If the past month has taught me anything it’s that making political predictions is a mug’s game. Most of the political commentariat seemed as far off as me in their expectation of a parliamentary majority. Likewise, it’s hard to guess what exactly will be in the Queen’s speech, but here is what Green Alliance thinks it should contain. Read more
This post is by Lord Chris Smith, who was chair of the Environment Agency from 2008-14.
One of the most distressing things about the prospect of Brexit is the impact it could have on the range of environmental protections we currently have in Britain. Virtually every piece of safeguarding we have – of habitats, sea water and rivers, of air quality and against polluting emissions, of agricultural quality and cross boundary impacts – derives from European directives and common European policy. Many of these are already enshrined in UK law, of course, and the so-called Great Repeal Bill that will supposedly transpose everything into domestic legislation will, perhaps at the outset, ensure this.
On 7 December, MPs voted to support the government’s plan to start formal Brexit talks by the end of March next year. As the UK edges closer to leaving the European Union, the government now faces a critical choice on the future of our environment protections. Read more
The government’s ‘great repeal bill’ will transpose all current EU law into domestic British law upon the UK’s exit from the EU. Theresa May has promised that the UK will “no longer [be] part of a political union with supranational institutions that can override national parliaments and courts.” The plan is to ‘cut and paste’ current EU rules into UK domestic law.
Theresa May’s speech at the Conservative Party conference last weekend put the UK’s environmental future into a holding pattern. Her announcement that through a ‘great repeal bill’ all current EU law and regulations would be transposed into UK law, means that, like an airplane, the UK can circle for a little longer above the complexity of its changing relationship with the EU.
