My Lords, I support this amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, for it guards against lowered standards while still enabling the United Kingdom to do much better. It also requires transparency on any change from EU standards on the control of chemicals.
No one would argue in favour of slippage of standards. However, many of us believe that, as the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, has just outlined, for technical and other reasons such standards can slip very easily all the same.
This amendment prevents that. Yet its expedients should not wrongly be viewed as a restrictive measure of conformity to the EU, of which we are no longer a member, but instead as an opportunity for the United Kingdom to take a lead internationally by setting even higher standards of our own.