In the midst of the political chaos that gripped Westminster this autumn, on 22 September, the government tabled the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill (REUL Bill). As the country went from one prime minister to the next, many of the UK’s existing laws designed to protect the environment, human health and beyond, including pesticide regulation, were suddenly put at extreme risk.

The Bill could have a catastrophic impact on pesticide regulation in the UK, and therefore the Pesticide Collaboration are calling on the government to urgently withdraw the Bill.

What is the Retained EU Law Bill (Revocation and Reform) Bill?

The Bill was introduced by the then Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, Jacob Rees-Mogg MP, and was dubbed the ‘Brexit Freedoms Bill’ – which illustrates that the Bill is a highly politically motivated one designed to distance the UK further from the European Union.

If this Bill becomes law, it will reduce parliament’s power and capacity for scrutiny and enable the government to make really important decisions without debate or votes. The Bill states that unless action is taken to save or amend EU derived laws by the end of 2023, they will automatically disappear, therefore there is a chance that all the EU-derived pesticide regulation with teeth will simply fall away: posing extreme risks in terms of worsening the biodiversity crisis, endangering human health, and threatening to undermine our food safety. Furthermore, clause 15 makes clear that regulations cannot be amended if the changes lead to increased regulatory burden, which suggests that strengthening pesticide regulation beyond what we have now will become extremely difficult or even impossible.

We should be going further and faster to drive pesticide reduction and promote safe alternatives – not rolling back on current standards and letting them burn in the government’s post-Brexit bonfire of regulations.

What are the risks of this Bill?

Given that Defra seem to be unable to meet any of their own deadlines, we are not convinced that a year will be enough time for pesticide laws to be saved from the ‘sunset’ date.

When it comes to human health, there are established links between pesticides and breast cancer and Parkinson’s disease. We also know that the UK is already one of the most nature depleted countries in the world, and with COP15 currently taking place in Montreal, the government needs to recognise that pesticide use is a leading cause of biodiversity decline.

The REUL Bill risks the disappearance of a huge amount of our existing pesticide regulations, and would be a major blow to parliament’s ability to strengthen future regulations. To say the passing of this Bill would be an enormous backwards step would be an understatement.

What happens next?

Civil society have come together to demand that the Bill is withdrawn. From Wildlife and Countryside Link to the Civil Society Alliance and the Trade Union Congress, NGOs across all sectors are united in the view that the REUL Bill will do more harm than good. Even Croplife – the body that represents the pesticide industry in the UK – have said that current legislation is preferable in comparison to the REUL Bill, which puts current regulation at risk.

The Bill is believed to finish its stages in the House of Commons in the run up to Christmas, and then will be passed to the House of Lords to go through the legislative stages there, where there will be more debates, votes and amendments before it is passed back to the House of Commons.

The Pesticide Collaboration believes that the REUL Bill should be withdrawn, due to the threat it poses to protecting human health and the environment from pesticides. The government must wake up and withdraw the Retained EU Law Bill, and instead focus on following through with what they have already promised. For example, they must get on with publishing the much-delayed National Action Plan for the Sustainable Use of Pesticides, which they promised in 2018 but is yet to emerge.

The Pesticide Collaboration will continue to make this case to the government, and will continue working alongside the Collaboration’s members to raise awareness of the harms and risks associated to pesticides. We will keep campaigning in the hope that the UK government will see sense and rather than trash the UK’s existing pesticide regime which took decades to design, they will ditch the REUL Bill immediately.

 

By Amy Heley