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https://www.theguardian.com/comment...doze-a-hole-through-environmental-protections
For three years, ministers have been proclaiming that leaving the EU would allow Britain to strengthen its environmental protections, and that all the benefits of membership would be faithfully carried over. Now we can see the worth of those promises, in a trio of bills set before parliament. The environment bill, agriculture bill and fisheries bill replace the EU’s comprehensive framework directives, common agricultural policy and common fisheries policy.
All three bills contain major flaws that undermine the government’s claims. They leave gaps, fail on enforcement and oversight, open loopholes for future ministers to quietly backslide from existing standards, and turn what is currently a coherent system of long-term, stable regulation into a patchwork of competing and sometimes contradictory proposals.
For three years, ministers have been proclaiming that leaving the EU would allow Britain to strengthen its environmental protections, and that all the benefits of membership would be faithfully carried over. Now we can see the worth of those promises, in a trio of bills set before parliament. The environment bill, agriculture bill and fisheries bill replace the EU’s comprehensive framework directives, common agricultural policy and common fisheries policy.
All three bills contain major flaws that undermine the government’s claims. They leave gaps, fail on enforcement and oversight, open loopholes for future ministers to quietly backslide from existing standards, and turn what is currently a coherent system of long-term, stable regulation into a patchwork of competing and sometimes contradictory proposals.
