OEP Chair Dame Glenys Stacey wrote to the Secretary of State for the Environment Thérèse Coffey to seek assurances that environmental protections will not be reversed as a result of the Retained EU Law Bill gaining Royal Assent. Her letter and the reply from the Secretary of State can be found on this page. A follow up letter from Dame Glenys Stacey to the Secretary of State was added to this page on 4 September 2023.
This page was further updated on Tuesday, 24 October 2023 with publication of a further response on this issue from the Rt Hon Lord Benyon, Minister for Biosecurity, Marine and Rural Affairs.
Following receipt of this latest letter, our concerns regarding the potential implications of not restating EU interpretive effects to Defra remain. Should Defra not restate interpretive effects before the end of 2023 the burden will fall to claimants and the courts to interpret and apply assimilated REUL, and it remains to be seen whether this will result in environmental regression. As such we continue to take an active interest in how this will play out in practice.
