Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, pursuant to the debate of 25 February 2019, on Exiting the European Union (Consumer Protection) motion debate, Official Report column 75, what progress has been made on setting up the IT system intended to support the establishment of UK REACH.

In the event of a no-deal scenario, the UK REACH IT system will provide the critical functionality needed to support UK REACH and provide continuity for UK business. REACH IT is being built in a phased approach, prioritising all essential industry user functions for the end of March 2019. This will enable industry to register new chemicals and those with existing REACH registrations to provide the UK Agency, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), with details to verify those registrations.

We have tested this system in recent weeks with over 100 industry users, receiving positive feedback during its testing phase. The decision was made not to switch to deploying contingency plans as we are confident that the UK REACH IT system will be ready from 29 March.