Environmental Policy after Brexit in Britain and the EU – Prof Andy Jordan

[00:00:00] Michael Clegg: can i say welcome to everybody to this uh event on environmental policy making after brexit in britain and the eu um i'm michael clegg and i'm the uh secretary of cambridge for europe and uh also uh joining us today is paul brown the chair of cambridge for europe he's going to be helping with some of the questions and administration um as speaker today is professor andy jordan from um uea so a big welcome to andy andy's professor of environmental policy in the tyndall center for climate change research at uea he's the author of several books on environmental policy making and recently edited along with vivian gravie the fourth edition of environmental policy in the eu actors institutions and processes he's advised the oecd the uk cabinet office defra the european commission world wildlife fund and the rspb in 2015 to 16 he advised the uk parliamentary environmental audit committee inquiry on the eu referendum and in 2016 to 20 served on the scientific committee of the european environment agency and andy currently sits on defra science advisory council social science expert group so um lots of knowledge and experience with andy which he's hopefully going to uh to transmit to us all today um can i ask everybody to mute yourselves we will try and keep you muted whilst andy is speaking um andy's going to speak for sort of 20 to 25 minutes um we'll have questions after that if anybody would like to ask a question feel free to pose your questions while andy's speaking but we'll we'll allow andy to to complete his talk initially um but if you'd like to ask a question um then do put it in the zoom chat um you could either uh you can either leave your question for paul or i to read out or if you're keen to read it yourself perhaps you could just put read um it would also be helpful if you could actually label your question as a question uh so we know that it's a question and not just a comment on how interesting the meeting is or something similar okay so with um no more ado i will hand over to andy [00:02:15] Andy Jordan: right thank you um michael uh and thanks for the kind invitation to uh to speak to you this evening so while i just um i think you need to stop sharing yours michael your slide andy is can you yeah okay yeah you've got it okay so can you see the slide there the first one yes we can andy thanks that's good okay right okay well yes thank you for uh inviting me to speak to you to uh today um so yes i work at the tyndall center uh which is based at the university of east anglia and um i um have been working on environmental issues and particularly european union environmental issues really since the early 1990s when i moved to uea which had been and still has one of the largest and most well-known environmental scientist schools uh in europe and i mean to be honest um for a long time teaching and uh certainly speaking to the public about the european union has often felt a little bit like this cartoon depiction here um and yet certainly in that period in the period sort of since about 2013 2014 onwards i have detected a real really significant growth in in interest in in the in the way the european european union works i mean and particularly since 2016 um i think for the first time ever in my life as a lecturer i uh was started to be asked for more lectures on the european union which uh really was uh unprecedented and really the european union i mean i think what what often used to uh put off students from um studying the european union was just the inherent complexity of it i mean this is just one slide from that i show to students it's essentially a a very simplified uh diagram which shows how the european commission and the european parliament agree policy i mean it's and that's a simplified diagram it's it's really really complicated and and yes for the most part for many students really really uh quite dry quite sort of arcane and very very sort of uh very sort of procedural but uh i think really what one of the good things i think that the the referendum did was energised people uh including students who and and policy makers and other stakeholders to to find out more about the way that the european union works and in in response to that demand a group small group of of us created uh this this network essentially it's a sort of think tank called brexit environment to provide impartial uh evidence-based information to to to policymakers and as michael uh said at the beginning when he summarized my bio we we found that there really has been a a very strong demand uh uh really since the uh and before the referendum for that sort of impartial information on environment if you're interested in environment uh you can follow us on twitter uh there's a website address there as well uh there's loads of stuff up there uh resources blogs reports and and and lectures and all sorts of other things so if you're interested by all means please um have a look uh with we're funded or were funded by the economic social research council as part of a bigger initiative called the uk and a changing europe which is which is still running and if you've if you're interested in all things europe or and or eu then i strongly strongly recommend that you sign up for their their newsletters and and and look at their website that's that's uk and a changing europe and we've had other money from the economic and social research council as well so um eu environment policy well it started out in the late 1960s actually a long long time ago it's relatively uh broad in its aims it's cheap seeks to achieve a high level of environmental ambition across the well the now eu 27 um it's if informed by a set of sort of principles things like precaution and prevention polluter pays as i'll say as i'll show later on it's it's mainly regulatory in nature the eu in this policy area operates via regulation rather than other sort of policy tools um it has very significantly shaped the the policies of the 27 or as was 28 member states but what's quite interesting about it though is that the eu is itself also shaped by um international uh dynamics things that are done within the oecd for example or within the united nations i mean a good example is the united nations framework convention on climate change you know the cop process that we all heard so much about over the last two weeks it's often presented though eu environment policy as being relatively top down but actually i try and explain to the students that it isn't it it retains a lot of flexibility for different member states to do things at different sort of speeds informed by this principle of subsidiarity the idea that i think that's a lot of flexibility to do so i think that we're going to do so i think that i think that we're going to do so i think that we're going to do so that we're going to do so that we're going to do so and finally compared to perhaps other areas of eu action it's it's been relatively effective it's developed a large number of policies and and also if you believe um the results of the sort of euro barometer polls that the commission has been undertaking for many many years now it's relatively popular as well across all member states um including incidentally uh amongst the the the uh um within the uk as well prior to uh brexit so you can see here very simply on this figure the the the growth in the number of eu uh policy instruments in just one area of of environment policy climate change and you can see how it sort of started uh well this is climate policy so it started relatively recent in the 1990s and how it's really uh how it really sort of took off in the 2000s but notice also how it hasn't just the number of of new policy adoptions has not just continued to increase inexorably it's sort of tailed off it's plateaued particularly in the last sort of five four ten uh years and if we just go into a particular area of of environment policy so this is climate policy you can see the whole sort of set of different sub areas where the eu is is active you know renewable energy biofuels the fuel that we put now in our in our cars if we're still driving fossil fuel vehicles um car emissions uh emissions trading labeling of of products like kettles and fridges and things like that so a whole range of of different ways in which the the eu uh is is active but again if if we look historically and this is a diagram which shows all areas of environmental policy we can see a number of kind of kind of interesting things so this this figure here has sort of three lines on it so that the first line the the line with the the triangles is the total number of environmental policy instruments adopted and again you see rapid increase through the sort of 80s and 90s and then sort of plateauing uh in the in the 2000s but if you look at the other two lines so the darker of those are the two lines the one with the diamonds that's the that's the number of legally binding uh instruments and that actually tails off and actually decreases uh in the last five to ten years whereas the third line which is the the line showing the numbers of uh non-legally binding environmental acts has actually increased particularly in the last five or ten years so putting all that together the the eu hasn't just continued regulating on and on and on the total number has plateaued but crucially also the eu is now so you're acting more through kind of uh voluntary or non-legally binding means and less through you know sort of legally binding means so the nature of eu action um is also changing as well and another um another figure again here this this compares the number of new items of legislation adopted each year with the numbers of uh items of legislation which essentially amend the existing body of legislation and again what you can see here is that the the adoption of new policy instruments has over time increased and then decreased whereas the um adoption of of legislation essentially at adopt amending what's already there has has has actually increased so again what it shows is not this inexorable rise in policy everything sort of gradually moving up to the up to up to brussels but rather policy sort of the number of policy items plateauing and more attention now being made or being devoted to amending and improving what's um already there so i think by showing some of these figures hopefully i've sort of begun hopefully in a gentle way to try and sort of demolish some of the myths about how the eu uh operates so again if we look at historically in a particular area of policy we can also see a marked difference in the way that the eu acts it generally acts by regulating rather than by adopting market-based instruments like taxes and emissions trading i mean it's had a go at using sort of informational devices and sort of voluntary agreements voluntary agreements essentially agreements between the european union and particular industries like um like the car manufacturers but these generally have been few in number and generally have not been as effective as regulation so generally the eu operates by regulation and it operates by regulation because essentially the treaties the founding treaties require it to uh operate in that way i think what's been really interesting about the about eu environment policy is the way that it sort of has stabilized policy making over the last 30 or 40 years you know this gradual build up of policy and its implementation by the member states if we compare that on the other hand with the way that that you find policies being developed at the member state level i mean this is an example of of the uk you can see a lot more turbulence so that what this simple um figure here shows i've taken it from the institute for government it shows just how much change there is political change there is within uh different ministries uh of state so the main ministry dealing with environment of course is is defra so you can see here just how many changes there have been in the secretary of state uh over time um and some i mean for example ministry of for example ministry of justice has been even more change so i i think one of the things that the eu did was really to sort of try and promote longer term more stable uh policy making so by the time we got to 2016 when the referendum was held we had by that point a very significant and a large body of eu legislation in brussels speak that's known as the a key communitaire this had triggered a very substantial and kind of wide-ranging europeanization of both westminster and also white hell um most if not all policy by the 2000s was being uh if not made by the eu in this particular area uh or at least being um sort of uh negotiated with with the with the eu a lot of what was going on in departments particularly like defra was essentially about um implementing policies that have been adopted at a higher level and there were lots of important policy functions of course that were out uh undertaken outside of london in brussels in strasbourg in copenhagen where you find the european environment agency uh and in in places like seville where they um helped to to um uh to deal with uh industrial emissions policy i think it's important to remember also that that over the last 30 or 40 years what you see really developing is a sort of a hybrid model of policy in this area so on the one hand the eu has very heavily shaped had very heavily shaped the uk through adopting all of this legislation but at the same time you know the uk had not just passively taken all of this policy from the eu it had it had also sought to um insert its own national interests and own um um sovereign demands into the process so let me just very quickly run through this slide here so on the left hand side are some examples of how how the eu has shaped uh the uk over the last uh well when since 1973 when the uk uh joined the eu so of course it's very heavily very heavily shaped um the way in which new policies were formulated and adopted and you saw all in those figures that i showed earlier how the number of instruments changed uh increased very rapidly over time it's kind of raised the political profile of of of certain topics that might otherwise i think have been neglected things like renewable energy energy efficiency things like that um it it provided relatively strong sort of policy implementation mechanisms to ensure that policies were delivered so the commission for example oversaw implementation if there were infringements um failures to would implement then those could eventually be brought before the european court of justice which could in certain cases levy fines against member states so i think what policy making by the eu did was to lend national policy greater credibility it took away a lot of that political churn that you so um depicted in the previous slide it and and that sort of double lock so things being locked into eu legislation but also into uk legislation gave investors the you know the certainty to invest to invest in things like water treatment or offshore wind uh and and and from that huge amounts of investment flowed things like the the the thames sewer the huge sewer that's being built uh to clean up the thames for example that was largely down to eu legislation and if like me you're interested in in the politics of all this then crucially what the eu eu membership allowed was was for a very sort of interesting process of of credit and blame shifting to occur so if something generally went well with eu environment policy then of course you know member states were very quick including the uk to claim credit for it if on the other hand things didn't go quite so well then of course uh the eu provided a sort of very handy um scapegoat on the other side of course the uk didn't just uh passively accept eu policy making it depending on the issue sometimes advocated higher standards in areas like climate change for example uh in industrial emissions and other areas it it advocated for lower uh standards of water pollution for example air pollution um the uk has done a lot through um universities and other institutes to shape the sort of scientific basis of eu environment policy and the european environment agency was pretty much set up by a group of uk uh former civil servants and and many of the key um actors within the agency even now uh are uk uh nationals um the uk in particular has helped to shape the eu's international environmental policies by providing the eu with sort of greater diplomatic uh capacity through its embassies and things like that you see this particularly in areas like um climate change for example um the uk was always when it was a member state it was very keen not just on achieving certain goals but achieving them in a relatively cost effective and efficient way so the uk was a strong advocate of what what's still termed in the eu better regulation of making sure that regulations are cost effective but also regularly updated and revised and then finally it was actually surprisingly active once it had joined the eu and and particularly in the sort of the blair years very good at sort of uploading ideas that have been originally developed in the uk and sort of ensuring that the the the the uk kind of set the environmental agenda um right across the eu now what's quite interesting is that after brexit this pattern of influence of course is now changing so i won't go through all of the slide again but let me just give you a couple of examples of how things have changed so on the left hand side thinking about how the eu has shaped uk policy well of course now the eu is not providing um all of those policy formulation and adoption capacities we don't have the commission coming up with new policy ideas we don't have the parliament supervising it so there's been a huge amount of new work for policy making bodies within the uk i mean just last week after five essentially of four or five years of of of of discussion they finally adopted the very first um piece of environmental uh legislation the environment act so the really the first big piece of environmental legislation essentially since 1972 1973 and it's been i think a big learning curve for everyone in government and also uh in parliament and i think what's going to be interesting about that is that in future it will be uk politicians that will be responsible for delivering on that policy and if things go wrong there won't be the possibility to blame brussels or or other member states for that you know they the the uk politicians in future would be um sharing all the credit for it if it goes right and i think should also share the blame for it if anything goes wrong on the other side uh i think there's also going to be changes for the eu as well with the uk no longer in the room i think certainly in an area like climate change where the eu has generally been pushed to a higher level of ambition by the uk um now the the balance of power within the within the council has changed you know this there's now without the uk there there's there's more member states perhaps um pushing for um for progress to be made slightly slower or perhaps for for the eu to go not as as um as far either and then also i think and again you see this in an area like climate change the uk the eu no longer has the uk sort of significant diplomatic uh capacities to project its influence uh beyond um europe so i think really front and center really in this for in this changing process of policy making and politics is essentially defra now defra department for environment food and rural affairs is within whitehall terms a relatively small department way way smaller than some of the big sort of spending departments and yet it's a department that is generally over the last 10 20 30 40 years really not had to never never had the responsibility of developing significant pieces and items of legislation so what this um uh diagram shows here again i've taken it from the institute of government it shows how many major items of legislation are adopted uh sorry are are progressed through parliament by different departments and you can see defra uh way over there on the right so again it sort of confirms that until brexit that defra was essentially a a policy delivery and implementing department um not so much a policy making department so they're being big big challenges for the defra to deal with um it's had to be massively um um increased with with with resources since brexit it's virtually the head count has virtually doubled uh since since brexit so if you want to know where some of the billions have disappeared to um since brexit then yeah one of them is is into um work development schemes within um within certain parts of government so let me just finish now with some areas where the eu and the uk um may uh or have an opportunity to to cooperate a bit more uh with one another i mean i'm going to sort of gloss over all of the politics of you know northern ireland and fishing all over that but i think we can we can discuss that in the q a if you want but on the positive side i think there are definitely some areas where the eu and the uk can can cooperate with one another i mean one is definitely within international bodies like the un and um you know in particularly on topics where the uk and the eu share uh the ambition to to to achieve higher environmental standards i think on scientific uh and i'm thinking particularly sort of environmental the related scientific issues there's the opportunity to collaborate through eu funding bodies like the horizon europe of course the uk is not yet signed up to to that that's still um um um snared in the whole debate about uh northern ireland nevertheless um there's also the possibility to um engage in more collaboration on sort of less political issues like data collection monitoring and policy evaluation the european environment agency in copenhagen um is is responsible for undertaking these uh these sorts of uh really important tasks unfortunately the the uk pulled out uh and brexit despite you know the fact that it could easily if it wanted to have remained an associate member so who knows um with a change in in political leadership in the uk there's a possibility there for the uk to rejoin the european environment agency and then and become involved in sort of some longer term thinking and and monitoring environmental issues meanwhile i think there's definitely going to be cooperation on on product standards because if if we want to as a country sell our products within the eu particularly products with an environmental uh uh uh character for example and you know car emission standards for example or or waste things like that things that are transferred between borders we will have to collaborate with the eu and and probably abide by the standards set by the eu there are also things that are mentioned in the trade and cooperation agreements things like emissions trading the uk has essentially developed its own uh parallel system of emission trading and also on on new ideas as well like carbon border adjustment taxes um this is a hot topic in in brussels at the moment it's a way of protecting the high standards the high climate standards in in the eu from unfair competition from um countries outside of of of of of the eu and given that both the uk and the eu uh share the ambition to achieve high environment climate standards and that this might be a topic that the eu and um the uk could collaborate on of course yes let's be honest there are also potential flashpoints as well um in the trade and cooperation agreement there are there was a general principle that neither side should regress uh its standards and i think uh and all sorts of procedures that are that are in there which which one side can use to in a sense uh ensure that the other side doesn't achieve a competitive unbalances by regression regressing or reducing um its standards i think we're more likely to see regression uh on on non-product standards for the reason i gave uh before and it's it's i think interesting that that since the the um the referendum that there are certain um environmental issues that sort of sit behind the border issues like habitats protection and nature protection environmental impact assessment which have you know are in the crosshairs of of those achieving you know hoping to achieve some kind of um uh more uk focused approach to environmental policy uh the traded cooperation agreement also um sort of um sort of requires or at least um requests both sides to progress uh their environmental standards in other words to keep improving them i mean they're pretty much in alignment at the moment after 40 years of of integration and there is the possibility for example if one side suddenly improves its environmental standards to then use something called the rebalancing measures part of the trade and cooperation agreement to ensure that the other side uh doesn't achieve a competitive advantage by not sort of catching up with the more uh ambitious party and those rebalancing measures can involve all sorts of things like quotas and and and tariffs and then of course finally um there is there are all these new trade agreements uh or not so new trade agreements that uh the uk uh is is or has been signing since brexit a lot of them are not so new because they essentially just roll over existing uh eu broker trade agreements but certainly when the uk starts to sign genuinely new trade agreements uh a new one has partly been signed with australia and certainly if it signs one with the us then the uk might find itself uh diverging or wanting to diverge or under pressure to diverge from uh eu standards in which case we might see i think uh more conflicts so if you're interested uh in in environmental policy i mean there are absolute loads of of of of books out there um there's sort of if you're interested more in the sort of the the politics and policy making of the european union i can i can recommend this book that i uh uh recommend to my students the one by michelle and um there's a chapter in there on environment uh it's uh it's in its sixth edition so yes very well used i think a seventh edition is out uh next year and then yes as as michael uh identified or mentioned in in in in the beginning um we have a book that i have been editing um it's now in its fourth edition you can find it online there are some of the chapters there which are free to download so they're open access so by um by all means um have a look at those and then yes if you want anything else on brexit environment there's the website you can follow us uh on twitter and i think that's it so yes thank you for listening and yeah i'll try and answer as many questions as you can you can fire at me [00:33:11] Michael Clegg: thanks very much andy um and yeah i think you're i think your camera's off so you might want to put [00:33:16] Andy Jordan: that back on now yeah i'll stop sharing this [00:33:23] Michael Clegg: okay um so i think we're just beginning to get some some questions coming through now perhaps perhaps i could just take chair's privilege and kick off by asking one myself um as as cambridge for europe we're sort of interested in those um uh sort of small scale well perhaps that's the wrong way of putting those those issues which we can identify and campaign on which are sort of slightly less than the the long-term aim of rejoining the the european union um so i was quite taken by what you were saying about the european environment agency and that there's no reason we cannot we couldn't be an associate member of the of the eea outside the eu if if we were trying to if if one was thinking well what's the benefits of that you know and what what might be the downsides of it what could can you outline a little bit of what they might be what would be the benefit what would be the benefits of associate membership of the eea and does it have any any downsides well first of all i mean the [00:34:25] Andy Jordan: agency the eu has lots of agencies as i'm sure you're aware but this is quite a distinctive agency so it's not a regulatory agency so it there are very few if no sovereignty sort of related um concerns i think with with this particular agency it's essentially collects data that's submitted by the 27 member states plus i think it's six other states some of which are outside of the eu so it's an open sort of relatively open sort of agency what what what do they do well essentially they they collect the data uh they quality check it and they publish it in in all sorts of reports uh it's an absolute gold mine of information the european environment agency have a look very well used it's it's it's a very very it's very um it has a very good reputation for producing high quality work uh it's used by the eu institutions to um as an evidence base for policy making it's seen as relatively sort of uh relatively neutral um but lots of other states uses as well so what what were the benefits of of of the uk joining well i think first of all not only could by sharing data not only can we uh find out what's happening in other member states but those member states can also find out what's happening in the uk so hopefully that that could engender trust greater trust you know that one side isn't trying to achieve a competitive advantage by regressing its standards or perhaps not implementing existing uh rules and there's also some kind of more subtle benefits of being involved you see a lot of what the agency does is it is it actually helps to inform longer term policy making objectives so to give an example every five years it produces a state of the environment report and i i think the last one i worked on it when i was in the committee the scientific committee of the agency was really heavily shaped um the uh the big sort of green european green deal uh that was adopted uh in the last few years which has then fed through to the big sort of fit for 55 package of of climate measures so what that would do is it would actually give the uk an insight into where eu policy is going in the future and have some ability to kind of not only know where it's going but possibly also uh to shape it as well so i think lots of advantages a membership fee will have to be paid it's you know it's less i've forgotten exactly how much it is it's certainly less than 10 million a year um you um but i my sense though is already uh despite brexit there's still informal interactions going on between uh civil servants and parliamentarians in the uk and those in other member states through bodies like uh like the agency and things like sort of informal seminars and things like that so although and one final thing to remember is actually because of the way that brexit's been um implemented the uk is actually still providing data to the agency uh in relation to northern ireland and yet has no representation in the agency it's not in the management board it has no representation in the scientific committee it has no representation um in in in the other decision-making bodies of the agency so yes we have yes distinct lack of representation in that particular body [00:38:34] Michael Clegg: thanks andy that was really helpful um and the last point obviously has resonance and you know in a number of spheres um so perhaps i could uh read a question that's coming from jennifer zerk and jennifer if i if my reading it out manages to mangle your question then by all means uh come in and and repose it but jennifer's asked um what are the consequences under the eu uk sorry the eu uk tca so the trade and cooperation agreement if the eu seeks to impose new environmental requirements on uk-based exporters to the single market and the specific example jennifer has in mind is the proposal for mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence for companies that's [00:39:17] Andy Jordan: soon to be released right okay so what happened when when brexit occurs or just before brexit occurred essentially all of the eu legislation was transferred via some you know a bit like a huge vacuum cleaner was like sucked out of the eu and deposited in in in in uk law so the two essentially uk law and eu law essentially are mirror images of of one another so the big question now is what happens after after after brexit do do they continue to uh align with one another um dynamically i automatically or do they sort of continue to align in a in a sort of more or less um passive way each side deciding to move at the same speed or do they diverge and i mean the example that the that you gave in the question is an example where the eu might be anticipating a new area of legislation so then the question is does the uk uh adapt all of the law that it's retained from the eu to keep up with the eu or does it or does it in a sense decide not to do anything and by default diverge yeah so i think this is where the difference between product standards and non-product standards comes in if it's something that deals with products then and and where where access to the single market is contingent on on on maintaining those standards then those are that you you will continue to see convergence i think or should i say at least not divergence it's on these issues where there is where the the trade dimension is not so strong um so where you're more likely to see divergence and possibly possibly uh regression so if you want some indications of of what might be up for regression then have a look at the tigger report the thing that was produced by the by the brexiteer sort of you know um group um which listed a whole series of different things have a look at what uh you know the david frost uh group in the cabinet office is doing um and also have a look at some of the things in the in the environment act as well for example it provides the uk with the opportunity if it so wishes all the powers to begin to amend the habitats and birds directives [00:42:06] Michael Clegg: thank you for that thank you um paul's asked a question which uh sort of relates to some of the campaigning we're currently involved in and the european movement's currently involved in um so paul's question is it often seems that the uk government is in rather a rush to sign new trade deals to show that brexit to show some brexit quote unquote wins how big is the risk that this will undermine uk environment policy and international standards or climate goals [00:42:35] Andy Jordan: i mean i think it's possible um but at the moment that that risk hasn't emerged because most of if not all of the the the trade deals have essentially just rolled over eu legislation and therefore that legislation as i explained is essentially now retained within uk law so there's no there's no discrepancy i think we begin to we began to see some of the potential for divergence with the australia trade but i think it's a big deal where because that includes very um it doesn't include the same sort of commitments to um long-term climate change mitigation targets that you would find in uk and and essentially national policy for example it doesn't mention the 1.5 degrees uh target so that's something that the environmental groups green the uk is a body that sort of is the network which coordinates all of the environmental groups that's something that they're looking at very very closely because the trade deal with australia has only been signed in principle so we haven't yet seen the detail but that's definitely something to watch um any trade deal i think the other ones lined up on new uh new zealand and and and the us so in terms of campaigning i mean remember that that generally i suppose brexit was all based on was all sold on the idea that that the the the eu policy was was not very um attractive and that international and particularly trade policy was inherently better but i don't think really there's much evidence to suggest that the the the the uk uk citizens like um big trade deals i mean if you look at the the opposition to some of the big trade deals that the eu tried to sign up to t-tip for example a lot of the strongest opposition actually came from advocates and campaigners within the uk so um yeah i think i think belatedly i think the uk government has has tried to engage with civil society organizations and stakeholders to try and bring them on board in in in the process of developing these trade deals but at the moment it it's yeah it seems to be doing things in a rather sort of stealthy kind of manner which kind of could store up problems uh later on [00:45:03] Michael Clegg: yes thanks for that i mean i think we're all you know painfully aware of the um the the the janus faced aspect of lots of brexiteers where on the one hand um brexit is seen to represent the ability for the uk to act independently and yet on the other hand the uk will do nothing to um lower standards or or in any way um sort of reduce high standards you know and there's there's that there's that mismatch that tension there that runs through such a lot of um brexit rhetoric um jennifer's asked a follow-up to paul's question which was to ask whether there was any chance that the or whether you think there's any chance andy that the uk might eventually take a leaf out of the eu's trade policy book and subject proposals for new trade deals to a sustainability impact assessment [00:45:52] Andy Jordan: yes um is that over optimistic well it was one of the iron many ironies of brexit that actually the uk when it was a member state was very keen on these sorts of assessments um essentially to to keep keep the commission in line you know to ensure that you know it there was surveillance of external surveillance of what it was doing it was also very keen on evaluating policies as well and and updating them and things like that but but um there's no indication at the moment that the the the uk is planning to to subject its to to to borrow that that practice that was within the eu and and and use it within in the uk in relation to new trade agreements i mean far from it i mean a lot of these new trade agreements have been adopted and negotiated and adopted at relatively high speed with very little stakeholder uh involvement um you may have heard about the uh trade and agriculture commission are you aware of that what's going to do so um yes yes yes yes yes so very slow to respond to its report and yeah and and only created it after the environmental and and uh agriculture groups kicked up a big fuss i think i think initially i don't think he even wants to create that such a body so i think i'd i'd at the moment i think the ng ngos would like sustainability impact assessments because it really would give them a um some leverage in the process and and and and open up what what is otherwise quite a secretive process but i don't personally see the likelihood of that happening too soon no no although there is something interesting [00:47:40] Michael Clegg: i think that that comes out of some of those thoughts that there's kind of um there's quite a lot of of dimensions under which you know improvement could be made there are quite a lot of areas where perhaps relatively small relatively incremental but nonetheless kind of real improvements on the current situation are possible um we've we've got a question from ellie crane here it's quite a it's quite a general one and um people might might wish to throw in their own ideas in the in the chat but let me let it let me put it to you um andy and see what you might have to say so ellie's question is and she says she's anticipating family conversations around the christmas dinner table um not that there'll be much on your christmas dinner table ellie in view of you know shortages um so any tips for talking to committed brexiteers who still believe that the uk made the right decision but who don't have the background knowledge to engage in detailed policy discussions what facts or approaches might you find resonate with [00:48:37] Andy Jordan: people i think i think that to to to protect the environment or to or to rejoin the eu or well i [00:48:52] Michael Clegg: think why not start with the first of those andy is your kind of key area to protect the environment [00:48:58] Andy Jordan: yeah okay so i think generally and i'm thinking now about work that colleagues have done um in in one of the research centers i do generally the brexiteers um respond very strongly to uh of course to um arguments couched in terms of things like sovereignty and doing best by the country and things like that so what the research has shown is if you want to motivate people uh to act who are perhaps on you know who vote uh conservative and or voted ukip that's the way to get them you you say well you know let's do that we're doing this for the national good or we don't want the uk to be left behind by other countries or we want to ensure that you know the uk punches above its weight so couching things in those sorts of terms seem to resonate more with those sorts of audiences yeah i can send you the link if you want to have a look at the particular pieces of research they're very well um well very well evidenced and um yeah and peer-reviewed yeah thanks for that i mean it struck me listening to you saying [00:50:16] Michael Clegg: that that that it's always seemed to me that there's a kind of um there's a real difficulty with um the kind of under the kind of positions that tend to underpin a brexiteering perspective and what i would understand to be necessary for environmental policy because in as much as a the brexiteer arguments have a notion of sovereignty at their heart then because environmental issues almost all need um international agreement an international agreement that's then converted into some kind of technical legal framework that has some enforceability into the future you know environmental policy is almost always about some kind of compromising of sovereignty so you know i've always felt that there was just almost an inherent in principle tension between those two things but i i don't you know that's that that's just my top of the head thought really i don't i [00:51:13] Andy Jordan: don't know if that if that feels right yeah i i'm just thinking back to what um boris johnson was saying just the other day after cop 26 and essentially was saying you know well you know we did all these amazing things and and you know it's you know it's kept 1.5 degrees alive but we couldn't you know force these other countries to do anything to you know phase out coal because well they're sovereign nations and you know it's their right sovereign right to do what they want kind of now sort of sidestepping the whole way in which the eu works which of course is to share sovereignty and then when you share sovereignty then you've got some you've got some leverage over um over other countries with which you've established a long-term partnership so yeah i thought that was quite curious but but yeah i suppose the other thing to say is that during the referendum the environment was just not mentioned really at all uh i think i think remain tried to mention it quite late on and um david cameron in one desperate last throw of the dice went down to rain and marshes pushed very hard by some of the large environmental groups but leave said nothing about environment at all i mean absolutely nothing and we just you know it was message discipline so i'm just thinking aloud here i think for a lot of people um perhaps who voted brexit maybe they've really not sort of thought about you know the environment side of things because you know they've that's not really the way that environment policies expected to go in the next five or ten years was never explained to them in the in the in the in the um in the sort of referendum at all i'd like perhaps some other policy areas like you know immigration for example or nhs at least there was some very rough indication of where things might go but but not in environments at all if i could um interrupt a [00:53:24] Speaker 3: second i think one of the interesting things is if you're looking at topics i mean the food standards is interesting because there there have been a couple of polls carried out over the last year but very large polls by which and i think best for britain and some other groups and they've shown pretty consistent support for maintaining very high standards and that's cuts across the leave remain divide um you know there's it's it's something that's very very high levels i mean you're talking about 80 percent in some cases depending on the exact question i think in terms of trade deals and ensuring that uk farmers aren't put at a competitive disadvantage even there's also i mean that was pretty much the same results in the voters and remain voters and maybe that's not unexpected in what you said because yeah it wasn't really part of that that made you so maybe that's something in terms of what what we can do i think it's actually you know maybe there is i think um it's politically possible it could be um certainly be be sold to have better good alignment with eu standards actually um um can i just ask a question i'm just wondering it's it's another issue what we've seen in the eu recently is i mean they obviously departure of the uk but you've also seen issues over over gas and imports and over coal and in poland the gas import journey compound to what extent are these kind of are these issues within countries and the more the wider divide between the say that the more populist uh it's autocratic you could say countries within the eu and and some of the more the more established countries uh in the western central eu um weakening the eu's leadership position on environmental issues [00:55:07] Andy Jordan: certainly with copland and other issues yeah i mean i mean ever since the um the sort of newer member states joined the eu after 2004 essentially central and eastern europe there's been a sort of a fault line between those newer member states who generally wanted to go um slower uh than than than the the the you know the the um the eu15 and the way that the particularly in areas like sort of climate change but renewable energies and things like that the way that the eu has done that is as i think was quite clever rather than sort of say well you know you can you don't have to achieve those standards he said well yes you do have to achieve the standards of the other countries but you know there'll be funding for it there'll be um you can get there but in a slightly slower way or a more circuitous way so holding to the general uh idea that all country all countries achieve the same ends but leaving the means very much for the member states in question to decide i mean i mean if you if you're interested in this look at the big fit 55 package that the commission uh launched uh this year i mean it's just so complicated and a lot of the a lot of the complexity has arisen through deals between different parts of the eu on how to share out costs and how to ensure that all countries you know um eventually get to the eventual endpoint but in in a sort of fair kind of way so different member states for example have have different um you know so that funds have been created for example to help them make the uh transition to to to cleaner fuels for example [00:57:07] Michael Clegg: thanks andy um jane khan has asked a question that that refers to the eu green deal um could you give your view on the eu green deal is it something the uk should try to align to [00:57:21] Andy Jordan: well it's it the the green deal was something that uh emerged uh when the commission president osula von der leyen was was you know trying to uh was campaigning and and rather unexpectedly was was part of her a election winning manifesto and then really you know buoyed very much by you know the school strikes and greta and all that has suddenly become you know the main thing now that he's trying to achieve i mean it wasn't so long ago that experts like me were saying well you know it felt like eu policy was environment policy was kind of in the doldrum so it's really re-energized uh environment policy i suppose what's starting to happen though now is some areas are kind of zooming ahead like climate and energy uh but other areas of of the european green deal for example the greening of agriculture uh uh proceeding a lot more slowly there's a lot more discussion and debate so how is that how's that going to affect the uk relationship well it really depends on on whether um you know one side decides that it's for eg the eu has gone so far ahead of the uk that that it's it's it constitutes um a constraint on on free trade if if it is then they can implement these rebalancing measures um i suspect that that that won't happen not least because they've got too many other things to argue over fish for example and northern and northern ireland yes yeah yeah they'll be arguing about fish when there's no fish left i mean the other thing about the about um about the european green deal is is how rapidly these have been rolled out because of course had the eu been sorry had the uk been a member state it would have been part of the european green deal um but it isn't so that's proceeding meanwhile the uk is sort of still after you know pretty much five years of discussion and negotiation finally got its environment act up and running but that's going to take years and years and years to be implemented because it's it's a big it's essentially a framework legislation you'll need lots of items of secondary legislation to implement it so it'll be interesting to see over the next few years you know whether the whether you know how the relative speeds of policy making and policy development vary [00:59:56] Michael Clegg: yeah yeah yeah yeah no no that's interesting especially as you said before the um the sort of uh it can some of these issues can perhaps call the the lie of the idea that eu policy making is necessarily slow and bureaucratic Kelly is on occasion but not always necessarily so um and westminster is not necessarily a great model alternative um i think we're probably almost on time now actually we've got one very very straightforward question so i'll pose it and it may uh may just be a yes no answer already so um this is from daniel beck um and dan asks can britain continue to discharge sewage into the [01:00:35] Andy Jordan: sea with no longer fearing an ecj fine um as far as i understand it after after brexit um all of the um infringement cases which were uh ongoing essentially were um put to one side um and will not be enforced by the european court but interestingly what's happened is i don't know if you've been following this but but as the um environment bill as was moved through parliament lots of environment groups used it as an opportunity to try and address loopholes in eu law which essentially prevented which allowed discharges of sewage into water courses um um you know during for example intense rain events now at any point the uk so this relates right back to a directive 1991 the urban wastewater treatment directive at any point the uk could have addressed that uh and implemented the directive in full but it didn't it decided not to so yeah it's quite interesting how the the the opportunities now being grabbed by the environment goods to kind of insert this new requirement into the environment into the environment act but it's it's it's it's not an area of law that i know terribly well but um yeah it but it also took a lot of campaigning as well almost like a big kind of public um uh campaigning event over the last particularly the last few weeks um to to achieve that so we'll see now how how how well the uk implements it without the european commission and the european court looking over its shoulder [01:02:47] Michael Clegg: yeah thanks andy um so i took chair's prerogative to start the questioning and maybe i can take chair's prerogative and ended as well so we'll have this as as a last question we're probably all falling a bit feeling a bit sort of copped out now after a couple of weeks of cop but i just wanted to ask whether um reflecting on cop whether it feels like the eu was taking a leadership position within the negotiations at cop or given that sort of focus on the us china side deal whether the eu was to some extent being being sidelined in glasgow [01:03:25] Andy Jordan: i've well i wasn't in glasgow um but from i've heard sort of two stories about glasgow one one is that the eu was relatively quiet um that it that a lot of the big deals as you as you suggested were done um by um by the us or at least shaped by the us and china and india um and that actually didn't really have a good cop and then others have said well actually in some ways you know the eu has by being so proactive at previous cops i'm thinking particularly at paris for example has ensured that actually now all states are now talking about things like net zero and 1.5 degrees so yeah that in fact it had already done its work and could in some respects you know afford to sort of sit back a bit and and and and and put the pressure on on on some of the other on some of the other countries but i think the other thing to remember is that the way that the paris agreement now works is that all countries are meant to come to the um negotiating table and essentially pledge what they want to pledge the old approach which was actually the approach of the eu originally wanted which is where all sort of you know each each country would be allocated its own emissions sort of uh reduction target that that just didn't fly that that's why the whole the cop at um the cop agreement so the cop uh copenhagen was such a big disaster not only for the climate but also a big disaster for the eu but the eu learned from it and um and i think certainly raised its game by the time it got to paris [01:05:17] Michael Clegg: thanks for that andy um no i promised that would be the last question but i think we're going to give you another because um i understand there's from paul that there's a question about the common agricultural policy that i couldn't see so maybe we could just get that in as a yeah just a quick [01:05:30] Speaker 3: question from linda that was sent as a direct director to me uh so it's it's about the common agricultural policy the not the cops the cap um can you see any environmental positives of not being part of of the common agricultural policy that could be taken forward with brexit years uh then if positive ways for that developed uh here these could be part of uh cooperation input to the eea and [01:05:53] Andy Jordan: influence europe i can see you okay well i mean i know that the cap is not one of the eu's great success stories i mean far from it but i think the uk could be proud in in in having in its record of trying to green the cap over over decades and decades intellectually and politically and through all sorts of different ways so i think one big question is is is how how effective will the eu be through the european green deal at greening cap without the uk in the room so with the french farmers even more dominant that's an interesting question on on on where the cam i mean i think the the other part of the question was about the broader campaigning uh opportunities i think i think as i said before i think we know from polling evidence and previous examples of policy making that actually the u uk citizens are not i mean they might be suspicious of the eu but they're definitely not in favor of big uh trade deals then they don't know how they operate they're suspicious of of the objectives of of big business so i think you've got a big potential campaigning opportunity there as as the uk tries to as a brexiteers try and uh develop new um trade deals um secondly i think i think the u the evidence showed as well the euro barometer reports that actually the the uk citizens generally saw a role for action above the heads of states you know that actually they didn't trust everything to be dealt with by central government they they saw a role for higher level of authorities um so i think there's a i think a possibility there to engage people with a discussion about how government is held to account um you know through these some of the new body for example the office and environmental protection that was created by the new environment act also i think there might be campaigning opportunities uh around attempts to try and weaken existing areas of eu derived law habitats nature environmental assessment plus other areas you know that are now being lined up for change gene editing gmos these are things that members of the public in the uk feel very very strongly about i mean look at how look at the size of the rspb and its membership millions and millions and millions and millions there may not be dedicated remainers but they sure as hell feel really strongly about the environment [01:08:47] Speaker 3: right yeah i think i mean i think there is a definitely i think we had a question about earlier about um what can we do to rejoin but i think what you've said there kind of hit a key point that at the moment while many of us will campaign to rejoin and i think we'll i think we need to to be more out about that to an extent but also there are other issues and i think specific issues where we can campaign in a in a slightly less pro eu point perspective but to you know in a way which where there are issues that are important anyway but i think they can also if handled correctly can help to keep us perhaps in in closer to to the eu and to its its values and and its um yeah its structure and organization and that's um i think that will be one of the challenges over over the next uh next few [01:09:35] Andy Jordan: years well greener uk is the network that essentially coordinates all of the ngos the environmental ngos in the uk it was formed after the referendum that's that's the body that yeah that's also now thinking about new trade agreements it's also keeping an eye on you know what david frost is doing in the cabinet office so yeah might be a potential you know ally in what you're doing yeah yes the more [01:10:03] Michael Clegg: eyes on david frost the better i think um so thanks andy thanks very much that was really stimulating lots of really interesting ideas and i don't know if you had a chance to look at the chat but there were lots of appreciative comments um after your talk so so thank you very much indeed so thanks thanks for everybody to attending um for attending paul were there any cambridge for europe announcements you [01:10:25] Speaker 3: wanted to make uh well i think that's going to be our last um online event before the the holidays hopefully we'll we'll come back um off in the new year with some more events um to be announced uh we do we are having a stall in cambridge on saturday week so the 27th so uh if anybody is in cambridge if anybody can volunteer we are we're all keen to have people join us and that um details of this are on our website and on our um facebook page and we'll be tweeting about it as well um and i think that's it for the moment we will watch keep an eye on our our social media and our website and um there'll be plenty coming up over the next few months great thanks paul and thanks again andy [01:11:09] Michael Clegg: thank you well thanks and cheerio to everybody thanks for attending thank you bye-bye thank you andy