(15 October 2019) The UK Environment Bill sets out a process for amending the UK’s REACH law. UK’s REACH replica is largely a copy of the EU’s chemical safety law, REACH, though with significant differences concerning governance arrangements. The Environment Bill covers a wide range of environmental provisions (nature, air, waste and product standards) and now includes two specific REACH-related sections: re-amending the UK regulations to enforce UK-REACH (setting penalties etc.) and creating an amendment process for the Articles in the main UK-REACH text. This process would allow the Government to amend major parts of the UK-REACH and thus deviate from the EU’s approach. However, it also lists a number of “protected” articles which cannot be modified.
The UK government has previously announced a “Brexit red tape challenge’” aimed at deregulation. As mentioned above, it has also removed text from the former Political Declaration which said that the UK would “consider aligning with Union rules in relevant areas” in order facilitate co-operation with EU chemicals agency ECHA.