Environment Monday - How would a no deal Brexit affect Barnets Environment?

I have long been a supporter of Friends of The Earth. The organisation has been campaigning for decades for environmental protection. I was disturbed to read a report on their website detailing the possible effects of a Hard Brexit to the environment. You can read the full report here.

Here are a few extracts that I believe are of particular relevance in the Borough of Barnet. Putting aside the rights and wrongs of Brexit for one second, even the most hard line Brexiteer must concede that the May Govt has completely botched the negotiations process. Long before they decided to invoke a 2 year period for Article 50, they should have started serious planning to address all of the issues raised by a Hard Brexit. If we had a robust plan for this in place, then we would have had a better negotiating position for a good deal and a safe option for crashing out. As no proper planning has been done, the UK is over a barrel.

My view was that when the country voted for Brexit, the govt should have set up a Royal commission, to sit for 1 year, to fully analyse the impact of Brexit and develop a coherent strategy to proceed. When this had reported on the issues to be addressed, then we would have been in a position to submit the Article 50 letter. We should have done it in a September, when our energy requirements are lowest and our locally produced fruit and veg are at their highest, so that shortages of imports would be easier to manage. If May had called her election after the Royal Commission reported, she'd have had five years to execute a coherent plan. I support Remain, but I believe that the 17.4 million Brexit voters have been completely failed by a lack of leadership. 

What the FoI report says that is relevent to Barnet.

No deal pushes us to burn and dump mountains of waste instead of recycling

The UK is one of the EU’s biggest waste exporters 

For years, we’ve been offloading our waste mainly on to Europe. And for that reason, we don’t have a well-developed setup in place to encourage recycling and reuse.

No deal could mean all that waste getting stuck in the UK – at least in the short term – where it would end up buried in sprawling rubbish dumps or burnt in polluting incinerators.

Faced with a build-up of rubbish, we wouldn’t have time to adapt and create a more eco-friendly way of managing waste in the UK.

Barnet Eye Comment - Waste processing in Barnet is already in chaos. This will make the situation far worse.


No deal is bad news for wildlife and protected habitats

Back in 2005 the UK was allowing the trade of protected species collected elsewhere in Europe. It contravened the law, so the EU put a stop to it 

If we leave without a deal, we won’t be able to challenge the government for breaking environmental laws, including ones that protect nature. That is, until a watchdog is set up. Who sets that up? The government. And as explained above, we don’t know when that will happen or how effective it will be.


Barnet Eye Comment - Barnet has an appalling record of protecting wildlife habitats. Without the EU protection, this will only get worse.


No deal allows for lower food and animal-welfare standards

Under a no-deal Brexit, any present or future UK government will be able to regress our environmental standards. There will be no international agreement in place to prevent that.

At the same time, chaotically falling out of the EU would leave us scrambling for trade deals.

Potential trading partners would heap huge pressure on us to accept products that don’t make the grade. This could include meat from animals raised in more-environmentally-damaging ways.

The government is already facing calls from US trade negotiators to lower our food standards by accepting chlorinated chicken 

Worse still, poorer-quality imports would undercut British producers – leading to pressure for us to adopt the same lower-quality practices here in the UK.

Barnet Eye Comment - Barnet has farms and food producers based locally. Intensive farming techniques will trash the local green space used for farming, but this will become essential for farmers to compete. This can only be bad for them. I don't want my kids to eat chlorinated chicken thank you very much.


No deal increases the risk of unsafe chemicals getting into the environment

As a member of the EU, we’re protected by REACH. This is the most advanced system in the world for ensuring chemicals are safe for human health and the environment.

Without a deal and a handover period to spend time replacing REACH, we'd be in the dark.

The day after a no-deal Brexit, a company could launch a new chemical and we wouldn’t know what to do with it or be able to properly regulate it.

We wouldn’t have access to the vast amount of research in the REACH database. Without that knowledge it will be much easier for businesses to win legal challenges against bans on chemicals – such as pesticides linked to harming bees.

The REACH database covers 21,000 chemicals. It’s highly unlikely the UK will be able to replicate it on its own.
A less-effective UK system would be more open to abuse with companies able to sell substances in the UK that are banned by the EU.

Barnet Eye Comment - We believe there should be tighter control on chemicals, not a complete free for all. The risks of this are immense.