A letter to my MP:
Dear Mr Pursglove
I hope you have had as merry a Christmas as is possible under present circumstances and I wish you a safe 2021.
It may seem a little odd to bother you with a missive in this period between Christmas and New Year but I guess you’ll be working anyway, and may well be heading back to Westminster tomorrow to vote through our cooperation agreement with the EU. That agreement is one of three matters I’d like to mention to you in this letter. So let’s start there…
- Environmental protection from 1 January 2021.
I feel fairly confident that I have read more of the 1246 pages of the Brexit deal than most of your constituents and you won’t be surprised that my eye has been looking for the environmental implications of it all. As a Remainer back in 2016 and one who would have favoured as soft a Brexit as possible (a view at some distance from your own, I know) I was most interested in all the stuff about level playing fields in Title XI (and I have written about it in my blog https://markavery.info/2020/12/27/brexit-deal-ten-words-that-spell-environmental-damage/ ).
I am troubled by the 10 words highlighted in Article 7.2 on p202 which state ‘A Party shall not weaken or reduce, in a manner affecting trade or investment between the Parties, its environmental levels of protection or its climate level of protection below the levels that are in place at the end of the transition period, including by failing to effectively enforce its environmental law or climate level of protection.
Those 10 words clearly limit the size of the level playing field and I wonder what you and your government colleagues in DEFRA feel they mean. What aspects of environmental protection does DEFRA feel do not affect trade or investment please? Could you ask them for their thinking on this, please. And do they think that these matters are so clear that they cannot be misinterpreted by either party nor by future governments. I’d be really interested to hear their thoughts, which are, I believe, important to how we will see environmental protection play out over the post Brexit years. Thank you.
2. COVID-19
Pretty tricky situation isn’t it? I just wanted to say that when I took my 94 year old mother for her jab at Thrapston before Christmas everything went very smoothly. I’ve read of breaking fridges in Rushden and no-show vaccines in Corby but my family’s personal experience, so far, has been good. Clearly the roll out of the vaccine will be a critical test of the govenment’s competence and you need some success now to make us forget the failures of last spring. So the best of luck with that – we are all willing you to succeed.
3. Floods
Yes, after pestilence comes floods. Here in Raunds we are getting accustomed to increasing flood events even though we are perched on the top of a hill. Most of the floods are in the places where local people said that there would be floods if new housing were built in the wrong places. And we have a lot of extra housing in Raunds. I’m well aware that these are local decisions in which you as our Westminster MP play very little direct part, but you should know that your constituents are going to be facing increasing issues of flood risk as climate change progresses alongside built develoment in such areas. Only if all levels of government are aware of these issues, and work together constructively, will the best outcomes emerge.
Anyway, items 2 and 3 are really for your information. Item 1 is where I would like you, please, to seek clarification from DEFRA on the implications of our Brexit deal for environmental protection.