A Supreme Court battle looms next week over who controls British environment legislation
Almost no one seems to have noticed, but one of the most important court cases so far this century will be heard next week. It will not just decide whether four fifths of our environmental legislation can be effectively enforced, but crucially affect our relationship with the EU. For if the judgment goes as ministers want, it will pose arguably the greatest challenge to Brussels’s writ since Britain first joined the Common Market.
A good thing, too, many will say, not least those increasingly turning to a surging Ukip. But issues other than national sovereignty are also at stake, including public health and the rule of law.
The case – before the Supreme Court on Thursday – attempts to put an end to the decades-long scandal of air pollution, which kills tens of thousands of people in Britain each year. Three years ago Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, published authoritative research showing that it caused 4,300 deaths annually in London alone, while the Government’s official air pollution watchdog later put the nationwide mortality figure at 29,000.
In just two months this year, there have been three serious episodes in London alone (ministers failed to issue warnings). And this week the Mayor’s office advised schools not to let children out into their playgrounds when levels are high.
Partly because air pollution breezily ignores borders, it has long been regulated on a continental basis, through EU directives made part of national laws. But successive governments have failed to implement them, and now ministers seem set on watering them down. David Cameron has included “environmental legislation” among the areas for renegotiation where he believes Brussels has “gone far too far”.Yet green issues are among the few where Britons have long approved of EU intervention. While they have traditionally, and by large majorities, told polls that Brussels has a “negative role” in areas such as health care, employment, inflation, housing and tax, about three times as many people consistently say it has had a good effect on the British environment as disagree.
The PM has particularly singled out for attack European controls on one air pollutant, nitrogen dioxide – largely responsible for the asthma epidemic that affects one in seven British children. And these, as it happens, are also the subject of Thursday’s case at the Supreme Court.
Under EU directives, which they themselves have approved, all member states were obliged to bring this pollution down to levels determined on medical grounds by the beginning of 2010. All except five of them failed to do so, but Britain has done particularly poorly. Only three out of 43 areas in the country hit the limits in time, while London achieved the sorry distinction of being the most polluted capital in Europe. Brussels allows governments to apply for a five-year extension for particularly difficult areas to tackle provided they have credible plans for meeting the limits by the start of 2015. Yet Britain insists that 16 areas – covering places from Birmingham to Berkshire, Surrey to Stoke-on-Trent – will not clean up until 2020, and that London will have to wait until 2025. Ministers freely admit that they are breaking the law, and are in effect daring the European Commission to take legal action. Indeed, it could take Britain to the European Court and have it massively fined. But this would take years, during which the pollution would continue. It has, however, long been established that national courts should also enforce European directives, since they become part of each country’s laws. So ClientEarth, a green legal outfit, tried just that, taking ministers to the High Court a little over a year ago. Extraordinarily, however – while agreeing that the Government was breaking the law – it decided “this is a matter for enforcement at European level, rather than domestic level”. And in May the Court of Appeal effectively agreed. On Thursday, the Supreme Court will have its say. Experts warn that if it too backs ministers, the consequences will be enormous, imperilling the enforcement of the 80 per cent of British environmental measures that originate in EU law, as well as of directives covering a host of issues from product standards to fair competition. The effect could be to reduce them to second-class legislation. “This is one of the most significant cases to come before British courts in recent years,” says Prof Richard Macrory of University College London, one of Britain’s top environmental lawyers. “It would be disastrous if the principle were upheld that, when there is a breach of EU law, it should be solely left to the commission, rather than the national courts, to deal with.” It’s going to be an interesting case. BELGIAN WILD BOAR UP FOR A FIGHT AS CULL ENDS IN FAILURE What would Asterix say? Last week, 200 Gauls went out to cull an exploding population of wild boar in northern Belgian forests. It was a much-needed foray. The beasts have caused several road accidents and have become so aggressive that hunting dogs have to be issued with specially armoured jackets, costing £200 apiece, before taking them on. Their Vitalstatistix? Don’t ask. The Belgians – much admired by the Gaulish chief in the last story written by René Goscinny – returned with a bag of just one boar, complaining that many of their prey had legged it over the Dutch border. Even Pippa Middleton did better: a group of 20 hunters she joined near Gerpinnes, Belgium, in December slew six of the beasts. The Flemish Agency of Nature and Forestry, which organised the cull, put part of the failure down to its big-heartedness. “One group contained too many young animals and we decided not to shoot,” a spokesman told Reuters. That would not have impressed Obelix, and nor would the fate of the sole trophy, which was divided between the hunters – leaving each, presumably, to feast on one two-hundredth of a boar each. THE GREEN STUFF AT THE HEART OF BRITISH GAS PRICE RISES Anyone remember “Cedric the Pig”? British Gas was this week embroiled in perhaps its biggest row since its cruelly nicknamed erstwhile chief executive, Cedric Brown, stepped down with a large pension 17 years ago, following revelations that it had made £50 profit per household, months after raising prices at twice the rate of inflation to meet “costs largely outside our control”. The company has been at great pains to give the impression that many of these uncontrollable costs are a direct result of the Government’s green- energy policies. They were vigorously trotted out at the time of the price rise, and the company was at it again this week, warning that they would continue to put “upward pressure” on prices. They do, of course, add a bit to the bills, but this is dwarfed by the rising cost of gas itself. Indeed, subsidies for green-energy generation, the most controversial addition, contribute about £20 to the average £1,200 dual fuel bill – or less than half the company’s own profit. Naturally, they provide a tempting way of diverting attention from more embarrassing issues, but British Gas really must beware of telling porkies.
source and credit a telegraph
Under EU directives, which they themselves have approved, all member states were obliged to bring this pollution down to levels determined on medical grounds by the beginning of 2010. All except five of them failed to do so, but Britain has done particularly poorly. Only three out of 43 areas in the country hit the limits in time, while London achieved the sorry distinction of being the most polluted capital in Europe. Brussels allows governments to apply for a five-year extension for particularly difficult areas to tackle provided they have credible plans for meeting the limits by the start of 2015. Yet Britain insists that 16 areas – covering places from Birmingham to Berkshire, Surrey to Stoke-on-Trent – will not clean up until 2020, and that London will have to wait until 2025. Ministers freely admit that they are breaking the law, and are in effect daring the European Commission to take legal action. Indeed, it could take Britain to the European Court and have it massively fined. But this would take years, during which the pollution would continue. It has, however, long been established that national courts should also enforce European directives, since they become part of each country’s laws. So ClientEarth, a green legal outfit, tried just that, taking ministers to the High Court a little over a year ago. Extraordinarily, however – while agreeing that the Government was breaking the law – it decided “this is a matter for enforcement at European level, rather than domestic level”. And in May the Court of Appeal effectively agreed. On Thursday, the Supreme Court will have its say. Experts warn that if it too backs ministers, the consequences will be enormous, imperilling the enforcement of the 80 per cent of British environmental measures that originate in EU law, as well as of directives covering a host of issues from product standards to fair competition. The effect could be to reduce them to second-class legislation. “This is one of the most significant cases to come before British courts in recent years,” says Prof Richard Macrory of University College London, one of Britain’s top environmental lawyers. “It would be disastrous if the principle were upheld that, when there is a breach of EU law, it should be solely left to the commission, rather than the national courts, to deal with.” It’s going to be an interesting case. BELGIAN WILD BOAR UP FOR A FIGHT AS CULL ENDS IN FAILURE What would Asterix say? Last week, 200 Gauls went out to cull an exploding population of wild boar in northern Belgian forests. It was a much-needed foray. The beasts have caused several road accidents and have become so aggressive that hunting dogs have to be issued with specially armoured jackets, costing £200 apiece, before taking them on. Their Vitalstatistix? Don’t ask. The Belgians – much admired by the Gaulish chief in the last story written by René Goscinny – returned with a bag of just one boar, complaining that many of their prey had legged it over the Dutch border. Even Pippa Middleton did better: a group of 20 hunters she joined near Gerpinnes, Belgium, in December slew six of the beasts. The Flemish Agency of Nature and Forestry, which organised the cull, put part of the failure down to its big-heartedness. “One group contained too many young animals and we decided not to shoot,” a spokesman told Reuters. That would not have impressed Obelix, and nor would the fate of the sole trophy, which was divided between the hunters – leaving each, presumably, to feast on one two-hundredth of a boar each. THE GREEN STUFF AT THE HEART OF BRITISH GAS PRICE RISES Anyone remember “Cedric the Pig”? British Gas was this week embroiled in perhaps its biggest row since its cruelly nicknamed erstwhile chief executive, Cedric Brown, stepped down with a large pension 17 years ago, following revelations that it had made £50 profit per household, months after raising prices at twice the rate of inflation to meet “costs largely outside our control”. The company has been at great pains to give the impression that many of these uncontrollable costs are a direct result of the Government’s green- energy policies. They were vigorously trotted out at the time of the price rise, and the company was at it again this week, warning that they would continue to put “upward pressure” on prices. They do, of course, add a bit to the bills, but this is dwarfed by the rising cost of gas itself. Indeed, subsidies for green-energy generation, the most controversial addition, contribute about £20 to the average £1,200 dual fuel bill – or less than half the company’s own profit. Naturally, they provide a tempting way of diverting attention from more embarrassing issues, but British Gas really must beware of telling porkies.
source and credit a telegraph
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