Ruth Chambers, Dr Richard Benwell, David Bowles and Phoebe Clay gave evidence.

Thank you very much to our next set of witnesses. We are starting three minutes early, but we expect a Division at about 4.15 pm. If that is the case, we will try to end our session when the Division bell rings. Will you please all introduce yourself for the record?

Ruth Chambers:

Good afternoon. I am Ruth Chambers. I am senior fellow at the Green Alliance, representing the Greener UK coalition of environmental groups.

Dr Benwell:

My name is Richard Benwell. I am from Wildlife and Countryside Link, which is a coalition of 67 environmental and animal welfare charities.

David Bowles:

I am David Bowles. I am head of public affairs and campaigns at the RSPCA, and I am representing the animal welfare stance.

Phoebe Clay:

I am Phoebe Clay. I am co-director of Unchecked UK. We are a non-partisan network of 60 organisations making the case for strong environmental and social protections.

Q These regulations cover huge areas in the DEFRA brief, including habitats regulations, environmental protections, and animal welfare and standards. First, I would like to hear your assessments of the Bill’s implications. Secondly, during Brexit a huge number of staff had to be drafted into DEFRA from the Environment Agency, Natural England and other Government agencies—leaving a vacuum in those agencies—to support the Department on those issues. Now we will have the EU retained law. Does DEFRA have sufficiently qualified staff to examine laws across animal diseases, air pollution, water quality, chemical safety, the habitats regs and all the rest of it to cope with what is coming? As Link, the Green Alliance and others have said, we are looking at 570 regulations, although it might be more now, given the work of the National Archives; maybe we will get up to four figures. What is your assessment and can DEFRA civil servants cope? I will start with Richard.

Dr Benwell:

Thank you so much for the question. Link has given evidence to lots of Bill Committees over the years—I have given evidence to some of the members of this Committee—and I do not think we have ever been moved to say at this stage in a Bill that it should simply be withdrawn. That is our view of the Bill at the moment.

We see the Bill playing out in perhaps one of three scenarios. In the most benign scenario, you could imagine a situation where the whole body of environmental EU retained law is simply restated and moved across on to the UK statute book as assimilated law. Even in that most benign scenario, we see a situation in which Parliament and the civil service have spent huge amounts of time, likely costing millions of pounds, in delivering the shift across. Even more importantly, we see a huge opportunity cost in terms of lost time to actually make environmental improvements. You said, Mr Sobel, that DEFRA has already had some capacity crises, and it is true. All sorts of important DEFRA agendas—the environmental principles, the environmental targets, the river basin management plans—and a whole raft of pieces of vital DEFRA work being proposed by this Government are now extremely delayed, and that would only be made worse by that scenario.

The second scenario is the cliff-edge version of the Bill, where you imagine huge swathes of potentially vital environmental laws falling off the cliff edge at the end of the sunset. I do not think any of us imagine that the Government will knowingly let things like the habitats regulations, the water framework directive or pesticides rules hit the buffer. I do not think anybody thinks that is the intention, but the fact is that we imagine there will be mistakes along the way. If you look at the process following the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, there were lots and lots of wash-up SIs at that point from all the mistakes that were made by DEFRA alone—simply to get through the legislation at that point. With this version, so much more is on the table. Things are likely to be missed. Mistakes are likely to be made.

The third scenario is one of change and ministerial fiat to mess around with things along the way. The delegated powers in the Bill are some of the most extraordinary that I have ever seen. They give Ministers the power to change things almost without scrutiny along the way. The third scenario, and probably the most likely, is that we see elements of law being cherry-picked, either to be taken out or changed over the next 12 months, without any opportunity for people to amend, scrutinise or improve.

All three are really terrifying scenarios, and we can talk about why they come through the Bill later, but our view at the moment as Wildlife and Countryside Link is that the Bill is irredeemable and should be withdrawn.

Q Ruth, do you have a view on assessment and capacity on behalf of your members of the Green Alliance?

Ruth Chambers:

Absolutely, and I endorse what Rich has just said. One other implication of the Bill relates to environmental law and policy making across the rest of the UK. I know we are very much focused on Whitehall today, but how, for example, will this process be conducted in Northern Ireland without a functioning Government? How are stakeholders going to be involved? That is not clear to us. We know that the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs in Northern Ireland has identified 600 pieces of rule that pertain to it as a Department. Again, where is it going to find the capacity to deal with that?

In relation to Scotland, there is an interesting angle, because the Scottish Government have a legal commitment to keeping pace with the EU. What is the interplay between that legal duty and the programme of rule in relation to the Bill and the Scottish Government? We note the concerns raised by Senedd Cymru, the Welsh Parliament, that the Bill risks imposing a regulatory ceiling on ambition and distracting from programmes in Wales. Those are some additional impacts to the ones identified by Richard.

I will come back to DEFRA, which is where we are perhaps more qualified to speak, and look at some numbers for a minute, in case that is of assistance to the Committee. We have heard talk of the previous EU exit statutory instrument programme, which we were involved with. Looking at the numbers of SIs involved in the two years of that programme, there were 108 in 2018 and 161 in 2019. That was a huge undertaking for the Department. As you have just said, it took a lot of resource from outside DEFRA, which put in some really innovative consultative mechanisms to help it to cope with that number of instruments.

By contrast, under this programme, the dashboard shows that DEFRA has 570 published pieces of REUL, but that is not the final number. We understand from the Department that the number is 835 and counting. That is not yet a published figure, and obviously we will need to have it confirmed by the Department, but that is a huge increase. The EU exit SI programme will pale into insignificance when you look at those numbers, which will require resource housed in legal capacity and technical policy capacity, and will require asking the expert stakeholder community as well. There is a lot of work to be done.

I just want to intervene before the other witnesses give their answers. This is all very good stuff, but the answers will need to be quite a bit shorter or we will run out of time.

Q Do you want to come in on the animal welfare aspect, David?

David Bowles:

I concur with everything that has been said. Two years from now will mark the 50th anniversary of the first ever animal welfare law passed at the EU level. The RSPCA has worked out that since that date in 1974, we have had 44 different animal welfare laws.

I will make one additional point. Obviously, animal welfare plays out very resonantly with the public and, indeed, with the Government. The Johnson Government came in with five different manifesto commitments on animal welfare and a pledge to improve animal welfare. It is quite ironic that the Bill, in Richard’s cliff-edge scenario, could get rid of those 44 pieces of legislation.

An additional issue that I do not think the Committee has looked at is that of devolution, which Ruth touched on. As you are probably aware, the Senedd yesterday put out advice on the legislative consent motion to reject the Bill, which it does not believe is good for the Welsh Government. Curiously enough, although Ministers of the Crown have the chance to delay the Bill’s deadline from 2023 to 2026, that option does not apply to Welsh Ministers.

Most animal welfare legislation is devolved—we have worked out that only 13 of the 44 pieces of legislation are reserved, while the rest are devolved—so it is up to those in Wales to decide what to have in their country, such as the battery hen ban and a vast array of other farm legislation, including on the live transport of animals. They will have all those things only until 2023 because Welsh Ministers have no option to extend that deadline. Only Ministers of the Crown have that option, and that really worries me.

Q That is quite stark, isn’t it? We are talking about 10 months—maybe 11 if we are lucky—to look at 44 pieces of legislation just for animal welfare, as well as all the devolution issues. Ruth, you were involved in this last time— albeit with far fewer SIs—so who else should be consulted for that process? It affects a huge number of different organisations, including yours, vets, businesses, the National Farmers Union, the farming community, academics and so on, and then there are the agencies—the Environment Agency, Natural England or Forestry England or whatever it may be—which may or may not be pulled into DEFRA to deal with this. Who else needs to be pulled in, and what level of support and capacity would those organisations have for such a big programme? Perhaps you could talk about your organisations first before talking about others.

Ruth Chambers:

All the groups you mentioned would be immensely helpful to the various Departments in identifying and commenting on the body of REUL that belongs to them. The important question is how such consultation should be conducted. For us, it should be hardwired from the outset and conducted in a transparent and structured way. Navigating the complexities and time constraints of consultation will place a huge burden on businesses and civil society. The more that that can be signalled in advance, the easier it will be for us all.

Last time around, the Department put in place a reading room on statutory instruments, for example. That was a helpful vehicle that gave stakeholders of all persuasions some extra time to look at the statutory instruments in question. It was just one mechanism that was put in place, but that sort of thing probably is not sufficient given the scale of the work that we are talking about. The more structured the engagement can be, the better, but it will be a big undertaking. It goes back to clarity on just how many pieces of law we are talking about, so that we know which laws are in scope and which are out of scope.

Q Phoebe, your organisation is used to doing this sort of work. What is your capacity and what do you think?

Phoebe Clay:

Looking further from that list, one important facet of that process is missing, which is people—the public. This is not an expectation of the public, certainly not during the referendum and certainly not in the past five years. What we have done a lot of is talk to people—your constituents—about their attitudes and what they value in relation to regulations. We find very little appetite for a process of this kind. We have been doing polling consistently over three years; all our polling suggests that a good two thirds of the British public think we should retain or, indeed, strengthen the level of standards that we had as members of the European Union. We find very little evidence that people see Brexit as an opportunity to deregulate—quite the opposite. People want to play to a sense of British standards, of the march of progress towards a better—and more—level of protection. In terms of what we value in the UK, this goes very deep. I would echo what my colleagues have said in relation to transparency and having in place a process whereby there is a level of democratic engagement with the Bill.

Q I want to delve down with an example—particularly as I am a shadow DEFRA Minister—and also declare my interest as the parliamentary champion for white-clawed crayfish. One of the regulations we are going to have to look at is the Invasive Species (Enforcement and Permitting) Order 2019. I am sure you are all well aware of that; Richard is nodding his head, so I will come to him first. That order sets out and underpins the enforcement regime for invasive species such as the American signal crayfish, which threatens my crayfish; pennyworts; killer shrimps; and so on. We dealt with that in the EAC and I think that Richard was present at that hearing. That order is the only piece of current legislation that prevents the introduction of invasive species, and it is part of retained EU law. I want to ask Richard how many of our important regulations that support nature and animal species are supported purely through retained EU law? If that order, and others, are sunsetted and we do not have the capacity or time to get to them before December 2023, what will then happen in terms of our ability to stop invasive species coming in, and what other effects could there be?

Dr Benwell:

As you say, that order is the main plank of action against invasive species. If we were imagining that the Bill is about reducing costs, far from it. If we were to lose that piece of regulation—the cost of invasive species in the UK on businesses at the moment is already in the billions. I think the sum is about £4 billion per year at the moment for the cost of invasive species on, for example, water companies. That would only multiply if we were to see those regulations lost or weakened. There are several areas where those kinds of rules exist only in retained law. For example, think of air quality threshold standards, or provisions such as the habitats regulations for protecting rare species or for providing the gold standard of protection for habitats. Think of the environmental impact assessment and the strategic environmental assessment rules. In some areas there is overlap, but in each of those areas EU retained law adds a really important element, over and above what existed in domestic law.

In some ways, it is a bonkers distinction. We have the term of “assimilation” in the Bill, as if we are taking something that is currently alien and making it British. It is already UK law; it has been on our statute book for a very long time. It has been assimilated in so far as businesses and people know how to work with it, expect it to operate and feel as if it is part of our law. There are loads of areas where the law can be improved, but simply choosing to tackle this block as if it were a special thing is a bad way to target areas for improvement. We could do much better through consultation, and by doing proper impact assessment of the laws that we know need improvement.

Thank you. We turn to the Minister now.

Q It was good to hear recognition of the UK’s long legacy of environmental and animal welfare protections. Often we have higher standards here than the EU does, so I struggle to understand the argument that we need to keep environmental laws that were introduced by the EU just because it was the EU, and that we cannot trust the UK Government, which introduced the Environment Act 2021. I cannot understand why you cannot trust your own elected officials here in the UK, who are accountable day in, day out.

My question is for Ruth Chambers. The review of the substance of retained EU law has uncovered more than 500 pieces of retained EU law owned by DEFRA. Many of those pieces of legislation relate to environmental regulations and protections dating back 20 years. Surely there is merit in reviewing the totality of those regulations, as the Bill provides for, to see whether they can be consolidated. Do you agree or disagree?

Ruth Chambers:

It is certainly true that the body of retained EU law is ripe for being improved. That is what we would hope the processes of the Bill, or anything else, would lead to. Our concern is that the Bill would, either accidentally or if powers were misused in the future, not lead to those sorts of outcomes. Instead of the processes in the Bill, we would prefer a much more targeted approach that looks at retained EU law, and that picks the areas where the benefits to business are the greatest and environmental outcomes could be maximised, which Minister Trudy Harrison said, in answer to a written question, is DEFRA’s aim for reviewing retained EU law.

We are not opposed to reviewing the law, and we are definitely not opposed to improving it; we just do not think that the processes in the Bill will naturally lead to that outcome, especially when you look at clause 15, which we might have time to talk about. It basically makes the direction of travel of the Bill about deregulation rather than anything else.

Q It is good that you agree with most of what the Bill is trying to achieve, compared with Dr Richard, who does not want the Bill at all, because it provides us with an opportunity to enhance the protections that we have. You shake your head, Dr Richard, but you are very clear that you do not want the Bill to be around at all. I love the way that you are representing a coalition, as it were, but fundamentally you are also an active Lib Demmer who campaigns to get elected all the time, so the neutrality of your evidence should be taken into account.

Ms Phoebe Clay, previously your organisation has accused the Bill of threatening to interrupt the Government’s target to halt the decline of nature in England by 2030. Can you set out how you consider that the Bill could interrupt a legally binding target that has been established by the Environment Act? We have a lot of lawyers this morning, and we want to contrast their evidence with yours.

Phoebe Clay:

I think that is an ambitious target, and regulation has to be part of the pursuit of it. As Ruth has just said, the intent in the way that it is expressed at the moment is deregulatory. Our view is that, if that intent is pursued, we will struggle to stay on course with those broader objectives. It is worth stressing that is not just my organisation. Like Richard, we are a coalition. We represent a whole series of organisations across the spectrum, ranging from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds to women’s institutes and a number of organisations working on worker protections. I guess it is worth underlining that this is not our position as a small coalition, but the position of all the other organisations that have signed up to that.

I think it is only fair to give Dr Benwell a chance to come back on the issue of neutrality, very briefly.

May I respond to the response that was given a moment ago, to get clarity?

Q We will come back to that in a second, Minister, if that is okay. Dr Benwell, I think you should have an opportunity to put on the record your neutrality.

Dr Benwell:

Thanks, Sir Gary. Just to emphasise, we definitely see areas where EU-derived law can be improved, and absolutely share that intention. I could list quite a number for you now. Here I am representing not my personal views but those of the coalition. It is extremely clear from our published materials that the strong view of the environmental sector is that, while we share the intention of improving environmental law, we do not think that this process is the way to achieve it, because of the sunset clause, the deregulatory lock-in and the overly generous delegated powers to Ministers along the way.

Minister, you wanted to come back to Phoebe Clay.

Q Dr Benwell, earlier you said you wanted the Bill to stop—I am sure the transcript will provide that evidence. Ms Phoebe Clay, your organisation accused the Bill of threatening to interrupt the Government’s target to halt the decline of nature in England by 2030. You used the term “I guess”, but I do not want you to guess; I want you to tell me how we will interrupt the legally binding target of the Environment Act.

Phoebe Clay:

I guess that we just want the guarantee that those environmental protections will remain in UK statute. At the moment, we do not think that the other providers—

Q But you have no evidence for that statement at the moment.

Phoebe Clay:

We have the evidence that—

What is the evidence?

Phoebe Clay:

That these rules are not protected. We need to ensure that they will be.

Thank you.

My question is to Dr Benwell. Does your organisation have a position on the supremacy of EU law over UK lawQ ?

Dr Benwell:

No.

Q Yet you are the only organisation here to say that it wants to repeal the Bill, or does not want it to come in, although the principle is to re-enact the supremacy from EU law to UK law. How does that work out in what you have just said? You act as if you do not want the Bill to go through, and yet you do not have a position on the crucial part of the Bill when enacted.

Dr Benwell:

I am not sure that is the crucial part of the Bill from an environmental perspective; the crucial part of the Bill from our perspective is that it potentially or inadvertently allows for the loss of large portions of the statute book and for changes to environmental law without scrutiny. It also locks in an old-fashioned view of regulatory costs, seeing cost to business as the only way to judge the costs of regulation.

Q We have heard about this several times, with the debate about the timing of sunset clauses and so on. I am just intrigued as to why your organisation, which you represent, said that the Bill needs to go, whereas every other organisation—whether it liked it or not—tried to work out solutions within it. On that basis, you are unusual as the outlier, and it is always good to question the outlier, to understand their thinking. Perhaps you will explain that thinking for how you got to that position, because the practical problems you assumed and set out we have heard and agreed with, but you are still saying that the Bill should not go ahead at all. That seems to rub against everything else we have talked about and put forward in it. Would you mind answering?

Dr Benwell:

I do not think that we are the only organisation to have said that. I think that the Bar Council included the suggestion that the Bill should be withdrawn in its evidence. Wildlife and Countryside Link does not speak as a single body; it speaks on behalf of many of our members. The RSPB, for example, has been very clear in saying that the Bill should be withdrawn, as have lots of our members.

The Government might find features of the Bill they could bring forward separately. I think that the question of supremacy is one where we would see some risks in the interpretation of the law, but that is a political choice and, in itself, it is not the bit that we are most worried about. The bits that we are worried about, however, are so deeply ingrained in the fabric of the Bill that we suggest starting again.

On the sunset clauses, if you look at the House of Commons Library interpretation of what a sunset clause should do, it is there to stop emergency powers existing in perpetuity, giving Parliament a chance to review them. The Bill is taking, en bloc, huge amounts of environmental law and saying that they should potentially end within a year; it is a very strange amplification of sunset powers. On delegated legislation, the provisions in clause 15 that suggest Ministers should be able to bring forward alternative provisions without even tethering that to the original purposes of the regulations on offer are extremely broad delegated legislation powers. Another aspect that is deeply ingrained in the Bill is the idea that no alternative provision should be brought forward if it imposes new costs on business or hampers innovation and that sort of thing. That is an old-fashioned mentality that sees the costs to business of implementing regulation as the only view of the point of that regulation. Actually, if you take a deregulatory approach, it does not reduce costs; it simply transfers them from the businesses responsible for delivering them to the public. Those are all part of the weft and warp of the Bill, and that is why we think that the whole thing should go, rather than starting to amend it.

That is clear, thank you. I will bring Ruth in on this, and then we will go to Stella Creasy. Ruth, you wanted to come in.

Ruth Chambers:

Thank you, Chair. I have two points of clarification to make. First, I confirm that Greener UK as a coalition also wishes the Bill to be paused and withdrawn. That is not inconsistent with our position that we also believe that the body of retained EU law could be improved and that a process could be devised to do so. I feel that there was a little conflation of those two points but, to be absolutely clear, they are not the same thing.

Secondly, Minister, may I come back to your point about environmental targets, the 2030 species recovery target and the relationship with REUL? The relationship is a rather straightforward one: the opportunity costs that will inevitably come with the Department having to review, assimilate and reform such a large body of law. In fact, the Government have already missed their first legal milestone on environmental targets, on 31 October. That is just one example of how this can have a serious impact—because of the sheer deliverability challenges.

Q David, may I turn to you? Earlier in this session, you will have heard me say that I had a ministerial correction for the first time ever as a parliamentarian—old dogs and new tricks, all the time—[Interruption.]

Order. We will come back to your point.

Sitting suspended for a Division in the House.

On resuming—

We are all reunited, more or less. Stella has the floor. We will let you know in a moment what the ending time for this witness panel will be; we are still trying to work it out.

Q Thank you, Chair. We were not actually discussing shrimp when we were rudely interrupted by the Division bell; we were just about to talk about avian flu. David, could you update us? Originally, Ministers said that the requirements around avian flu control—something I feel strongly about, because we have it in my local community—were not within the scope of this legislation, but they have issued a ministerial correction to say that it is. That seems a good example of legal uncertainty. What is the practical impact of having legal uncertainty about the requirements when it comes to environmental protections? Could you give us examples of where there has been legal uncertainty?

David Bowles:

There are many examples. I mentioned at the beginning of the session that there are 44 different animal welfare laws, but that is my assessment; if you look at the dashboard that the Government have set up, there are 16 that are not on the dashboard but are on my list. That gives you an indication of the uncertainty, although to be fair, the dashboard is one of the most opaque measures of what the Government are doing. It does not seem to be in alphabetical or chronological order, and going through the 570 laws under the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs tab is quite onerous. I think it is uncertain about where it is.

The Bill applies not just to the UK, but to Wales, and probably 31 of 44 laws in my area of animal welfare are devolved. The Senedd and the Scottish Government, who have responsibility for them, are uncertain as well, because they are taking their lead from DEFRA. Yesterday the Welsh Government said they were not minded to work out which laws were devolved, which were not, and which came under retained law. They were going to leave that up to the UK Government. That just fuels the uncertainty.

Q On the point about uncertainty and the approach we should take, you all seem to be making the case for a sunrise clause rather than a sunset clause, so that we start with everything and work backwards. You have found 16 laws that are definitely not on the dashboard. I feel inferior now; I found only one: the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2017. However, the Conservation of Habitats and Species and Planning (Various Amendments) (England and Wales) Regulations 2018 is on the dashboard. From the point of view of layperson who is not legally qualified, how much variation is there between those orders? What sort of omissions could we be talking about? What uncertainty might be created when there are gaps because laws are not on the dashboard? “Enmeshed” was the word that Dr Benwell used?

David Bowles:

It could create huge uncertainty. Two things need to be worked out. First, what does retained EU law mean? As we saw today from the article in the newspaper, there seem to be more such laws coming forward. Secondly, which are devolved and which are not devolved? There could be a huge discussion about that. The Bill will have huge implications. There is not just the devolution issue, but the common frameworks issue, which is how the three Governments work out how to move forward on specific pieces of legislation. There is also the matter of the United Kingdom Internal Markets Act 2020, which is the legislation that allows free trade within Great Britain. There are huge implications for all those issues.

Q Finally, a big question to all four of you. We were all promised that on leaving the European Union we could have higher standards, particularly in environmental protections. I think that people across the House would want them; we are all very keen on defending them. Clause 15(5) talks about burdens. What is your interpretation of where a burden might impact our ability to provide environmental protection? I am thinking particularly of town and planning orders; environmental requirements are part of the planning process. When you read about that concept of burdens, do you have concerns about maintaining standards, let alone increasing them? what impact could that word have on laws that are not immediately considered to be environmental, but do have an environmental impact? We will start with you, Ruth, to give David a break.

Ruth Chambers:

That is a really important question. Clause 15 and how it defines “burden” is one of our biggest concerns about the Bill. If you look at the passage that defines “burden”, it is everything from an administrative inconvenience to something that causes issues to do with profitability. What does it actually mean? It also does not seem to sit readily with the answer that DEFRA Ministers have given, which is that their intention, in reviewing that body of rules, is to improve environmental outcomes. How does that sit with reducing regulatory burdens?

Not many weeks ago, some Government Ministers were suggesting that environmental protections were regulatory burdens and should be removed. That is not the case, we believe, with the current Government and current set of Ministers, but it shows that things can move quite quickly. That is why the Bill needs to be watertight on these issues.

Shall we move down the table? Dr Benwell.

Dr Benwell:

This is a really problematic part of the Bill because, as has been said, “burden” is defined in purely financial and business terms. It imagines that the small cost that business might incur is not worth it for the environmental benefits that come out the other end. Of course even critical laws, such as the habitats regulations, can be improved. For example, you could define projects and plans better, so that you could take intensive land management in as well. Those are conversations we are actively having with DEFRA, and we want to find ways to do that, but those proposals simply could not be given effect through the Bill because of clause 15, which sort of sets out a deregulatory agenda. Altogether you see a lock-in of deregulation where you might otherwise find improvements. We want to improve the law, but the Bill does not allow us to do that.

David Bowles:

I concur with the two previous witnesses. The Government came in with a manifesto commitment to improve animal welfare, and indeed they are looking, hopefully, to get rid of cages for laying hens and pigs, but because we are so uncertain about the status of the conventional ban on battery hens, which was agreed in 1999 and finally came into force in 2012, we do not know if that ban is to be scrapped. The Government are almost looking two ways on the issue, and that worries us.

We need reassurance that there is a transparent process for filtering the 570 DEFRA Bills, and a time period in which to do that. I concur with the other witnesses: we are not against improving legislation; of course we want to do that. We are not saying that the legislation is perfect, but there are a number of caveats, including the time period, the filtering process and the impact on devolution. All of that is so unclear that we need reassurance.

Phoebe Clay:

You put your finger on it when you mentioned the word “burden”, Stella. That is a really problematic word from our perspective. If we were to frame the discussion around environmental, social and human protections, the Bill would probably be less problematic. We know that people see the rules as protections, and conceive of them as things that keep them safe, particularly at a time when people are feeling incredibly uncertain and under-protected. Shifting away from the idea that regulations are necessarily burdensome would be a really important step forward.

We have until 4.33 pm, slightly to my surprise, so we have another 11 minutes to go. Minister, did you want to come in?

Q We have spoken a lot about the word “burden”, and how it is creating anxiety. Obviously, you are having meetings and trying to get as much clarification as possible. I was just going through the transcript of the evidence provided by Professor Alison Young this morning—I am not sure whether you heard it at all. She noted that clause 15 specifies that no replacement legislation can increase the burden on business. That does not mean—I refer again to her evidence—that you can take a number of earlier burdens and just remove legislation. We can bundle legislation together, which could also reduce the burden, but it also means amending legislation so that we have a higher standard, too. We have to accept that there is an opportunity to increase standards. All we are saying is that we want to make sure that by increasing standards, we are not necessarily increasing the burden on business. Those two aims are not conflicting. Do you not agree that there is an opportunity here to make things even better?

David Bowles:

indicated assent.

Some nodding from the panel, which is excellent news. I call Saqib Bhatti.

Thank you, Sir Gary. We passed the Environment Act 2021, which was a great piece of legislation of which we are incredibly proud, though there may be opinions about how that legislation could go further. Dr Benwell gave evidence when I served on the Bill Committee. There is no indication that we will go back on a major piece of legislation that we passed in this Parliament. The talk of getting rid of environmental laws and regulations is just scaremongering, isn’t it?Q

Ruth Chambers:

It is not, unfortunately. I think you have to see these things in their places. On the Environment Act 2021, you are absolutely right: it was groundbreaking legislation that the Government passed to do many things. It is an enormous Bill, as you know, because you were on the Bill Committee. It sets up the Office for Environmental Protection, and it passed law on resource efficiency and so forth, but in the main, it is new legislation. Part 1 ensured that some protections that we lost after we departed from the EU were put in place—for example, on environmental principles. Other parts are brand new, such as the requirement to set environmental targets.

That is, however, separate from this vast body of law that we are talking about today, which is inherited from the EU. It relates to some of the laws I have just been talking about, but also covers completely different areas—for example, pesticide regulation. The important thing is not to pit one against the other, but to make sure that we have a coherent and functioning statute book, in which primary legislation such as the Environment Act continues to work and to be given priority, and the body of retained EU law is treated with respect and improved in a manner that we can all get on board with. They are part of the same legislative picture, but they are not really in competition with each other.

There is a lot of talk about reassurance. At the end of the day, we have passed a major piece of legislation with great targets. It goes a really long way. Surely that is enough of a signal of our intent not to row back on our environmental protections and high standards, not least because our constituents want them.Q

Ruth Chambers:

It is great to hear you say that, but of course every Act of Parliament is only as good as the pace and vigour with which it is implemented. We mentioned that the first statutory deadline on improvement targets has unfortunately been missed. We very much hope and want to work with the Government to address that legal breach at the earliest opportunity. The Act is full of powers. It gives the Government the option to do a great many things, but of course it is only the Government who can decide to do them. We will support you all the way in putting those powers in place in the most ambitious way, but it is not sufficient to say that the Act is testament to the ambition. It has to be implemented, delivered and resourced.

Dr Benwell, I wanted to pick up on your testimony. You spoke about how this legislation re-establishes parliamentary sovereignty and takes away the concept of EU supremacy of law. You said that was not a critical part of the legislation. I would argue that it is, because it is a framework piece of legislation that sets out the standards. Do you accept that, as a result of this and previous legislation, Parliament is now sovereign, and that is what the Bill enables? Do you accept that EU law is no longer supreme over our legislation?Q

Dr Benwell:

That is what the legislation enables. I do not have a particular view on that from an environmental perspective.

I am asking you. What would you say?Q

Dr Benwell:

I do not have an environmental view on that question. I completely understand the political point, and that is for Parliament to decide.

Let me build on that. If Parliament is now sovereign and we are able to make our own laws, free from the shackles of European Union law, surely there is a great opportunity, as the Minister said, to make stronger environmental law. It puts us in a stronger position to do that.Q

Dr Benwell:

Definitely, and things like the Environment Act are a brilliant sign of progress. The promise in the manifesto to have the most ambitious environmental programme on Earth was excellent, and if we can deliver the species target that is in the Environment Act to halt the decline of species by 2030, that will be the first time in the world any country has set and met a target like that—but it does not operate by itself. Delivery of that Act rests on many of the environmental provisions that are put at stake by this Bill, such as provisions on planning rules, species protection and water protection. They do not live in the Environment Act; the Environment Act builds on them.

There is definitely the chance to do things better, and to bring forward lots of the positive things that the Government have already promised in their environmental programme, but they risk being set back as a result of the amount of time that the Bill will take and the potential for mistakes that this Bill introduces. That is why we are worried about it, not because of any of the principles around sovereignty. That is not a question we have a view on. It is more a matter of the practicality and enormousness of the task in front of us.

Q I have a quick question for Ms Clay. Your report from September, which looked at the public’s attitude to protections, suggested that there was not a great appetite out there for deregulation. May I turn that on its head? In your research, were people saying, “Well, actually, we would really like to get rid of this law or that law”? Did you get any sense of a clamour for the removal of any particular rules?

Phoebe Clay:

We have asked questions very generically, as you saw in the research that was published in October, and we have asked more specific questions. We find time and again that the majority of the British public opt for strengthening rules, including members of the public who voted to leave the European Union.

We find very little evidence of significant geographical differences. People in the south and north of England, for example, have similar views. Our research has been corroborated by research by others, including by Professor John Curtice after the EU referendum, the Legatum Institute and others, so we can state with a lot of confidence that the British public do not perceive these rules as burdensome. I think there is a real sense that they are protections, including the environmental rules, and there is a general sense that protections are something that we should aspire to, exactly as the Member of Parliament just mentioned. We should be aspiring for stronger standards than we had when we were part of the European Union, rather than weaker ones.

That concludes this session. Thank you to our witnesses on our expert panel. We appreciate the evidence that you have given.