The UK government is rolling back environmental regulations inherited from the European Union, with new analysis showing it is lagging behind Europe on air, water, and habitat protections.
Helena Horton reports for The Guardian.
In short:
- Since Brexit, the EU has passed 28 new or strengthened environmental laws that the UK has not adopted, and the UK has weakened four laws covering habitats, pesticides, and fisheries.
- Experts warn that the UK’s planning and infrastructure bill removes legal protections for rare species and allows developers to destroy habitats by paying into a general fund rather than preserving nature locally.
- Despite some progress on issues like marine conservation and sand eel fishing bans, analysts say the UK is “actively going backwards” on environmental protections once covered by EU law.
Key quote:
“It is one thing deciding not to keep pace with the EU in actively strengthening our environmental laws but quite another to actively go backwards and remove environmental protections that we inherited from our EU membership.”
— Michael Nicholson, head of UK environmental policy at the Institute for European Environmental Policy
Why this matters:
Environmental rollbacks risk long-term harm to public health and biodiversity. Air and water pollution, once tightly regulated in the UK under EU law, can increase respiratory disease, contaminate drinking water, and degrade ecosystems. Removing habitat protections for species like dormice, red squirrels, and nightingales erodes the UK’s natural heritage. Without strong standards, consumer goods may become harder to recycle and more toxic, and rivers more polluted. Climate and environmental laws help prevent the UK from becoming a dumping ground for substandard products and unchecked industry practices.
Related: Opinion: Labour is inviting a toxic flood of foreign chemicals into Britain