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As we write, the Bank of England is busy with its emergency monetary action in capital markets to bail out large UK finance institutions. These are sober and unprecedented times as the crisis is not caused by an external shock, but by government policy.

But the extreme actions of the new Prime Minister Truss and Chancellor Kwarteng, who in principle should still be governing according to the 2019 Conservative Party electoral manifesto, does not stop at the destabilisation of the currency and economy. Important, hard-won, and widely supported nature and health protections are also at stake. And the two policies – tax cuts and decimation of regulations – are connected. Environment groups must oppose both.

Global Action Plan’s vision is of a green and thriving planet on which everyone can live a happy and healthy life within the earth’s limits. As of July 2022, we as global citizens, via the United Nations, formally gained the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment.

As of 22 September 2022, we as UK citizens stand to lose hundreds of environmental laws, which would lead to a more polluted, unhealthy and unsustainable environment. 

The Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill 2022, tabled the day before the mini budget and now going through Parliament, looks to remove more than 2,400 standards for air and water quality as well as legal protections for natural habitats and the use of chemicals in the food system. Not only does this mark an almost instant national breach of our newly gained global right, it will put our health, lives and cherished but fragile, ecology at great risk.

So, what right does the new government have to remove our environmental protections? None. They are being taken away without most people’s support by a government that, only this time last year, published a ground-breaking Environment Act that promised to reverse nature’s decline within this decade. In its 2019 Manifesto, the Conservatives pledged to “Raise standards in areas like workers’ rights, animal welfare, agriculture and the environment" after Brexit. The new bill threatens the complete reverse.

As the latest British Social Attitudes Survey shows, the vast majority of the UK public (72%) are concerned or very concerned about environmental issues, especially climate change and air pollution. Climate change is also a uniting anxiety, regardless of income, background or politics. People want a clean, healthy and sustainable environment. This is impossible without legal protection and there is simply no public mandate to revoke our environmental laws. 

So what can we do?

Individually: we can take online actions like that launched by the Wildlife Trusts. We can also talk about it, tell friends and urgently write to our MPs. Handwriting or emailing a letter is always better than taking an online action.

Let them know they don’t have a mandate to pollute and concrete over our country at will. MPs will have the chance to amend the bill as it passes through Parliament and to vote against it. Let them know that we value our international right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment and want to retain (and improve) our environmental laws, regulations and protections.

Organisationally: We in the environment sector need to collaborate. We need to cast brands, specific campaign aims, and jostling for funding aside and mobilise. Using our respective strengths and levers, be that direct action, inside-track advocacy, or membership lobbying, we need to call together for the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill 2022 to be quashed.

But environment groups should join with economic and social justice organisations to oppose the cuts to tax on the highest earners and companies. Not only are these immoral – even the IMF has said that these risk creating even greater inequality in the UK – but they will be paid for in two ways. The first is by cuts to public services and government department spending, including vital budgets to assist in reducing air pollution and reaching net zero. The second is through the very ‘supply-side reforms’ that the Retained EU Law Bill is a part of.

In other words, there is an intrinsic link between the slashing of taxes that is currently spooking markets and the butchering of vital environmental regulations. And the more the markets sell UK bonds and currency, the more urgent the government’s imperative to push through the Retained EU Law Bill will become.

Cutting regulations, taxes and spending are all tragedies for our common good and a disaster for the UK’s environment, which already hangs in the balance. Restoring nature and credibility and bailing out households requires urgent action. Let’s take it together.