Recommendation 12

The regulators told us they are taking action to mitigate issues around access to data. For example, in competition and consumer law enforcement, CMA can investigate itself and use its own powers to gather information.31 Despite no longer being able to share confidential data, it also told us that it has good working relationships with the European Commission and has launched three cases in parallel.32 To monitor food safety, FSA has developed a horizon-scanning data application that extracts information on food safety incidents from open-data sources. It told us the tool has helped it identify 27 food safety incidents, including listeria in some mushroom imports.33 However, it told us this does not compensate in full and managing food incidents is more work than it was before.34 HSE explained it is working closely with the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra), which is responsible for Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals policy, to find a solution to the loss of data from EU REACH that will cost significantly less than the industry estimates for replicating the data. It also told us that in general, the core safety data it needs to assess chemicals safety is available from public sources and data it already holds.35 However, we received written evidence from Green Alliance raising concerns that Defra’s proposals to take a more risk-based approach to the data requirements (based on usage and exposure data in a UK context) are the result of efforts to reduce the costs involved rather than any benefits to human health and the environment.36