Member

Let me unpack the measures. For the biocidal products regulation, this instrument will extend the expiry date for up to 173 approved active substances to 31 July 2031, provided that renewal applications are submitted. This will prevent them lapsing through no fault of the applicants and avoid severe market disruption. It will reform emergency provisions so that essential biocidal products such as drinking water disinfectants may remain available until an authorisation decision is made where the need for use is long term, and it will clarify and extend data protection rules to ensure that businesses investing in scientific data can recover costs consistently across all relevant approval routes. On 9 March this year, the Government announced that the biocides regime would be in scope of a new UK-EU sanitary and phytosanitary agreement as part of the reset negotiations. Although we cannot speculate on the outcome of negotiations, the direction of travel is that the UK plans to follow a model of dynamic alignment with the EU for biocides. This will also supersede previous proposals for the reform of the biocides regime.