Dead or Alive: Environmental De-regulation?

Much like Frankenstein’s Monster, the Retained EU Law Bill proposed to take apart the body of environmental regulations that were retained in law after the UK’s exit from the EU, seeking to remove them, replace them, or combine them with new regulations. With Sunak as Prime Minister, that work continues to shuffle forwards, and the Government’s plans for handling the mass of legislative review involved are still not certain.

Reports indicate that the new Prime Minister remains committed to the task, but that the deadline attached to the sunsetting of EU law may be extended, with a view to allowing more time for civil servants to review and replace regulations. That extended timeline will be crucial if the review of retained EU law is going to meaningfully improve the state of environmental protections, rather than regressing on past commitments.

As it was for Liz Truss, the challenge for Rishi Sunak will be to ensure proper accountability and meaningful improvement wherever regulations are replaced, rather than merely chopping off limbs for the sake of it.

Many key questions remain unanswered about investment zones, planning reforms, and the Government’s plans for growth. Until it is clear what rules are likely to be relaxed, how environmental assessments are likely to operate in the future, and what the Government will do to prevent environmental regression, the exact consequences of the proposals will continue to be uncertain.

Some form of planning reform remains very much alive, and despite seemingly heading to the grave many times over the last few years, those reforms should be expected to continue over the coming months.

The challenge remains to provide certainty on the details of what planning reforms (and potentially the proposed Environmental Outcomes Reports) will entail, what investment zones mean for crucial environmental protections, and how changes to planning will be coordinated in the context of wider changes to environmental regulations.

One of Rishi Sunak’s first acts in office was to re-align the Government with the 2019 Conservative Party manifesto commitment to maintain the ban on fracking, following the sizeable negative response to the proposals under Liz Truss to lift the ban. 

Naturally, the move is a positive one from an environmental perspective. The challenge for the Prime Minister will be to capitalise on the desire for renewable energy as an alternative, rather than falling back on other fossil fuels to provide energy security. 

In the long-term, fossil fuels cannot provide meaningful energy security while the world moves towards decarbonisation, so the continued ban on fracking will have to be only the first step towards maintaining and improving the cleanliness of the UK’s energy supply.

As if through an ominous fog, the future of the Government’s Environmental Land Management Schemes remains largely unidentifiable, without a significant degree of movement from the last Prime Minister’s position.

Farmers and land managers still lack certainty on whether or not a commitment towards environmentally-friendly practices will be properly rewarded going forwards, which may be encouraging reservation rather than action. Though the new Prime Minister did indicate that he believes farming and the environment should go hand-in-hand, the exact ramifications for the future of farming and ELMS in particular are still unclear.

During Rishi Sunak’s first week as Prime Minister, the Net Zero Review’s call for evidence closed, paving the way for the Review to conclude and report back by the end of the year. That process remains ongoing, and the independent nature of the Review suggests that it will not substantively be affected by the new Prime Minister. 

An approach which is less dominated by the need for short-term economics to come ahead of long-term social and environmental outcomes could provide greater scope for a more positive outcome to emerge once the Review reports back.

At the same time, early indications suggest that the new Prime Minister will not be taking the opportunity to take a leading role in raising global ambitions for climate action. In his first week as Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak indicated that he did not plan to attend COP27, though he is reportedly keeping that decision under review. In addition, COP26 President Alok Sharma was removed from the Cabinet, so he won’t be in those key meetings during the final stretch ahead of the Summit.

Neither of those early indicators is enough to make projections about the future of the UK’s climate policy, and there are signs that point towards different directions of travel. For now, the challenge for the Prime Minister will be to find an approach to climate change that genuinely meets the UK’s obligations, and to raise ambitions so that the rest of the world follows suit, whether or not he attends COP27 itself.

One of the more disappointing pieces of news from the last week was the confirmation that the Government will not meet the legal deadline to put environmental targets in law. That deadline was due to be reached today, and the recent political developments have prevented the revised target framework from being released. Similarly, progress towards the Government’s updated Environmental Improvement Plan has also been set back.

However, a late yet effective governance framework is better than a quick yet ineffective one. If the extra time that the Government has had as a result of the delay leads to a set of targets which provide meaningful benchmarks to drive environmental improvement, it will have been worth it.

The Prime Minister’s challenge will be to ensure that environmental governance is not sent to an early grave over the course of his Government, and that it rises stronger than ever before. Currently, it’s too early to tell what the outcome will be, until key policies such as the targets, the Environmental Improvement Plan, and the Government’s Environmental Principles Policy Statement are in place.