Cross-party report urges group-based restrictions on PFAS, a national polluter-pays Remediation Fund, and expanded UK destruction capacity for stockpiled waste streams.
MPs on the Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) have called on the Government to introduce phased restrictions on non-essential uses of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) from 2027, starting with food packaging, cookware and school uniforms.
The cross-party report, published yesterday (23 April), recommends the UK move to a group-based approach to restriction rather than controlling PFAS one compound at a time, warning that substance-by-substance regulation has produced a "whack-a-mole" dynamic in which industry substitutes one forever chemical for another of equivalent concern.
PFAS are a class of more than 10,000 synthetic compounds used for their resistance to water, oil and heat. The same carbon-fluorine bonds that make them useful in non-stick cookware, stain-resistant textiles, firefighting foams and semiconductor manufacturing also make them persistent in the environment and in human tissue, prompting the tag of 'forever chemicals'.
The EAC recommends that the Government apply the precautionary principle and an "essential use" test to regulate the class as a whole, with derogations only where a use is necessary for health, safety or the functioning of society and where no safer alternative is available. That approach mirrors the restriction proposal submitted to the European Chemicals Agency by five European states in 2023 and currently under consideration at EU level.
Committee chair Toby Perkins MP said the Government's current PFAS Action Plan amounted to "a plan to eventually have a plan", and that the pace of policy development was out of step with the scale of the contamination problem now emerging across the UK.
The report devotes substantial attention to the village of Bentham in North Yorkshire, where blood tests conducted in March found some of the highest recorded PFAS levels in UK residents. Contamination has been traced to a former Angus Fire site, now operated by AGC Chemicals, which manufactured aqueous film-forming foams used in firefighting for several decades. The committee points to Bentham as an example of the legacy liabilities that a polluter-pays framework would need to address.
Commenting on the report, Sian Sutherland, Co-Founder of A Plastic Planet, said: "Bentham is just a glimpse of what is already in the ground, the water and our bodies across the country. Restricting non-essential uses is the bare minimum, but focusing on a handful of consumer products while leaving the industrial tap running misses the point. If the Government is serious about forever chemicals it has to regulate the class, fund the clean-up and build the destruction capacity, not pick off one use at a time."
To fund remediation of contaminated sites, the EAC recommends that Defra consult by March 2027 on a National PFAS Remediation Fund financed on a polluter-pays basis, with producers and historic users contributing according to their share of UK PFAS production and release. The fund would cover source investigation, containment and, where feasible, destruction of contaminated soil, groundwater and treatment-plant residuals.
Destruction capacity is a separate constraint. The UK has only two hazardous waste incinerators operating at the high temperatures required to break carbon-fluorine bonds, and the committee heard evidence that neither has spare capacity to process the volumes of PFAS-bearing waste already in storage. The report calls on the Government to commit within six months to an accelerated research and development programme on alternative destruction technologies, including supercritical water oxidation and plasma-arc processes.
The EAC also notes that the UK is lagging the EU on group-based restrictions and on wider regulatory infrastructure. Drinking water limits have now been set by the Drinking Water Inspectorate, but equivalent thresholds for food, soil and agricultural inputs remain undeveloped, leaving producers, regulators and local authorities without clear reference values for contamination found outside the water supply.
Defra has said it will respond to the committee's recommendations in due course.
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How will the government and DMOs address the challenges of including glass in DRS while ensuring a level playing field across the UK?
There's no easy solution to include glass in the DRS while maintaining a level playing field. Potential approaches include a phased introduction of glass, potentially with higher deposits to reflect its logistical challenges. The government and DMOs could incentivise innovation in glass packaging design and subsidise dedicated return points for glass-handling. Exemptions for smaller businesses unable to handle glass might also be necessary. Any successful solution will likely blend several approaches. It must address the differing priorities of devolved administrations, balance environmental benefits with logistical and cost implications, and be supported by robust consumer education campaigns emphasizing the importance of glass recycling.