Risks of a Smoke-filled Brexit
Kate Harrison
The
EU (Withdrawal Agreement) Act maintains EU law and protection until the end of 2020. After this point, EU laws governing air quality will become part of domestic regulation and ministers will be allowed to depart from EU interpretations of the law. Unfortunately, the government’s newly published Environment Bill 2019-20 will prove no substitute for our current level of protection when it comes to clean air. In brief, the Bill outlines powers for new environmental targets, introduces a list of environmental principles, sets up the Office for Environmental Protection (“the OEP”) and includes 6
“ There is nothing in the Environment Bill that prevents Air Quality from deteriorating .” some additional measures in relation to Air Quality. The Environment Bill amends the local Air Quality management framework, providing that national AQ strategies are to be reviewed every five years with a Secretary of State duty to report to parliament every year on progress.1 While it is the duty of the Secretary of State to set long term targets and ensure that
-targets are met, the targets them-selves could be expressed in ways which are easy to meet and difficult to enforce. The Secretary of State is allowed a 15-year time span for targets to be achieved: 2 this period of time is little comfort for those who believe there are only 10 years within which to act to save a habitable planet.3 The latest mortality estimate of 64,000 deaths annually from air pollution, for instance, means that 15 years at current levels of exposure would result in almost a million premature deaths in the UK alone.4 Worse still, there is nothing in the Bill that prevents Air Quality from deteriorating despite calls for a commitment to
