Environment secretary Therese Coffey has informed the House of Lords that there are more EU legacy laws that government will need to review than previously thought.
Coffey told the Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee this week that roughly 1,100 EU laws on the environment had been transferred to UK law during the Brexit process to make exiting the EU easier.
As of late September, the government's official audit had identified 570 EU legacy laws that the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs [DEFRA] was responsible for. At the time, 70 of those had been amended and 63 scrapped.
As the audit has gone on, it has unearthed the new approximate figure of 1,100 EU legacy laws under DEFRA's jurisdiction. This is reported to be the most for any single government department to have to deal with.
Out of the approximate 1,100 laws, 140 have been abolished, Coffey declared.
If EU legacy laws are not specifically retained or replaced before a deadline of the end of December 2023, they will simply expire.
Green campaigners have raised concerns that if a chunk of the laws are allowed to lapse even unintentionally, it could lead to “significant gaps” in UK environmental protections.
Green campaign groups Greener UK, Wildlife and Countryside Link had previously estimated that DEFRA officials would be left with an “insurmountable” task of reviewing in excess of 1,000 legacy laws by the end of next year.
Coffey has sought to dispel concerns by reassuring that the government will not “drop the ball” on environmental protections and can “retain stuff” accordingly.
She added that some of the laws that would be going would be in the aim of changing “aspects of bureaucracy”, but some regulations would take longer to review.
Coffey explained: “It's not my intention to suddenly drop lots of legislation just for the sake of it.”
The December 2023 cut-off point is included in the Brexit Freedoms Bill, which was brought to Parliament under Liz Truss’ brief premiership and is currently being scrutinised in Parliament.
The Bill, if approved, will enforce the December 31, 2023, “sunset” on retained EU laws and hand ministers greater powers to amend or scrap EU legacy laws through secondary legislation.
While enabling government to change laws more quickly, it has raised concern from the opposition benches that it could give ministers the ability to circumvent Parliament when changing important laws.
The administrative burden placed upon government departments to be able to properly review all legacy laws by next year’s deadline is also a concern. Across all areas, the government’s audit has highlighted approximately 2,400 EU legacy laws that will need to be reviewed before the cut-off point, and this figure is expected to rise.
Meanwhile, 1,400 previously unidentified laws are also being looked into by government after the National Archives brought them to the attention of ministers.
There is a mechanism in the Brexit Freedoms Bill to be able to push the deadline for some laws back to 2026 in England if necessary to alleviate the burden. However, the devolved governments - who are responsible for some of their own environmental laws - will not have the ability to push back the deadline if the Bill goes through in its current guise.
