Greens Lead Cross-Party Call for Brexit Environment Bill

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MPs are calling for a new Environmental Protection Bill to be added to the governmentโ€™s list of policy priorities for the year ahead as laid out in last weekโ€™s Queenโ€™sย Speech.

Led by Green Party co-leader Caroline Lucas, the environment amendment has cross-party support from Labour MPs David Lammy and Kerry McCarthy, Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran, the Scottish National Democrat MP Chris Law, and Plaid Cymru MP Liz Savilleย Roberts.

The amendment, which was introduced last week and will likely be voted for on Thursday June 29, states that โ€œin negotiating our future relationship with the EU, the Government should opt for the most environmentally effective wayย forward.โ€

This includes introducing a new bill to โ€œtransfer all relevant EU law into domestic law by way of primary legislationโ€. This legislation should include โ€œthe meaningful transfer of existing targets and to set new and ambitious targetsโ€ as well as provide access to citizens to environmentalย justice.

‘Conspicuousย Absence’

Speaking in the House of Commons on Monday, Lucas said โ€œa Bill on environmental protection is conspicuous by its absence. Given the significance of the EUโ€™s role in environmental protection, I think that this is a particularly grave omission on the part of the governmentโ€™s Brexitย team.โ€

The Queenโ€™s speech last week introduced this yearโ€™s legislative program, the majority of which is concerned with leaving the EU. The only mention of climate change came when the Queen reiterated support for the Paris climateย agreement.

Since then Theresa Mayโ€™s government has officially announced its deal with Northern Irelandโ€™s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). The DUP was called โ€œdinosaursโ€ in Parliament by Lucas last week following the Queenโ€™s speech due to their history of climate denial and denying the science behindย evolution.

In a statement to DeSmog UK, Lucas said: โ€œItโ€™s astounding that the Queenโ€™s Speech didnโ€™t contain plans for a bill to protect the environment in the Brexit process. The Government is aiming to pass eight separate pieces of Brexit legislation, yet they’re leaving environmental protection behind despite 80 percent of our laws in that area coming from the EU.โ€ย 

She continued: โ€œI’d urge MPs from all parties to back my call for an Environmental Protection Act. Such a bill would both strengthen our environmental laws and ensure that a legal and regulatory framework is in place to enforceย them.โ€

Zombieย Legislation

Currently the governmentโ€™s plan is to translate all EU environmental laws into British law via the Great Repeal Bill. However, concerns have been raised about how these new environmental standards will be adopted and effectively enforced once the UK officially leaves the EU.

Andrea Leadsom, while in her role as Secretary of State for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, acknowledged that one third of all environmental legislation would be extremely difficult to simply cut and paste from EU to UKย law.

And there are concerns that once laws are transferred theyโ€™ll become what has been dubbed โ€œzombie-legislationโ€ โ€“ where rules exist but thereโ€™s no effective way to monitor or enforceย them.

In March, the EU Select Committee report on Brexit and Climate Change found there was little confidence in the UK governmentโ€™s ability to hold itself to account without an independent domestic enforcement mechanism being setย up.

There are currently no details about how the EUโ€™s system of checks and balances on environmental rules will be replaced in the UK.

Labour MP Kerry McCarthy told DeSmog UK: โ€œAs the Environmental Audit Committee warned earlier this year, there is a real danger that environmental protections could be weakened afterย Brexit.ย 

โ€œWe called for an Environmental Protection Act, and it is very disappointing to see that this wasn’t included in the Queen’s Speech. It’ s not surprising though,ย given the Government’s inability to see that environmentalย laws are not ‘bureaucracy’ or ‘red tape’ but are vital protections for things we hold dear: clean air, clean water, biodiversity, and theย beautiful Britishย landscape.

โ€œIt is a shame that no Conservative MPs signed the amendment, but I hope that the Government will reflect on the strong support across the House for the environment to be protected post-Brexit. I hope other MPs will join me in fighting forย this.โ€ย 

When asked by Lucas on Monday June 26 why there was no environment bill in the Queenโ€™s speech to address these concerns Brexit secretary David Davis said โ€œrelevant administrations and regulatory bodiesโ€ will be created to oversee legislation when the laws are transferredย over.

He added: โ€œOf course, development beyond that will come later, but at the moment we are talking about bringing the whole corpus of EU environmental law into British law. That is not nothing, by any stretch of theย imagination.โ€

But as Lucas added: โ€œLet us also be honest about the fact that a small but vocal part of the right wing sees Brexit as an opportunity for mass deregulation. A fight is coming โ€ฆ No one voted on 23 June last year to scrap our environmental legislation, yet there is a real risk of that happening unless we enshrine it in a new environmental protectionย Act.โ€

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Kyla is a freelance writer and editor with work appearing in the New York Times, National Geographic, HuffPost, Mother Jones, and Outside. She is also a member of the Society for Environmental Journalists.

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