Responding to concerns that Brexit could weaken environmental protections now set at the EU level, the U.K.’s Minister for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Michael Gove, implied that he was keen on maintaining environmental standards.
“I absolutely don’t want to water down” environmental protections, Gove told BBC Radio 4. “It may well be that we change the operation of particular rules but any change will be designed to ensure that we get better protection for the environment.”
Gove commented about the future system that will replace Common Agricultural Policy payments to British farmers, insisting on the need “to listen to environmentalists about how we could use that money to better protect and enhance our environment.”
Currently, about 80 percent of U.K. environmental laws are shaped by Brussels, according to a report by the British House of Commons environmental audit committee. As it stands now, EU laws protect wild species and their habitats in the U.K. and set reduction targets for smog-causing air pollutants.
At issue is Gove’s past criticism of the Habitats Directive, the EU’s nature conservation law, on the grounds that it hampered economic development, as well as question as to whether there are checks in place to hold the U.K. government to its word.