Defend Nature update - a setback and a small win

Charlotte Owen
, 07 June 2023
Defend Nature update - a setback and a small win

The Retained EU Law (REUL) Bill is still speeding through Parliament. Just recently we asked you to take urgent action to ask MPs to attend a crucial vote on 24 May, and your response was fantastic - thank you!

Nationally, nearly 10,0000 Wildlife Trust supporters took rapid action to ask their MP to support Amendment 48, which would ensure that the laws that protect nature are not weakened, and we also contacted all Sussex MPs direct.

Disappointingly, the government and Conservative MPs voted down this amendment. We're not sure why, since it aligns perfectly with the government's repeated reassurances that environmental protections won't be weakened. However, opposition MPs did back the amendment and environmental concerns dominated the overall debate, in large part because so many of our supporters wrote to their MPs.

So what happens now? The REUL Bill is in a 'ping pong' phase, moving back and forth between the Commons and the Lords as various amendments are proposed until a final version is agreed. During this process, the same amendment cannot be made twice but with some careful re-working, a new amendment with the same overall effect could potentially be re-inserted. This is what we hoped to see when the REUL Bill returned to the House of Lords on 6 June, and we are delighted to say that two new amendments (which The Wildlife Trusts have been working on behind the scenes) have been put forward by a majority vote in the House of Lords: 

  1. Lord Krebs laid a new Amendment 15, which still focused on non-regression of environmental laws and no weakening of International Conventions; 
  2. and Lord Anderson laid Amendments 6 and 42, which asked for transparency and more scrutiny by Parliament.

The REUL Bill will now return to the Commons for MPs to consider and vote on the latest batch of amendments. Since the government has a majority, there's a risk they will vote the same way again and remove these amendments - but with such a clear majority in the Lords, we hope the government will take note of this clear signal to safeguard the environment. If you'd like to contact your MP again about this to reinforce the message even further, there's still time to send a postcard or you can email them direct - you'll find contact details here: TheyWorkForYou.com


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