Vital legal protections for the environment and human health are being destroyed in post-Brexit departures from European legislation, a detailed analysis by the Guardian reveals.
The UK is falling behind the EU on almost every area of environmental regulation, as the bloc strengthens its legislation while the UK weakens it. In some cases, ministers are removing EU-derived environmental protections from the statute book entirely.
Businesses and environmental groups have told the Guardian they have been left in the dark as to the extent of the regressions because there is no government body tracking the divergence between the EU and the UK.
In practice, it means:
Water in the UK will be dirtier than in the EU.
There will be more pesticides in Britain’s soil.
Companies will be allowed to produce products containing chemicals that the EU has restricted for being dangerous.
At least seven big policies have been changed that have put a chasm between the EU and the UK on environmental regulation. These include:
EU-derived air pollution laws that will be removed under the retained EU law bill.
Dozens of chemicals banned in the EU are still available for use in the UK.
Thirty-six pesticides banned in the EU have not been outlawed in the UK.
The UK is falling behind on reducing carbon emissions as the EU implements carbon pricing.
The EU is compensating those who are struggling to afford the costs of the green transition, while the UK is not.
The EU is implementing stricter regulations on battery recycling, while the UK is not.
Deforestation is being removed from the EU supply chain, while the UK’s proposed scheme is more lax and does not come in until a year later.
One green MEP said the findings were “tragic” while a centre-right MEP said the divergences were “particularly bad” for companies that wanted to do business on both sides of the Channel.
Petros Kokkalis, a Greek MEP with the Left group, said: “It is rather worrying to see that the UK is not following the same path [as the EU]. And it is even more worrying to realise that it is the citizens and their health that will bear the consequences.”
About 85% of the UK’s environmental protections are EU derived. Despite Michael Gove, Boris Johnson and the other architects of Brexit promising that environmental protections would be strengthened after the vote to leave the EU, the Guardian’s analysis shows the opposite is the case.
The Guardian analysed data from the Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP), which has been tracking divergences in environmental law since the UK left the EU, and for the first time the full scale of the regression can be laid bare.
There are 10 further policy areas that are in the process of being tightened in the EU while staying the same or being loosened in the UK. These concern sewage pollution in rivers and seas, protection for habitats of endangered animals, food waste, electronic waste, fast fashion, “forever chemicals”, ozone-depleting substances, extracting rare minerals, regulating dangerous particulate pollution, and reducing emissions from intensive farming.
Michael Nicholson, the head of UK environmental policy at IEEP UK, said: “The UK is quietly diverging from EU environmental law, particularly in England. We are increasingly seeing a trend towards the EU improving environmental laws and the UK not following suit. In some areas, there is a real danger of us going backwards.
“This backsliding is problematic because not only will it weaken existing levels of environmental protection, our trade and cooperation agreement with the EU has a specific legal commitment, repeated by multiple ministers, that the UK would retain high standards and not regress after Brexit.”
In Northern Ireland, the situation is even more complex, as under the protocol it has to keep some EU-derived environmental laws. While this means there is technically more protection from chemical pollution and nature destruction, the differences in regulation between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK have implications for trade and politics.
Industry insiders have told the Guardian that businesses fear they will no longer be able to export to their biggest market as the divergence between UK and EU grows to the extent that food and other products imported here will no longer be able to be legally exported into the bloc. This is because certain chemicals are allowed for use here but are being banned by the EU. Agricultural industries have said shipments are already being returned by European authorities because they contain products the EU has banned, and that the government has not notified businesses of these changes in the law.
Ed Barker, the head of communications at the Agricultural Industries Confederation, said its members were struggling with lack of transparency about regressions from EU environmental law.
He said: “At the very least we have been asking for the government to at least track and monitor EU divergence, because if nothing else it is needed for Great Britain to know how to trade with Northern Ireland, let alone with the EU.”
EU politicians have told the Guardian they are concerned about trade implications. In the UK, the Labour party’s shadow environment secretary, Steve Reed, said if his party won the next general election, the UK “certainly won’t” fall below EU standards in future.
He added: “The government made promises to people that they only wanted the ability to vary standards so that they could strengthen them.” He said there were a lot of ways “in which they had reduced standards, the opposite of what they said they would do”. He added that he was “very, very” sympathetic to the idea of dynamic alignment, which would mean the UK’s environmental regulations would automatically mirror those of the EU, but that the country would have the power to diverge on any of them.
The government defended its approach. The environment secretary, Steve Barclay, said: “Brexit gives us more freedoms.” He added: “We have more trade attaches, we are unlocking more trade deals”, and said changes to the EU’s common agricultural policy where farmers are paid to protect nature in England mean “we can now design things that work for nature, but also work for the farming community”.
A Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs spokesperson said: “We are unequivocal about enhancing the UK’s already high standards on environmental protection. Our standards have never been dependent on EU membership.
“We have created an ambitious environmental programme – including new legally binding targets under the Environment Act and our environmental improvement plan to protect our environment, clean up our air and rivers and halt the decline of nature by 2030. It is inaccurate to say that the UK is falling behind the EU on environmental legislation, with many of our policies either equalling or going beyond EU targets.“
