REACH (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2026

There was a consultation in 2024 and we then published our proposed approach to the ATRm on 30 March 2026, providing long-awaited clarity for industry. The ATRm will reduce the information that businesses must submit for transitional UK REACH registrations. It is expected to reduce the one-off costs to industry of those registrations by around 70%. At the same time, the model will maintain the important protections provided by UK REACH. It recognises that companies placing chemicals on the Great Britain market remain responsible for understanding and managing the risks that those chemicals may present to human health and the environment. Registration will therefore remain central to ensuring that businesses meet that responsibility and properly manage the risks arising from the hazardous properties of chemicals and how they are used in Great Britain.

The Government are acting decisively by bringing forward the legislation on the ATRm so that industry knows what it needs to do in good time for the extended deadlines. However, the ATRm cannot be implemented in time for the first existing deadline of 27 October 2026. It is therefore necessary to extend the deadlines once more to ensure that we put in place a robust and effective policy framework. Extending the deadlines will provide the additional time needed to finalise and implement the ATRm in a proportionate and workable way. It will also provide businesses with the certainty that they need to plan for compliance and help to maintain continuity in important supply chains. Without this extension, businesses would have to meet the existing deadlines and submit the full registration information currently required by UK REACH, despite the Government’s clear intention to replace those requirements and reduce the £2 billion cost to businesses by around 70%.

I turn to the second change introduced by this instrument. The regulations amend the deadlines by which the HSE must complete compliance checks on 20% of registration dossiers. These dates must remain aligned with the revised registration submission deadlines. Otherwise, the HSE could be required to complete compliance checks before the relevant registration information had been submitted. Under these regulations, the compliance check deadlines will move to 27 October 2030, 27 October 2032 and 27 October 2036. The time available between each registration deadline and its corresponding compliance check deadline remains unchanged.

As with the previous amendment to UK REACH made using powers in the Environment Act 2021, we have followed the safeguards set out in Schedule 21 to that Act. We have worked closely with both the Scottish and Welsh Governments, who have both consented to this instrument. We conducted a public consultation to ensure that stakeholders could provide their views and evidence.

We have also published a statement confirming that the amendments are consistent with the overarching aims of UK REACH, including the objective of ensuring a high level of protection for human health and the environment. We have published an impact assessment that demonstrates that extending the deadlines will reduce unnecessary costs to businesses while maintaining an effective regulatory framework. The impact assessment builds on the options assessment published in March 2026, which the Regulatory Policy Committee rated fit for purpose.

The chemicals industry believes that the regulations before us this afternoon should be approved. For the reasons the Minister set out, it is so important to have the necessary extension to the UK REACH registration and compliance deadlines—again, we are going on to finalise the approach on the ATRm. However, the industry has raised with me—I want to share this with the Minister this afternoon—the fact that the revised timetable remains challenging. Although the regulations extend the first registration deadline by three years, they also compress subsequent deadlines into a much shorter period, which will put enormous pressure on the companies concerned. The industry also says, more importantly, that approval should not be interpreted as meaning that the underlying challenges have been resolved. There remains significant uncertainty regarding access to registration data, the cost of compliance and the risk that businesses could be forced to infringe intellectual property rights in order to meet UK registration requirements.

Therefore, I press the Minister to make sure that the Government provide certainty regarding future registration requirements by three specific asks this afternoon. First, avoid placing businesses in situations where compliance conflicts with intellectual property rights, ensuring lawful and affordable access to the data needed for registration. This is currently not the case. Secondly, and alternatively, look to other economies such as Switzerland, which has successfully implemented a model that supports innovation and competitiveness and strengthens supply chain resilience, all while maintaining the same robust health and environmental protections as the EU. Thirdly, monitor whether the compressed timetable from 2029 to 2031, which the Minister set out, remains realistic for both industry and regulators. The goal here is not less regulation or further delays but a model, like the one that exists in Switzerland, that protects the environment, for the reasons the Minister set out, while allowing businesses to drive growth, which lies at the heart of the Government’s priority in economic policy.

I believe the outline model that the Minister has set out this afternoon still leaves Great British manufacturers and importers facing avoidable cost—which they were specifically told would not be the case at the time that Britain left the European Union—inhibits the introduction of new products to the Great British market and leaves serious questions over proprietary data requirements, despite the goalposts on regulating chemicals via REACH having shifted to EU alignment by default.

I welcome the opportunity to raise these issues today. On 13 May 2026 the ACA, the Alliance of Chemical Associations, wrote to the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, the honourable Emma Hardy, to raise these points, but they are very pertinent as well to the regulations before us this afternoon. The Government, and particularly the department, owe it to the chemicals industry to make sure that we can reduce this dichotomy of having two registers and the duplication of costs that it currently has to face.

First, can she set out the milestones that will determine whether the ATRm is delivered on time, given that the design and implementation are not, as she described, expected to be completed until summer 2027? The Committee needs some confidence that we are moving towards some kind of stable system, not simply pushing the problem further down the road. Will the Minister also confirm how progress will be monitored and how often updates will be published? What will trigger, in turn, some kind of remedial action if the timetable slips? There is a danger of the perception that the sector continues to run on a series of sticking plasters; I am sure she appreciates that.

Secondly, what assurance can she give that any future divergence from EU REACH will be strictly evidence led and transparent? I read somewhere that the system is like reading the description on the back of a book without having any of the information inside the book that is necessary to move at pace. The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee has already raised concerns about the lack of clarity around the circumstances in which the Government would diverge, and the Office for Environmental Protection has highlighted the problem of new EU hazard classes that have not yet been brought into GB law. How will the Government avoid creating an unpredictable system in which decisions appear to be made case by case, without a clear scientific basis? I think this is something that the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, was reaching towards. If the default position is alignment with EU REACH unless there are compelling reasons to diverge, we need to know what those reasons are, how they will be tested, and how the public and Parliament will be able to scrutinise them.

If that is the case, why will the Government not take the same approach to the SPS regulations soon to be determined by the EU, in particular on the role of precision breeding?

I will take advantage of this opportunity to ask one question on something not directly related to this SI: the chemical Asulox. Emergency authorisations for its use ended a few years ago, and we are already seeing the impact of the withdrawal of Asulox from the market, as bracken moves further and further up the hill, outcompeting grass, outcompeting degraded peat and undermining our habitats. Will the Minister commit to take that away and see whether anything can be done to reintroduce Asulox to the market? I very much look forward to her response.