Labour Accuses Tories of Using Brexit as Excuse to Undo Environmental Regulations

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How do you squeeze environmental issues into an election campaign dominated by Brexit? Perhaps by making Brexit about environmental issues.

Thatโ€™s what Labourโ€™s shadow trade minister Barry Gardiner did Tuesday night, accusing the Conservatives of using Brexit as a โ€œvehicle for deregulationโ€, and putting the UKโ€™s environment at risk as a consequence.

Gardiner was speaking at the Greener UK hustings, organised by a wide-ranging coalition of environmental NGOs held at Londonโ€™s Royal Society on 30 May. His comments were directed at the Conservativesโ€™ representative on the panel, environment minister Thรฉrรจse Coffey.

Gardiner said: โ€œMany in her own party are driven by Brexit acting as a vehicle for deregulation, and that is why it is so frightening that there will not be the same oversight as that which was previously provided by the European Union.โ€

Coffey responded that the Conservatives were not trying to undo EU regulations, but were open to exploring all the โ€œopportunitiesโ€ that Brexit provided for revisiting environmental regulations. That including those that protect particular species under the EUโ€™s habitat directive.

She said her party had been praised by many environmental NGOs for this open-minded approach.

This comment comes, however, after leaked documents show the Conservative government lobbying the EU for weaker climate targets on the same day that Prime Minister Theresa May triggered Article 50.

Deregulation wasnโ€™t the only issue on which the representatives of the major parties disagreed.

Gardiner, along with Liberal Democrat environment spokesperson Kate Parminter and Green party transport spokesperson Caroline Russell, all said that Brexit was mostly a โ€œthreatโ€ to the UKโ€™s environmental laws.

Only Coffey emphasised the supposed โ€œopportunitiesโ€ that could come from revising the regulations once they are brought into UK law under as part of the Great Repeal Bill.

Though Coffey added that EU environmental regulations would not be subject to the Conservativeโ€™s โ€œone in, two outโ€ rule that seeks to cut redtape.

In response to a question from the audience about the status of international climate agreements, Gardiner said it was a โ€œdisgraceโ€ that the UK was only country with a positive reputation on tackling climate change to not criticise US president Donald Trumpโ€™s threat to leave the Paris Agreement at the G7 meeting this week.

While Coffey did not comment on the Paris Agreement or Trump specifically, she did say the Conservatives were committed to โ€œleaving the environment in a better place than we left itโ€, and that included on issues relating to climate change โ€“ mirroring the strong words on climate change delivered in the partyโ€™s manifesto, released last week.

Photo: SERA via Twitter 

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Mat was DeSmog's Special Projects and Investigations Editor, and Operations Director of DeSmog UK Ltd. He was DeSmog UKโ€™s Editor from October 2017 to March 2021, having previously been an editor at Nature Climate Change and analyst at Carbon Brief.

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