Brexit: Why did the Red Tape Initiative Meet with BEIS?

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The Red Tape Initiative, dubbed the โ€œother Brexit departmentโ€ by Politico, has so far only met with one government department since it launched in April, DeSmog UK has learnt โ€“ the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS).

According to the Red Tape Initiativeโ€™s (RTI) director-general Nick Tyrone, the group met once with BEIS officials โ€œa few monthsย agoโ€.

Tyrone told DeSmog UK that it was a general meeting to simply โ€œput us on their radarโ€, adding that โ€œwe have only met with BEIS to date in terms of government departmentsโ€.ย ย 

The Red Tape Initiative isย led by Conservative Oliver Letwin, who was, for just three weeks, the first Brexit secretary before David Davis took over the role. ย Before the Brexit referendum, Letwin was responsible for leading the โ€œclean growth committeeโ€ toย coordinateย decarbonisation efforts across governmentย departments.

According to Tyrone, however, the governmentโ€™s much anticipated and long-overdue Clean Growth Plan, where it will lay out plans to reduce the countryโ€™s greenhouse gas emissions, was not discussed with BEIS.

โ€œAt no point did we discuss the Clean Growth Plan, or indeed, any specific policies at all, as at that point we had not yet conducted any panels. We certainly didnโ€™t lobby BEIS on any legislative matter whatsoever,โ€ Tyroneย said.

Rather than discussing specific policy, he said: โ€œThe main purpose of the meeting was to find out from them whether our whole project was worthย pursuing.โ€

โ€œIn other words,โ€ Tyrone explained, โ€œdid the department have something that would replicate the work we were about to set out doing too closely, thus making our workย redundant?โ€

Asked to clarify further, he said: โ€œI mean, were BEIS going to be holding evidence gathering meetings on the same topics for the same basic purpose. I didnโ€™t think that was likely, but worth checking before money and effort wasย spent.โ€

Post-Brexitย Rules

The RTI was set up in April with the aim of making suggestions to government about ways to change, clarify, or cut EU rules and regulations as they are adopted into British law afterย Brexit.

With hundreds of EU laws to translate in a short period of time, many have questioned whether government will be able to consider each rule or regulation individually and through the proper parliamentaryย procedures.

What the RTI hopes to do, Tyrone has previously told the media, is to spot changes that may have been missed by government andย parliament.

The goal is to remove so-called regulatory burdens with cross-party support. As the groupโ€™s website states, it hopes โ€œto forge a consensus on the regulatory changes that could benefit both businesses and their employees in a post-Brexitย Britainโ€.

Over the next year and a half, the group will be holding sector by sector meetings to see what each sectorโ€™s biggest concerns are with post-Brexitย regulations.

โ€œSo, what they feel is absolutely necessary to keep from the EU regulatory framework post-Brexit,โ€ explained Tyrone, โ€œor what needs to be amended post-Brexit as the translation from EU Directive into UK law was either messy or had unintendedย consequences.

โ€œThe idea is to come up with regulatory ideas that would gain support across the political spectrum โ€“ things business, the trade unions and the green lobby would all agree were at best a good idea, at worst, not a badย one.โ€

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The RTIโ€™s meeting with BEIS was first revealed in a parliamentary question put forth in July by Green Party co-leader Caroline Lucas and answered on 11 September. According to government, RTI and BEIS have also exchanged four emails โ€“ itโ€™s unclear what these emails wereย about.

A BEIS spokesperson told DeSmog UK: โ€œBEIS does not have a formal relationship with the Red Tape Initiative, which is a private organisation independent of Government, so toย speak.

โ€œAs you note, the answer to the Parliamentary question of 19th July this year confirms the extent of the contact that department officials have had with the RTI. We would not go in to detail about the content of private meetings orย correspondence.โ€

Backed byย Business

The RTI is backed by major business groups including the Institute of Directors, the CBI and the Federation of Smallย Businesses.

And the group has garnered some criticism since it launched earlier this year. Many fear that the initiative will lead to important safe guards meant to protect health and the environment being removed during the Brexitย process.

The RTI‘sย funding has been revealed to come from just four sources: ยฃ50,000 was donated by Jonathan Marland, David Cameronโ€™s former trade envoy who also sits on RTIโ€™s management board; ยฃ50,000 was donated by Geoffrey Guy, a chairman at GW Pharmaceuticals; ยฃ50,000 came from the Ana Leaf Foundation, a health charity based in Jersey; and ยฃ12,000 was given by the Public Interest Foundation, a policy not-forย profit.

Itโ€™s worth noting that one of the trustees of the Ana Leaf Foundation is Hayley Du Putron, wife of Peter,ย a hedge fund bossย who has given the Conservative Party more than ยฃ800,000 since sister-in-law Andrea Leadsom won a seat inย Parliament.

Meanwhile the Public Interest Foundation backs right-wing think tanks Civitas and Policy Exchange. Civitas, in particular, is known for being highly opaque and part of a network of Brexit climate deniers.

As Politico described: โ€œThe idea of policy formation by what many feel is an old boysโ€™ network (with some Labour and Lib Dem window-dressing) is causing disquiet in someย quarters.โ€

Both pro-Brexit and those on the left have raised concerns about the group โ€“ some fear environmental protections will be erased, and health and safety standards weakened, while one anonymous senior figure of a pro-Brexit think tank told Politico that, while generally supportive of the initiative, they worried Brexit could be โ€œhijacked by big business lobbies like the CBIโ€.

Greenย Issues

Suggestions about how EU regulations could be changed are driven by the RTIโ€™s sector specific panels, which are made up of people from business, trade unions, think tanks and NGOs. Together, they come up with a series of policy recommendations which are then looked over by RTIโ€™s legal and political panels before bringing the suggestions toย government.

These panels take place behind closed doors Tyrone told DeSmog UK, adding that the names of each participant to the various panels will be included in the final recommendation reports, โ€œso it will all be public knowledge once we finish ourย findings.โ€

Tyrone provided a list of the 10 individuals who made up the housing panel as an example of who is invited to participate and โ€œwhat the composition of the panels looks like inย practice.โ€

This includes: Susan Murray and Jerry Swain of Unite the Union, Lewis Sidnick of NHBC, Nick Williams of Pocket Living, Kate Jennings, head of site conservation at RSPB, Richard Twinn, a policy adviser at UK Green Building Council, David Oโ€™Leary of House Building Federation, Chris Brown of Igloo, Paul King and Lendlease, and Richard Blakeway of Policyย Exchange.

It’s unclear, however, what the RTI‘s role or influence will be when it comes to climateย change.

When asked about the government’s upcomingย Clean Growth Plan, Tyrone told DeSmog UK: โ€œRTI has no views on specific policies other than what emerges from the panels we hold (and the Clean Growth Plan has never been discussed at any ofย them).

โ€œWe simply take what emerges as a consensus from the panels we hold โ€“ so if someone on it doesnโ€™t like something, we dropย it.โ€

Before the Brexit referendum, the RTI‘sย Letwin was the chair of the mysterious interdepartmental โ€œclean growth committeeโ€. Set up by David Cameron at the end of 2015, the committee was tasked with addressing public concerns about air quality following the VW dieselgate emissions scandal. The committeeโ€™s remit also includedย decarbonisation.

Beyond this, not much information about the committee ever came to light, including whether or not it was directly involved in shaping the still unreleased Clean Growth Plan, originally due at the end ofย 2016.

Looking ahead on green issues, Tyrone said that RTI is in the early stages of pushing for the EUโ€™s nature directives โ€œto be carried over post-Brexit mostly as is but with some better clarity for both conservationists and builders, in the interests of both the species in question andย business.โ€

The EU has two nature directives โ€“ the Habitats Directive and Birds Directives that tackle species conservation. The aim, said Tyrone, is to give โ€œmaximum protection for species, while giving maximum clarity to builders as to what the rules are.โ€ He highlighted bats in particular as being a focus ofย concern.ย 

Paul de Zylva of Friends of the Earth, however, worries this is an โ€œoversimplificationโ€ย of how the Nature Directives work. โ€œProviding more clarity isn’t enough,โ€ย he said. โ€œThe lack of proper implementation of these rules has been found to be the number one issue. Looking at newts or bats is not the same as looking at what is needed for all other species andย habitats.โ€

Photo: Oliver Letwin, Policy Exchangeย via Flickr | CCย 2.0

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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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