LONDON — Britain’s plan to leave the EU and do a quick trade deal with the US risks sacrificing whole swathes of environmental protections which currently apply to the UK, a new report has warned.
The House of Commons library has identified more than 1,000 pieces of environmental legislation that are contained within Britain’s EU membership. These include protections on wildlife, air pollution, animal welfare and agriculture.
The government is committed to transferring all of these over to UK law with it’s Great Repeal Bill.
However, a report published by Green MP Caroline Lucas on Monday warns that many of these risk being watered down or traded away in Britain’s rush to do a comprehensive trade deal with Donald Trump.
“Theresa May’s courting of the United States in pursuit of a new Free Trade Agreement poses an even greater risk that Ministers may be tempted to water down regulations in their haste to demonstrate the ‘success; of post-Brexit trade arrangements – such as those on GMOs, pesticides, and animal hormones,” Lucas warns.
Opponents of the now suspended TTIP trade deal between the US and EU, warned that it would have weakened regulations on chemical and pesticide use, oil and gas extraction and genetically modified food.
For example, environmental regulations on pesticides which are currently banned in Europe, but not in the US, would have had to have been “harmonised” in order to smooth the process of free trade.
“Any suggestion of regulatory harmonisation is not going to mean the US starts restricting more chemicals,” Michael Warhurst, executive director at Chemtrust, said at the time.
“We know chemicals are being discharged into rivers that harm the environment, such as feminising fish. Many of these are not banned in the US but are restricted at some level in the EU.”
Lucas believes that the risk from a deal with the Trump administration would be even greater than that posed by TTIP.
“With climate sceptics now in control of the US administration, and the recent attacks on US climate, energy and environment regulation that have followed, there will be a temptation for the UK to water down EU-derived environmental protections. The UK government, in committing to leave the environment in a better state than when it found it, must not succumb to deregulatory pressure from across the Atlantic.
“We must not open our borders to beef treated with hormones or chicken washed with chlorine,” she adds.
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