WWT cautiously welcomes Environment Bill
The Prime Minister has announced England will have an Environment Bill. This is great news.
Firstly, well done to all WWT members for your part in securing this. In 2015 you gave us your ideas for a Bill, in 2016 we presented them to Parliament as part of a WWT proposal, and in 2017 you supported our #timetobeheard campaign to nudge the Government into action.
A particular well done to WWT’s former Head of Government Affairs, Dr Richard Benwell, who wrote the proposals so well that the Government then head-hunted him to help with their implementation.
But that doesn’t mean that he, nor the Government, gets an easy ride. Firstly there is no detail yet – we only have the bare bones of the ambition for a Bill. And secondly, there is an element of the Good, the Bad and the Ugly in all legislation.
The Good
Teresa May was quick, and right, to highlight this will be the first Environment Bill since 1995 when John Major was Prime Minister. In this sense, she will have delivered where Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron did not.
The Bill will provide a legislative vehicle for the Government’s 25 Year Environment Plan, announced by the Prime Minister at WWT London Wetland Centre in January.
The Bill will also provide a legislative vehicle for post-Brexit environmental law. Much of our environmental law comes from Brussels – this will be its new London home!
In other words, we will have a much greater chance of strong protection for our environment after Brexit with this Bill, than without it.
In her announcement, the Prime Minister gave a firm verbal commitment there will be “no regression from the standards that we are committed to” and that “we should have high environmental standards and protect those standards in future”. These comments are very, very welcome (though see below).
The Bad
Just to say where this announcement happened. It popped out in the middle of the Prime Minister’s verbal evidence to a Parliamentary Committee. Aside from the PM’s answers, the Committee’s questions contained some interesting points too:
The PM effectively committed to non-regression from standards that the UK is already failing to meet – including targets for air quality, renewables and waste. In other words, we think she just committed to having high standards in future and continuing to fail to meet them! (The Committee thought so too).
The PM wouldn’t commit to the Government being legally accountable for failing to meet any standards. This is a key point on which the eventual Bill could stand or fall. Unless the Bill is given teeth to prosecute this and future governments, as the EU does as present, it could become an empty promise.
The PM wouldn’t put environmental standards in the “common rulebook” it will use to trade with the EU post-Brexit. This includes things like common standards on food safety and medicines. In other words, we will be free not to keep up with environmental regulation in the EU.
Principles for environmental law - e.g. the polluter pays - are currently enshrined in EU law translated into UK law, but there was no suggestion from the PM that we would transfer these principles post-Brexit.
This announcement was made less than 24 hours before Defra published biodiversity statistics. The figures are mixed – for example they show great increases in the area of protected landscape – but disasters include the abundance of priority species moths dropping to just a fifth of 1971 levels. So while the talk is ambitious, wildlife is still being impacted. (At least England has these datasets, over half of public bodies in Scotland fail to report on biodiversity).
The Ugly
These are just the political asides – but the sort of asides that can sneak up and derail whole processes.
If you’re Northern Irish, Welsh or Scottish, you’re probably a bit confused by now about why we’re discussing UK standards in a Bill for England. So are we. It’s just another Brexit EU-decoupling thing to work through.
In relation to the Government not committing to still being legally accountable after Brexit: The Committee were quick to spot the irony that the PM mentioned this while talking about a current EU prosecution against the UK for failing to meet air quality standards – just the sort of pesky enforcement that would disappear post-Brexit.
Just a little thing to watch for. It’s been commonly reported that this Government pledged to be the first to leave the environment in a better state than it found it. Teresa May repeated the actual wording that "we will be the first generation” (X, Y, millenials? Teresa is a baby boomer!) to leave it in a better state. In other words, if it doesn’t happen then it’s the fault of all of us – and on that point, we don’t think she’s wrong.
