Government urged to scrap Raab’s ‘rights removal Bill’
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/b/government-urged-to-scrap-raabs-rights-removal-bill
DOMINIC RAAB’S Bill of Rights was dealt a fresh blow today after a damning report warned the reforms would seriously damage people’s ability to enforce their rights.
A cross-party committee of MPs and peers has called on PM Rishi Sunak to totally scrap his Justice Secretary’s plans to overhaul Britain’s human rights laws, with committee members saying they found “hardly any support” for the changes following their inquiry.
The reforms seek to replace the Human Rights Act 1998, which enshrines the European Convention on Human Rights in domestic law, with a new Bill of Rights.
Mr Raab says the overhaul is needed to prevent abuses of the current system, often citing cases where human rights defences have been used to halt deportations.
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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/b/government-urged-to-scrap-raabs-rights-removal-bill
Target date for cleaning up waterways in England is moved back by 36 years
Environment Agency under fire for extending schedule for tackling pollution in rivers, lakes and coastal waters to 2063
Targets to clean up the majority of England’s rivers, lakes and coastal waters suffering from a cocktail of agricultural and sewage pollution have been pushed back from 2027 to 2063.
Not one English waterway, including rivers, lakes, estuaries and coastal waters is in good ecological and chemical health at present, with pollution from water treatment plants and agriculture the key sources of the damage. The Environment Agency said on Thursday £5.3bn was being invested for the next five years to stop the further deterioration of waterways.
But the summary documents within the plan reveal the target for all 3,651 water bodies to achieve good chemical and ecological status – a state in which they are as close to their natural state as possible – was now decades away in 2063.
Until Brexit the UK government was signed up to the water framework directive, which required countries to make sure all their waters achieved “good” chemical and ecological status by 2027 at the latest. The UK government later reduced the target to 75% of waterways reaching the single test of good ecological status by 2027 at the latest. The target for the majority of waterways to achieve good status in both chemical and ecological tests has now been pushed back to 2063, according to the documents.
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dizzy: 2063, does that mean never that waters need to be cleaned up by? Filthy waters for the UK population then and greater profits to the effectively unregulated privatised companies responsible. I’m sure that someone warned that Brexit was about deregulation …
UK environment laws under threat in ‘deregulatory free-for-all’
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Environmentalists accused Liz Truss’s government of reneging on a commitment made after Brexit to halt the decline of nature by 2030. They say the revoking of 570 environmental laws that were rolled over from EU law after Brexit amounts to a deregulatory free-for-all leaving the environment unprotected.
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The bill laid before parliament outlines how 570 environmental laws, and hundreds more covering every government department, including transport, health and social care, working hours and other areas, are being lined up to be removed from UK law or rewritten. These include the habitat regulations that have been vital in the protection of places for wildlife in the last 30 years and laws covering the release of nitrates and phosphates into rivers.
The laws were retained after Brexit when the then Conservative environment secretary, Michael Gove, promised the UK’s environmental laws would not be watered down.
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RSPB ‘not ruling out’ direct action to defend nature from government policy
The head of the RSPB says the bird charity is ruling nothing out as it organises a mobilisation of millions of people against what it calls the government’s “attack on nature”.
Beccy Speight dismissed accusations by Conservative MPs that the group was lying to its members and pursuing a marketing drive, as it leads a coalition campaigning against the government over key “growth” policies which it argues will damage wildlife and nature.
The chief executive said a meeting with the secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs, Ranil Jayawardena, had not provided any reassurance that the government’s growth policies would protect nature.
The director general of the National Trust, Hilary McGrady, accused the government of “demonising” conservationists, saying her members were “outraged and worried”.
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