Will Cutting the Red Tape Mean Keeping it Green?

The government’s war on red tape is now set to ignite a bonfire of environmental regulations.

The Guardian ran an exclusive on Saturday, following a leak of proposals, which were announced by the government today under the heading “environment protected and business boosted.”

Of 255 regulations, Defra says 132 will be improved, mainly through simplification or consolidation; 70 will be kept as they are, to uphold important environmental protections; and 53 obsolete regulations will be removed.

Defra has produced a document called Red Tape Challenge – Environment Theme Proposals March 2012, which lists the areas being looked at, which include waste transfer, environmental permits, chemicals, air quality and industrial emissions, carbon reduction, noise and nuisance, biodiversity and landscape management.

Many of the proposals will be subject to further consultation.

A glance at the full list reveals an alphabet soup of regulations that have built up over time and which do indeed appear unwieldy and confusing.

Many environmentalists however are furious.

The Guardian reported that Green Party MP, Caroline Lucas, has called the red tape challenge “an ideologically driven vanity project”.

For the government, Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman says:

“We’re making it easier for people to do the right thing, by making rules clearer and by getting rid of old, unworkable regulations. This is a prime example of how we can help grow a green economy whilst looking after our natural resources.”

The government believes that simpler and smarter environment regulations will provide savings to businesses of more than £1billion over five years and protect the environment by being cheaper and easier for companies to follow while enforcement will be targeted at companies that are not abiding by the rules.

Included amongst the proposals is better guidance, due to take effect next month, on the clean-up of contaminated land (as I mentioned in Contaminated Land Regime Gets a Spring Clean).

That ought to speed up the process that determines whether or not land is regarded as contaminated and reduce unnecessary property blight by helping to focus only on land that poses significant risk, although local authorities will still need to determine what high risk is and what is low risk.

There’s a long list of other regulations in the government’s document.

The detail of these proposals will need to be scrutinised to ensure that a drive to reduce red tape does not become an excuse to get rid of sensible but politically inconvenient law.

Is the self-styled “greenest government ever” right to target what the chancellor has called the "ridiculous costs" of "endless social and environmental goals"? Can you even be the former without having the latter?

Are those goals “endless” because their ends will never be fully realised?

It will be important, when simplifying the rules, to ensure the substance of them is retained.

The Independent reports a poll showing just 2 per cent of people think the coalition is living up to Prime Minister David Cameron's promise to be the “greenest government ever”.

That tag was always going to be a hard one to live up to, especially where the main driver is seen as saving money.

It’s a cynic, rather than the greenest person ever, who knows the price of everything, but the value of nothing.

Update 20/3/12

And to show he's no cynic, here's an open letter from the secretary of state for climate change, Ed Davey! 

Photo by Steve-h via Flickr