Smuggled under the cover of making it easier to build nuclear power more quickly, the recommendations of the Nuclear Regulatory Review could end up being applied to any infrastructure or housing development proposals. Yesterday, the Chancellor confirmed that the Government's response to the review recommendations would be published this week.
The Wildlife Trusts are seeking legal advice because they believe that the Government is at risk of breaking EU trade commitments if it goes ahead with the Review's recommendations to weaken nature laws.
Matt Browne, head of public affairs at The Wildlife Trusts, says:
“It will prove catastrophic if Government bows to industry lobbyists and ploughs ahead with the proposals to downgrade nature laws at a time when our natural world is already in crisis. This would shatter the Government’s election promise to save nature, and risk breaking trade commitments and international law.
“Deregulation is not a magic bullet for our economy, not least because evidence shows that further breakdown in the UK’s natural environment could lead to a 12% loss of gross domestic product. Environmental deregulation also threatens closer trade links with our neighbours, a stated Government priority. Yet we’ve had months of misinformation from lobby groups exaggerating the costs of protecting nature and minimising the impact to wildlife of development – all with the aim of pressing the Government into weakening nature protections. This would be a historic mistake.
“The recent Government commissioned report ‘Global biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and national security – A national security assessment’ led with the news that “Global ecosystem degradation and collapse threaten UK national security and prosperity". Government must heed its own warning.
Over 100 MPs have now expressed concern through Early Day Motions and an open letter (see here and here) - this includes 43 Labour MPs - and parliamentary opposition to the nuclear regulatory review proposals is rising.
Last week saw a packed debate on Environmental Protection and Biodiversity in the House Commons, with MPs of all parties standing up to raise concerns about the environmental, social and economic risks of deregulation.
The Labour MP who opened the debate, Chris Hinchliff, said: “…the scale of the nature crisis is difficult to overstate, and any move to lower standards risks turning that crisis into a catastrophe. Yet, despite all this, we still get senior politicians declaring war on what little remains of our wildlife, with repeated suggestions that even this dire baseline is somehow too high. We continue to hear the unevidenced claim that Britain is held back not by a broken economic model but by bats and newts, and that profiteering developers would build genuinely affordable homes for all if only the last remnants of the natural world were less burdensome.”
He continued, citing: “…a nuclear regulatory review based on fundamentally flawed evidence that inflates the costs of environmental protections and downplays ecological risks. I would welcome the Minister taking this opportunity to distance the Government from that particular exercise in scapegoating nature for developer incompetence.”
The Office for Environmental Protection has shared similar concerns, stating recently that the “very broad-brush approach” to the Habitats Regulations proposed by the Review “would inevitably create contradictions within the government’s own environmental improvement and nature recovery strategies.”