The British government says, that in the face of Brexit, it is committed to safeguarding and improving existing environmental protection legislation.
According to the House of Commons' Environmental Audit Committee, the EU helped to shape some 80% of the UK environmental legislation, including air quality, agriculture and waste. Also, the EU Directives, such as Birds and Habitats have given much greater protection for the wildlife than domestic legislation. To protect this state, the British politicians must do a lot of work to ensure, that the country continues to protect the environment in the same way as before - without the help from the EU.
The cross party Environmental Audit Committee says, that to ensure, that there is no weakening in this field, a new environmental protection act should be presented during the Article 50 negotiations. The chair of the committee, Mary Creagh said: "The process of leaving the EU presents a huge risk to all those protections which is why in our report we're calling for a new environmental protection act so that when we leave the European Union we are no worse off protected than we are at the moment".
The Committee also called for the government to "guarantee, that it will not trade away environmental protections, animal welfare and food safety standards, as a part of the negotiations to leave or as part of future deals".
The future of some very important pieces of legislation, such as Directive 2008/98/EC on waste (Waste Framework Directive), is not certain, there is a great need to focus the attention of the government on the development of the new domestic legislation, to avoid turning post-EU environmental laws into "zombie legislation".
