European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Rachael Maskell Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 15th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas]

I agree. This country will be very interested in forming more free trade agreements as soon as possible, and under circumstances that might not necessarily be in the best interests of our own environment and standards. It therefore even more important that these things are enshrined in law, as the hon. Gentleman says.

Paragraph 3 of schedule 1 explicitly limits the legal remedies available when general principles are contravened. It will not be possible to take an action in court, or to challenge or quash any law or activity on the basis of the principles. The courts will be unable to overturn decisions, and individuals and non-governmental organisations will not be able to challenge decisions on the basis that they are not compatible with environmental principles such as sustainable development. In short, as the Bill stands, if a business or public body contravenes the principles of environmental law, it will not be possible to challenge that in court.

That is a clear departure from continuity, as the EU courts have strongly upheld the environmental principles, such as by overturning planning decisions that contravene the precautionary principle. The level of environmental protection after exit day will not therefore be as strong and rigorous as it was before exit day, unless we accept new clause 60 and do something right now to enshrine these principles in our law.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

Is it not vital for air quality that we enshrine these principles in UK law, given that the Government have been told four times by the courts to improve air quality but failed to do so? It is essential that actions can be brought to enforce such really important things.

[Caroline Lucas]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. The role of the ECJ in applying fines has concentrated the minds of policy makers in the UK. It was only the threat of significant fines that led to the air being cleaned up in places such as London. One of the many things that worry me about the Brexit process is that, even in what the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said about closing the so-called governance gap, I have not heard any proposal from him for real sanctions to concentrate the minds of policy makers on bringing their laws into conformity.

In EU law, the environmental principles are forward looking and play a formative role in guiding not just day-to-day decisions, but future policy development. That role could be lost under the Bill as drafted. In the months and years ahead, the principles of environmental law should be applied to UK decision making in a number of high-risk areas, such as trade policy, chemicals, and infrastructure planning, but unless the Bill is amended, the legal force of the environmental principles to guide future policy and decision making will be lost.

I want to end with a few words about national policy statements. The Government have suggested several times that instead of enshrining the principles in UK law, they might instead consider using the NPS route. I have real concerns about that because an NPS is not a fixed, long-term commitment, and does not provide the long-term certainty of primary legislation. Such an approach would represent a serious step backwards from the current position.

The statutory framework for establishing an NPS limits its scope to planning matters, so we would need a new statutory instrument to have a much broader scope. Also, an NPS lacks the binding character of legislation. Courts could give little or no weight at all to policy statements so, essentially, the basic problem with an NPS is that a Secretary of State has a great deal of control over it, unlike with primary legislation. In a case in which a non-governmental organisation or an individual wanted to use an NPS to hold the Government and public bodies to account, there could be a serious temptation for the Government to amend the NPS precisely to make it less effective at holding them to account.

I want briefly to express my support for amendments 93 to 95, which the hon. Member for Bristol East will no doubt speak to. Those amendments speak to the primary intention of the Bill as expressed by Ministers. Without them, it could not be said that the same rules and laws will apply on the day after exit as on the day before, as the Prime Minister has pledged. They are needed to ensure that our laws and our rights, and indeed the intent and purpose behind them, remain the same immediately after withdrawal from the EU. Any changes to those laws and rights, other than to ensure the faithful conversion of EU law into domestic law, should be made following our exit from the EU only through primary legislation, not by any other means. Those amendments therefore ask, in a sense, little of Ministers, and so, as with new clauses 30 and 60, I hope that the Minister will respond positively to them.