Not for the first time, dubious stuff from Monbiot.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... egulations
Want to import toxic chemicals into Britain with scant scrutiny? Labour says: go right ahead
What's the deal here? Labour wants to reduce compliance cost for chemical businesses, and has done a consultation where it suggests accepting chemicals that comply with regulations in some (unspecified) jurisdictions. What does this mean? The EU and a few other places with similar standards, you might think? Simplifying compliance was a big advantage of being in the EU and a reason we had to take on a load of civil servants in preparation for leaving.
No, it definitely means America. Which allows George to predict every chemical disaster that's happened there is coming here. Grenfell is thrown in for good measure. And Jacob Rees Mogg.
The reason he takes this view is something about foreign corporations. That lots of corporations don't want a free for all isn't considered. I'm reminded of Michael Hestletine's comments on some sort of earlier "red tape challenge". Businesses turned out to basically like the regulation, because they knew where they were with it and didn't particularly want to be undercut. Like I've said before, this is the same sort of politics that every change of workers rights is "Back to 1979" or "French industrial chaos". Yeah, you've saved some compliance costs, that's just the same as bringing back leaded petrol and asbestos.
He's got an alternative.
There is in fact a means of reducing costs while maintaining high standards: simply mirror EU rules. Though far from perfect, they set the world’s highest standards for chemical regulation. Mirroring them as they evolve would avoid the pointless institutional replication and total regulatory meltdown our chemicals system has suffered since we left the EU. But we can’t have that, as it would mean backtracking on Brexit, which would be BETRAYAL. Adopting the weaker standards of other states at the behest of foreign corporations, by contrast, is the height of patriotism.
This is absolute horseshit. See UK in a Changing Europe. The overall trajectory is to align, The idea that we're doing "patriotic" divergence all over the place doesn't bear a moment's scrutiny. This is the worst kind of playing for cheap clicks.
https://ukandeu.ac.uk/uk-eu-relations-a ... y-stealth/
At this point he puts his serious head on.
The divergence from European standards is likely to mean breaking the terms of the EU-UK trade and cooperation agreement, as well as landing Northern Ireland in an even greater quandary, as it remains in both the EU single market and the UK internal market. In many cases, deregulation delivers bureaucratic chaos.
Or, hear me out here, the Government doesn't actually intend to do what you say they are? You think they're going to do all this and suddenly think "Oh fuck, why didn't we think about our biggest market, that we've just negotiated a reset with! We'll have to scrap that now! All those economic benefits we just got the OBR to account for will have to be taken out of 5 year projections, we'll have to put taxes up!"
This all seems to be built on "any trusted jurisdiction" not being specified up front. Shady, huh? Well, not really, if you're trying to improve trade generally. It's a nice carrot in trade negotiations. Or indeed, stick. "Nice chemical export industry you've got there. Would be a shame if it got snagged up in red tape..." You don't have to impute any deviousness to the Government here, It's exactly what I'd expect.
No list is given of what these trusted jurisdictions are. It will be up to ministers to decide: they can add such countries through statutory instruments, which means without full parliamentary scrutiny.
I mean, seriously? You want the Government to have to take a bill through Parliament on everything like this? It can still be scrutinized on it. You think nobody would mention eg (since you're keen to invoke Rees Mogg) the UK saying Indian chemical standards are OK?
In one paragraph the document provides what sounds like an assurance: these jurisdictions should have standards “similar to and at least as high as those in Great Britain”. Three paragraphs later, the assurance is whisked away: the government would be able “to use any evaluation available to it, which it considers reliable, from any foreign jurisdiction”.
Didn't we have this discussion before with TPIP and the like? Different countries have different ways of evaluating things. That doesn't mean that everything evaluated under a different system explodes and takes your eye out. They may be as safe as anything we or the EU evaluates, just different, hence the current need for extra compliance costs which you don't have to be Jacob Rees Mogg to regard as wasteful. Evaluate the evaluation system and if it's OK, we accept that. What's the problem, apart from "sovereignty"?
I mean, he could be right. The Government might be about to chuck its entire EU strategy in the bin and do something very unpopular in its own right to save one industry £40m. Or perhaps it isn't. We'll see, I guess.
- By davidjay
- By Dalem Lake