Chloe Alexander argues that changes to the regulation of chemicals show some of the obstacles facing the government in delivering a coherent policy of closer regulatory alignment with the EU.

After years of weak, sclerotic post-Brexit chemical regulation, environmental and public health NGOs were relieved when last year the government committed to a sensible, but significant, shift back towards aligning with EU regulatory protections – still the highest standard globally.

An informal, ‘catch-up’ process has started for reviewing and potentially adding the EU’s ‘Substances of Very High Concern’ list, with a package of broader reforms expected at a later stage, alongside dynamic alignment in some areas under the UK-EU ‘SPS’ deal

But as a UKICE report set out earlier this year, this policy of voluntary alignment faces significant challenges – from the fact it cuts across different departmental competencies to limited resources for deciding where to align. Another problem making a consistent approach difficult is that many of these decisions were delegated to arms-length public bodies, with limited accountability.

This is especially noticeable in new secondary legislation which takes forward changes to chemicals policy which the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) was – unusually – given responsibility for during the EU withdrawal process (having been assigned the role of chemicals regulator). This includes changes to the process for classifying substances as hazardous.

Many thousands of known and suspected harmful chemicals are used in a wide variety of industrial processes and consumer products, and identifying which of them are hazardous is essential for managing their risks and keeping people and the environment safe. Once a substance is classified as hazardous (e.g. carcinogenic or mutagenic) it triggers a range of regulatory protections in areas ranging from worker safety to transportation.

These changes were first developed by HSE under a deregulatory programme of work, initiated by the previous government under the Retained EU Law Act 2023 to make it easier to amend, repeal or replace retained EU laws. They then found a vehicle in a Treasury pro-growth initiative last year and are being taken forward using powers in the Act just before they are about to expire.

The changes remove a statutory obligation on HSE to respond to all new substances classified as hazardous in the EU within a legal timeframe, while giving it delegated powers to choose which substances it will consider for hazard classification and to adopt classifications from other jurisdictions. As most jurisdictions have weaker safety standards than the UK or EU, this risks lowering standards.

A consultation response from HSE said it would restrict its focus exclusively to decisions made by the EU and ‘continue to align with these standards, with divergence occurring only in exceptional circumstances’. But this policy is not reflected in the SI and the exceptional circumstances in which divergence may be considered necessary were later defined very broadly, including wide-ranging economic and industrial considerations.

It will also be difficult to monitor divergence as HSE will no longer be obliged to consider all new EU hazard classifications and will not need to explain any exclusions. A ‘pick and choose’ regulation where the UK accepts some EU hazard classifications and not others is vulnerable to backdoor lobbying, which could mean lower levels of protection compared to the EU and create regulatory uncertainty.

There have also been delays to incorporating six new EU hazard classifications, with only a commitment to consider incorporation over the next year. These classifications already apply in Northern Ireland, and the government last year committed to consult on a consistent chemicals regime across the whole of the UK to safeguard the internal market – but is yet to do so.

The new EU measures include new classifications for endocrine (or hormone) disruptors (EDCs) and persistence, and have been followed by regulations for better protecting consumers and the environment from exposure to substances with these properties. For example, recent EU legislation automatically bans substances classified as endocrine disruptors from toys or in food packaging, that act on warnings from scientists to reduce exposure to EDCs, which are associated with the development of ADHD, certain cancers, obesity and infertility.

It has been HSE’s long-standing position that the UK should not adopt the new EU restrictions unless they are adopted globally – at the UN Globally Harmonised System (GHS) of Classification and Labelling of Chemicals. This is partly due to a viewpoint that these changes should achieve global consensus first, but as industry sometimes jokes, GHS is neither global nor harmonised across territories nor a (mandatory) system.

HSE also takes a less protective approach than the EU to restricting ‘PFAS’ substances, which are harmful to human and environmental health and used in a wide range of everyday goods and industrial processes. HSE’s Director recently described itself as taking “a slightly different philosophical approach” to the EU, based on building up restrictions “more slowly or gradually”, although the lead Defra official was more hopeful about matching the EU’s more comprehensive approach (which is itself yet to be finalised), saying “we may well end up in the same position, but we are too early to say that just yet”.

A divergence in philosophy has also been evident in some of HSE’s other decision-making. For example, it has taken a more light-touch approach than the EU to the industrial use of substances on the ‘authorisation list’, e.g. chromium trioxide, a carcinogenic chemical linked to increased risk of lung and throat cancer. This points to a wider problem identified by the Office for Environmental Protection about a lack of coherence of chemicals policy across government, particularly identifying “fragmented efforts and unclear alignment between agencies such as HSE and Defra”.

In recent days, concern has been expressed about democratic scrutiny of decisions to adopt EU single market rules. But there also needs to be transparency around decisions not to adopt EU regulatory protections, that should be supported by evidence against stringent criteria and open to challenge. Such a framework is essential for upholding our environmental and public health protections, to ensure accountability and guard against undue influence.

By Chloe Alexander, Policy & Advocacy Lead (Chemicals), Wildlife and Countryside Link

6 min read37 min

The timing could hardly be more fitting. As the crisis in the Middle East drives up prices at the petrol pumps, growing numbers of motorists are contemplating going electric – with every EV on the road helping to shield its owner from rising energy prices and bolster the UK’s energy security.

For motorists in my constituency of Camborne, Redruth & Hayle– as well as for the more than the one in ten of my constituents who rely on heating oil to keep their warms home – the war in Iran has created immediate, and very painful, consequences. The RAC Foundation has estimated that since the war began the cost of petrol has jumped by 12 pence per litre and diesel by 25 pence – with British motorists forking out an additional £300 million to keep their cars on the road in less than a month. We are experiencing the second great energy supply shock this decade, Britons are learning all over again how our dependence on imported fossil fuels leaves us acutely vulnerable to global forces beyond our control.

The conflict in the Middle East is vindicating this Labour government’s commitment to getting the UK off the fossil fuels rollercoaster and onto homegrown renewables. And it’s also proving why the Government was right to resist the Conservatives’ calls last year to scrap the Zero Emissions Vehicle (ZEV) mandate, as well as the 2030 ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars.

In fact, the war in Iran lends new urgency to the UK’s Electric Vehicle transition. It’s really quite simple: no matter where the fuel that powers your car was dug up – whether in the North Sea or the Middle East – its price will always be dictated by global markets. That means, in times of war or crisis, British motorists are left paying the price for decisions made in Trump’s White House and Putin’s Kremlin. Every EV we get on the road – increasingly powered by homegrown British renewables – is therefore a vital step forwards in reducing our dependence on oil, and establishing the UK’s long-term energy security. And the more of these EVs that we can build in the UK, with batteries put together in Somerset using lithium mined in Cornwall and processed on Teesside, the better for all the jobs and communities that our car industry sustains.

The EV transition is especially important for those motorists who were hit hardest by the last energy transition. Outside London, around eight in ten households own a car. And while we often wrongly characterise car ownership as a sign of affluence, in much of Cornwall, the opposite is true: here, in rural areas where public transport is now limited, cars are a vital lifeline, helping to connect some of our most vulnerable communities with essential public services and economic opportunities. It’s these drivers who have been hit hardest by soaring prices on our petrol forecourts – and who stand to benefit the most from ditching their petrol and diesel cars and going electric.

For many of these drivers, EVs are becoming an increasingly attractive and affordable alternative to petrol and diesel cars. The Government’s Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) Mandate is driving down the costs of new EVs, as manufacturers compete to sell more EVs to hit their EV sales targets. Meanwhile, EVs coming into the used car market are reaching price parity with their petrol and diesel competitors, with second-hand EV sales increasing by 48 per cent in 2025.

And as more renewables come online, and with ongoing geopolitical tensions all but certain to continue to drive instability in international energy markets, the lifetime savings that come with driving an EV will only continue to grow. Before the conflict in Iran began, a typical EV driver was already saving on average £850 a year charging an EV over fuelling a petrol car. With petrol passing 1.50 a litre, those savings have jumped to over £1000 a year. Were a barrel of oil to hit $120, petrol could hit £1.70, those savings would increase to almost £1,200 a year. If oil were to hit $150 a barrel, petrol could pass £1.90, and the savings that can come from running an EV would jump to almost £1400.

Clearly, the government’s efforts to support the EV transition are working. Manufacturers are defying the naysayers by hitting their EV targets under the ZEV mandate in every year of the scheme’s existence, and 2025 marking a record year for EV sales – with nearly one in four cars sold being electric. This is why I feel that the calls we’re hearing from some quarters for the ZEV Mandate to be weakened are so ill-timed. With Autotrader reporting an 28 percent increase in EV enquiries, and Octopus Electric Vehicles reporting an 89 per cent increase in orders, interest in EVs has increased significantly since the conflict in Iran began – a conflict that has made it abundantly clear that the UK needs to make the switch away from cars that are powered by foreign oil, to cars that are powered by domestic renewables. Now is the moment to accelerate the UK’s EV transition, not to slow it down.

But it’s also clear that if we’re protecting British motorists from global volatility in the long-term, there’s more that we need to do. That includes making it easier for people in terraced houses to charge their vehicles from home, building out the country’s EV charging infrastructure, particularly in rural areas, and looking at how to ensure that drivers who rely on public chargers get a fair deal.

We also need to see more concerted efforts to tackle what the Department for Transport has described as the “concerted campaign of misinformation” surrounding the EV transition. In 2024, the House of Lords’ Environment and Climate Change Committee identified misinformation as being a key barrier to EV uptake and called on the government to show “commensurate urgency” in “tackling misinformation and raising awareness about the benefits of EVs with the public”. More than two years on, as the Commons Transport Select Committee heard this week, misinformation continues to be concerningly widespread.

Knowing that you have all the facts to hand is essential before committing to a major purchase like a car. But as, new polling published this month has found, the majority of drivers of non-EVs scored just two or less out of ten in an EV knowledge test – with, for instance, almost half of respondents wrongly believing that EVs are more likely to catch fire than petrol or diesel cars when in fact the opposite is true. Unsurprisingly, the polling found that those with such a poor understanding of EVs are significantly less likely to want their next car to be an EV than those who scored well. That’s the result of this “campaign of misinformation” at work.

It’s sobering that so many people are now worse off because misleading information put them off switching to EVs. The more government, the media and industry act together to tackle this and improve public understanding, the better.

Gairloch looking toward Strath Bay, North-West Highlands of Scotland (Alamy)

4 min read31 min

My constituency of Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire, is an extreme example of what is happening across our island.

In the Highlands and Islands, youth emigration and rural depopulation are nothing less than an existential threat. Every year there’s worse news about plummeting school rolls, struggling local services, and communities growing older and older. Between 2001 and 2024, the Highlands saw the population aged 75 and over increase by 78 per cent, placing a massive burden on struggling social care provision.

Meanwhile, schools like Mallaig High School have seen pupil numbers fall from 147 pupils in 2005 to just 100 today, a 32 per cent drop, and in Gairloch there’s been a 47 per cent decrease. Availability of Stem teachers is limited, and these subjects are what the better-paying employers want. The families are leaving, looking for higher-paid work and available housing, and our young people are unable to see a future locally.

I believe that rural communities are considered as an afterthought, not helped by the fact that decision makers – in my case, Highland Council, the Scottish government and the UK government – are concentrated in Inverness, Edinburgh and London, far removed from rural realities. Funding pots are focused on population centres. I recently spoke to communities who felt abandoned because decision makers at CalMac had decided from behind a desk 150 miles south that their ferry services weren’t important enough to be classed as “lifeline”.

The cost of living only deepens the challenge. In remote Scotland, a Scottish affairs committee inquiry found the cost of living was estimated to be up to 30 per cent higher than in urban areas. Fuel poverty affects around 33 per cent of households, one of the highest rates anywhere in the UK. Housing shortages make it even harder for young people and families to stay or settle. As a result of the lack of working-age people, employers across the Highlands cannot recruit for essential roles in care, hospitality and other sectors that underpin the west coast economy.

Immigration policy is also part of the problem. Controls set at Westminster fail to reflect the acute labour shortages facing rural communities. Areas that need workers, whether in social care, tourism or local services, are too often unable to get the people required to sustain them.

There are also the missed opportunities. The Highlands sits at the heart of the UK’s renewable energy potential, yet communities see little benefit in terms of local jobs or long-term economic gain. The SNP cut college provision and apprenticeship pathways by £100m, adding to the shortfall of education and training pathways that have would allowed local young people to enter these industries and stop the rural brain-drain.

This trajectory doesn’t have to be inevitable. The Faroe Islands, which I visited with the Scottish Affairs Committee recently, offers a powerful counter example. With a population of around 55,000, they have maintained a stable population by investing in connectivity and education, paying higher average wages, and ensuring that people have a reason to stay.

That contrast should prompt serious reflection. In the Highlands, the opposite is too often true. A lack of housing, shortage of NHS staff, unreliable ferry services, and inadequate infrastructure are all making it harder to live and work in these communities.

Demographic change on this scale cannot be ignored. Without action, we risk hollowing out communities that have existed for generations. But with the right policies – targeted investment in skills, better infrastructure, action on housing, and embracing a migrant policy where there are labour shortages – we can turn the tide before it’s too late.

Angus MacDonald is Liberal Democrat MP for Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire

3 min read15 min

Not a parody. A fabricated version of you – saying things you never said, doing things you never did, appearing in content you never agreed to.

AI deepfake technology means this is no longer the realm of science fiction – it is already happening. As the first MP to be the target of a deepfake political disinformation attack, I’ve seen first-hand the disruption it can cause our democracy.

In 2022, as minister for AI and the Intellectual Property Office, I rejected tech sector lobbying for broad text and data mining freedoms after hearing from the APPG for the Creative Industries. Without safeguards, such changes would have undermined the rights of musicians, writers and artists in a sector worth £146bn a year. If the UK is to lead in both AI and the creative industries, the burden must be on AI to show it can coexist – an unchecked ‘free-for-all’ serves neither.

I therefore welcome the government’s recent proposal to revisit digital copyright law, and its recognition that policy “must support prosperity for all UK citizens”. But this is not only about prosperity. It is also about ensuring AI is not used to undermine our democracy, security, society or fundamental rights.

Having spent 30 years in technology and innovation, and as the founder of one of the UK’s earliest AI drug discovery companies in 2001, I fully recognise the transformative potential to deliver enormous economic and public service benefits.

The UK already has the third-largest AI sector globally and the largest in Europe, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development estimates that AI adoption could increase UK productivity growth by around £55bn a year. But harnessing innovation requires regulation. As I set out in the 2021 prime minister’s Taskforce on Innovation, Growth and Regulatory Reform, the UK as a trusted regulator has a chance to lead in setting appropriate regulatory standards in new markets from AI to fusion energy and space debris.

With the rapid dissemination of deepfake tools allowing someone’s identity to be stolen and misused by anyone, we should establish a fundamental right to identity protection in the digital age.

Recent evidence from the Science, Innovation and Technology Select Committee highlighted the scale of the challenge. When questioned, the big tech platforms showed little sense of responsibility for protecting UK values, democratic norms or citizens’ rights. By allowing US and Chinese tech dominance – controlled by a small group with limited accountability – we risk outsourcing digital sovereignty and undermining UK values, conventions and laws.

Other countries are beginning to act. Denmark has proposed strengthening protections over individuals’ likenesses in its copyright framework. In the US, some states are proposing new laws to prevent the unauthorised use of AI-generated digital replicas.

The tech industry is pushing back with a new pro-AI group, Innovation Council Action, supporting candidates and policies in US elections that oppose AI regulation. They have the support of Donald Trump’s adviser David Sacks, and plan to spend at least $100m on backing candidates. This comes on top of nearly $325m already raised by other pro-AI organisations and individuals.

Parliament now faces a choice: lightly regulate AI, or set clear, values-based rules to prevent it undermining our democracy, society and economy. Legislating to protect UK citizens, society, economy and democracy from the widespread abuse of identity theft is a good place to start. 

Britain is now on course to reach a tipping point where illegal operators overtake licensed firms in advertising spend, fundamentally reshaping what consumers see.  

New independent analysis from WARC, the global marketing intelligence firm, reveals that unregulated firms now account for close to half of all UK gambling advertising spend, and on current trends are set to become the majority within two years. WARC is also the source of the widely cited near £2bn gambling advertising figure used in media coverage, providing a consistent and authoritative picture of the market. 

According to WARC, the total UK advertising market is forecast to reach £1.9bn by October 2026. But that figure masks what is really happening.  

Licensed operators are reducing their advertising, with spend expected to fall by 9.2 per cent this year to £1.1bn. Meanwhile, the harmful unregulated sector is expanding rapidly, with spend projected to grow by 32 per cent and exceed £1bn within two years.  

On current trends, by 2028, unregulated and illegal betting and gaming advertising is expected to account for the majority of total spend, overtaking licensed operators. This should serve as a wake-up call to policymakers across the House. Just a few years ago, licensed operators accounted for more than 80 per cent of gambling advertising spend. That share has now fallen to just over half and is projected to drop below 50 per cent within the next two years.  

The direction of travel is clear: regulated firms are scaling back their advertising, while the harmful black market grows rapidly. That should give policymakers pause. 

Advertising is simply how operators compete for customers. The real issue is whether that competition is happening within the regulated market or being captured by the illegal black market. Within the regulated market, there are enforceable standards: age verification, safer gambling tools, self-exclusion schemes, and clear accountability. 

But the regulated sector is under increasing pressure. New tax changes, which make Britain one of the most heavily taxed betting and gaming jurisdictions in the world, and the current proposed financial risk assessment regime are adding cost and complexity. 

That pressure is set to increase further. The industry has already committed to removing betting sponsors from the front of Premier League shirts from next season, a step we support as part of raising standards. But as visible, regulated advertising reduces, demand does not disappear. It shifts into less regulated channels, where illegal operators are already growing rapidly. This is already visible in football, with only 3 of the 11 Premier League front-of-shirt betting sponsors holding a full UK Gambling Commission licence. 

That shift is happening across the advertising landscape, but it is most visible in digital channels, where unregulated operators are particularly active and enforcement is most challenging.  

WARC’s analysis shows digital channels now dominate gambling advertising, with search and online display accounting for the largest share of spend.  

Online and social media are more likely to reach under-18s than traditional broadcast media, making those protections harder to apply in practice. 

Unregulated operators are not bound by UK standards. They do not carry out the same age checks or safer gambling measures, contribute to tax, sport or research, and often operate outside the reach of UK enforcement. 

By contrast, the regulated betting and gaming sector supports 109,000 jobs, contributes £6.8bn to the UK economy and raises £4bn in tax each year. It is a significant British industry, generating growth, investment and employment across the country. 

Yet the harmful black market is becoming an increasingly visible part of the advertising landscape. 

The question is not simply whether there should be less advertising, but whether it is being driven by the regulated market or the illegal one. 

Focusing on licensed operators is the wrong approach. It will not reduce advertising and risks driving further growth in the illegal market.  

If current trends continue, Britain will soon reach a point where most gambling advertising no longer comes from within the regulated system. 

That is not a safer market. It is one where consumers are exposed to operators with no safeguards, no accountability, and no protections.  

The government must now go further and faster, building on its new black market taskforce and £26m in additional funding to the Gambling Commission to tackle it, to clamp down on illegal operators flooding advertising channels before they overwhelm the regulated market. 

What did she do to address this?