Asked by: Lord Lester of Herne Hill (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
Her Majesty's Government what is their assessment of the benefits and costs to the UK of membership of the European Chemicals Agency.
Answered by Lord Gardiner of Kimble
The European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) provides a range of centralised functions across a number of EU chemicals regimes, including facilitating collective decisions amongst EU Member States. Under the EU REACH Regulation, it manages data about chemicals on the EU market. Chemicals manufactured or imported in quantities above 1 tonne a year must be registered with ECHA to access the single market.
The UK’s current involvement with ECHA comes as part of our membership of EU. ECHA is funded mainly through a combination of industry fees for a variety of the services it provides and direct EU funding. The higher the income generated from fees, the lower the EU budget subsidy. As ECHA is an agency of the EU, the UK’s contribution to its running costs is through our general contribution to the EU budget.
Asked by: Lord Lester of Herne Hill (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
Her Majesty's Government what is their assessment of the benefits and costs to the UK of membership of the European Fisheries Control Agency.
Answered by Lord Gardiner of Kimble
The European Fisheries Control Agency (EFCA) is funded from the EU budget, to which the UK is the second largest net contributor.
Asked by: Lord Lester of Herne Hill (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
Her Majesty's Government what is their assessment of the benefits and costs to the UK of membership of the European Environment Agency.
Answered by Lord Gardiner of Kimble
Within the European Environment Agency budget[1] it is not possible to identify the membership cost for any individual EU Member State. The European Environment Agency undergoes regular independently-conducted evaluations[2] and the UK Government is fully engaged with the evaluation currently in progress[3]. When published in 2018, this evaluation will enhance our understanding of the benefits of European Environment Agency membership.
In common with other EU agencies, as part of exit negotiations the Government will discuss with the EU (and European Environment Agency Member Countries) any potential future relationship with the European Environment Agency.
[1] https://www.eea.europa.eu/about-us/documents/eea-budgets/budget-of-the-eea-2017
[2] https://www.eea.europa.eu/about-us/governance/eea-evaluations/eea-evaluation-2013
[3] http://ec.europa.eu/smart-regulation/roadmaps/docs/2018_env_002_eea_evaluation_en.pdf
Asked by: Lord Lester of Herne Hill (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government why chairing the Environment Agency is a part-time post.
Answered by Lord Gardiner of Kimble
The Agency has a full time Executive and CEO who are responsible for all operational decisions.
The role of the Chairman is to hold the Executive to account through regular meetings and committees and provide leadership and strategic vision for the Board.The Chairman does not operationally manage day to day business and is therefore part-time. This is the usual case for Chair appointments to Public Bodies across Government.