Divergence from EU environment regs ‘risks UK position in single market’

There is a risk of divergence from European Union regulation after Brexit, which will “endanger the UK’s position in the single market”, Environment, Food and Rural Affairs committee member Angela Smith has warned.

Speaking at a conference on the next steps for water market reform, Smith said she didn’t think the legislation currently embedded in UK statute is particularly at risk.

However, she said, it is going forward that we face the risk.

“There is a risk of divergence from the European Union in relation to environmental regulation and other standards, which will endanger our position within the single market and trading with the European Union member states,” she said.

In a question and answer session, Smith asked the panel whether the European Union is needed to “tell us how to do the right thing”.

Delegate at the conference, Wessex Water director of environment and assets David Elliott, said that whether Brexit has a big impact on environmental drivers in the future “remains to be seen”.

However, he said: “We should not take away the fact that there are other very good reasons for doing some of the things we have been doing under the auspices of European legislation, such as the Water Framework Directive, and that’s partly about that resilience challenge and better allocation of resources than we currently have.”

Deputy director for water resources at the Environment Agency, Trevor Bishop, said that, because the Water Framework Directive has already been transposed into UK legislation, it would take a “positive, conscious effort” to change it now.

Antoni Ventura, managing director of Suez Advanced Solutions UK suggested that environmental regulations are mostly international, rather than just European, so “many things won’t change” in the event of a Brexit.

“If you choose your path, you’ll reach the same conclusions and your regulations will not be very different from the European ones,” he said.

Meanwhile, technical director at consultancy firm Mouchel, Martin Osborne, pointed to the Channel Islands, which are not part of the EU but comply with European directives “for reputational reasons”, as they can’t afford the damage of being the “dirty man of Europe”.

He said: “I don’t think we can suffer that reputational damage either, so I think that we’ll keep complying.”