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Without nature there will be no food & no security. Why attack nature when a thriving natural environment is the answer to so many challenges we face? European Movement Staffordshire supports the Staffordshire Wildlife Trust campaign to #DefendNature – will you?
The Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill, currently on its way through parliament, aims to sweep away thousands of pieces of Retained EU Law (REUL) impacting many aspects of our everyday lives. Included in this are 570 EU-derived environmental laws. Most of these are very sensible and have protected our most precious wild places and wildlife for the last three decades.
According to Staffordshire Wildlife Trust, removal of laws such as the Water Framework Directive (WFD) means we will see poorer water quality and our aquatic wildlife will suffer - the UK already has some of the worst rivers in Europe, and the number of fish, water birds, mammals and insects would all drop. This is not acceptable.
The Bill gives the Government a deadline of 31 December 2023 to carry out a thorough review of these laws, and unless action is taken to keep, replace or update them, they will automatically be scrapped.
It is unrealistic that the Government will manage to review all 570 of these vital environmental laws by the end of next year. They’ve repeatedly missed deadlines on their environmental commitments, most recently the targets for nature’s recovery in the Environment Act, which were due to be published at the end of October. They’ve been delayed with no new date set.
Now we have left the European Union, it’s right that we review EU legislation. But we must do it in a sensible and democratic way.
We are urging the government to withdraw the REUL Bill – we have no objection to a sensible, consultative process that examines, updates and improves environmental laws, but that is not what this bill offers.
