Instead, the UK Government is pursuing a dangerous agenda of deregulation that puts the very laws protecting wildlife at risk.
Deregulation means removing rules and protections, often characterised as “cutting red tape”. In reality, it means polluters can get away with poisoning our rivers and countryside. It also means ripping up the rules that protect our most important wildlife sites from damage and removing funding that supports farmers to restore wildlife across our landscapes.
The Retained EU Law Bill – introduced into the House of Commons by Business Secretary, Jacob Rees-Mogg, today – will reform and revoke hundreds of laws that have their origins in policies from the European Union. Whatever our views on Brexit, many of these laws provide vital environmental protections for our air, rivers, wildlife and food standards. They helped remove the UK’s 1970’s reputation of being the ‘dirty man of Europe’ by cleaning up our waters. Changing these laws entails extensive procedural change with little benefit for nature and could lead to more litigation and greater costs for both developers and conservationists. If retained EU legislation is replaced with weaker alternatives, our natural environment will be left unprotected from those who prioritise profit over protecting the planet.