Following the EU Referendum vote, Linda McAvan MEP has said it’s unclear what effect the vote for the UK to leave the EU is going to have on the EU Commission’s pursuit of the Ban the Burn complaint about the legality of a £2.5 million Environmental Stewardship Agreement (ESA) that Natural England has awarded the grouse-shooting Walshaw Moor Estate.

Linda said that she can’t give a definitive  answer to this question, since all is up in the air, but she guesses that given that EU legal cases are premised on continued EU membership,  she can’t see why the Commission would invest time in pursuing the prosecution if the UK is going to be out of the EU.  

She added,

“Things might be different if we opt to stay in the Single Market and that means EU law applies – a kind of Norway option.

Everything will depend on what the UK now asks for and that’s in the hand of the government.

Maybe we can come back to this after summer once the new PM is in place and the government has defined its plan.”

We need a democratically run Brexit that keeps environmental protections

It is vital that the Brexit negotiations are run democratically – NOT by “Bonfire of regulations” Oliver Letwin at the head of a civil service unit that will be largely staffed by global management consultancy companies – since successive governments’ “Bonfire of the Civil Service” means that there are nowhere near enough civil servants left to work out the Brexit terms for negotiation with the EU.

We need to make sure that the BREXIT terms will include continued UK government support for tough environmental laws that transpose EU environmental directives into UK law, with proper enforcement measures.

Linda McAvan suggests asking the Calder Valley MP to write to ministers about this whole issue. This may be a forlorn hope.

Please ask Calderdale Council to add environmental protection to their Brexit Action Plan

Calderdale Council has set up a cross-party Brexit Action Planning group but the themes they’ve identified for their Brexit Action Plan do not include environmental protection.

Everyone who supports the Ban the Burn campaign, please consider writing to your Councillors and to the Council Leader Tim Swift, asking them to add environmental protection to their list of themes, and explaining why this matters to Calderdale.