My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to follow the noble Lord. I can speak only for myself, as I find that I am not on a committee so I have no expert knowledge in this regard. However, I pay tribute to the work done by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee in its 15th report, which I will refer to.
I know why this statutory instrument is being prepared; my noble friend the Minister set that out clearly in his opening remarks. In the impact assessment, the policy objective in paragraph 14 sets out the terms of the political declaration on the future relationship between the UK and the EU. Perhaps my noble friend can put your Lordships’ minds at rest this afternoon by showing that we will seek more than just a UK-EU free trade area for goods. The difficulty of our meeting to consider this two days before we were due to leave the European Union is that as we do not yet know the circumstances of our leaving, until the House of Commons has taken a view in this regard, we do not know whether we are leaving with no deal or whether there will be a transitional arrangement. In the event of the Prime Minister’s deal being agreed by Parliament, can my noble friend say how Defra and the Government intend to use a possible transition period to ensure continued co-operation between the UK authorities and EU agencies such as the European Chemicals Agency?
I agree with all those who have spoken on the questions raised in this 15th report about additional admin and the potential costs, and I have one request of my noble friend: since the report is strongly worded, and since neither the Expansion Memorandum nor the impact assessment have set out the costs and financial implications, it would be very helpful if he would set those out this afternoon.
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The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, referred to the gross value added. I add that 95,000 jobs were recorded as directly relying on this sector in 2017. Perhaps what is not widely known is that, of the 2,800 chemical businesses, 97.5% are either small and medium-sized businesses or micro-businesses. I think noble Lords are united in being aware of the consequences of our leaving the European Union for that category of SME and micro-business: this sector is especially important in that regard.