Post-Brexit UK Eroding Protections for Nature

The UK is using Brexit to weaken crucial environmental protections and is falling behind the EU despite Labour's manifesto pledge not to dilute standards.

- Helena Horton

Analysis by the Guardian and the Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP) has found the UK is falling behind the EU in terms of protecting rare creatures such as red squirrels, cleaning up the air and water, removing dangerous chemicals from products, and making consumer products more recyclable and energy efficient.

Experts have said ministers are choosing to use Brexit to "actively go backwards" in some cases, although there are also areas where the UK has improved nature laws such as by banning sand eel fishing.

Despite having promised a "reset" with the EU, Keir Starmer's government has failed to even start closing loopholes in environmental law that have widened since Brexit, and in some cases choosing to delete EU environmental rules from the statute book.

Since Brexit, the analysis has found the EU has brought forward 28 new, revised or upgraded pieces of environmental legislation that the UK has not adopted, and the UK has actively chosen to regress by changing four different pieces of legislation including on protected habitats, pesticides and fisheries.

Areas of concern include:

The planning and infrastructure bill, which overrides the EU's habitats directive and allows developers to pay into a general nature fund rather than keeping or creating new habitat nearby to make up for what is destroyed.

The UK falling behind on water policy, with the EU implementing stronger legislation to clean rivers of chemicals and microplastics and making polluters pay to clean up.