant impact to the everyday life of communities in Northern Ireland in a way that is liable to persist.

I will move to the Committee's initial questions. Some of those were directed at DAERA, and there is a DAERA answer and a DFE answer. I will indicate which has come from which Department.

The first question was:

DAERA has advised:

DFE has had a contribution from the Health and Safety Executive of Great Britain, which provides the Department with scientific and technical advice. It has advised:

— our local Health and Safety Executive for Northern Ireland (HSENI) —

You asked:

The response from our DAERA colleagues was:

The final question that we received was:

DAERA has contributed as follows:

We also had further contribution from the Health and Safety Executive of Great Britain. It states:

That concludes our introductory evidence. I am very happy to take any questions.

The Chairperson (Ms Ferguson): Thank you, Mark. There are no questions for you, so thank you very much.