Ruth Chambers argues that bypassing the Senedd to rewrite environmental rules is a threat to both nature protection and democratic government
Plaid Cymru came into office promising a greener course for Wales. Their manifesto pledged action on climate change and biodiversity loss, stronger environmental governance and greater resilience. Plaid’s first 100 days plan promised practical, evidence-led government and action on the climate and nature emergencies. However those ambitions seem to be overlooked now that the government has set out a proposal which would give ministers a broad power to remove or modify environmental regulations. This should trouble anyone who cares about nature or the quality of Welsh democracy.
Environmental regulations protect our air, water, wildlife and public health. Changes that appear to be technical can shift costs, weaken duties or narrow protections.
The government presents this as a practical answer to a genuine problem. Some regulations inherited from the EU are now more difficult to update because the power used to make them no longer exists. Ministers need a lawful way to correct legal defects, respond to new evidence and keep the rules working. But administrative inconvenience is not a good enough reason to give the executive a sweeping power to rewrite or remove a wide field of environmental law with only limited Senedd involvement.
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As Green Alliance has argued, the question is not whether ministers will sometimes need to amend these rules, it’s whether the power they seek is properly justified and underpinned by safeguards. Environmental regulations protect our air, water, wildlife and public health. Changes that appear to be technical can shift costs, weaken duties or narrow protections. Decisions of that kind deserve to be made through primary legislation with rigorous Senedd scrutiny. They should not be made through a shortcut for convenience.
The wider context makes caution more urgent. Environmental law is increasingly portrayed as an obstacle that must be made more ‘flexible’, rather than as the framework that keeps long term public commitments intact. We have heard this argument before: safeguards are blamed for delay — while speed, growth and cutting red tape are offered as the answer. Such blunt logic misses why these protections exist. They guard against short term political and commercial incentives overlooking harm that is dispersed, cumulative or impossible to reverse.
Environmental law is increasingly portrayed as an obstacle that must be made more ‘flexible’, rather than as the framework that keeps long term public commitments intact.
Wales should resist that logic. Its distinctive constitutional settlement puts sustainable development, the wellbeing of future generations and resilient ecosystems at the heart of public decision making. A power that could change a large body of environmental law without full legislative scrutiny sits uneasily with that settlement. It could also make policy less stable, not more. Businesses, councils and communities need clear, durable rules. If important standards can be changed through broad delegated powers, uncertainty will grow along with mistrust.
Good government is not measured only by how quickly ministers can act, it also requires their reasoning to be published, evidence to be tested and affected people to be heard. Senedd committees provide specialist challenge. Civil society can identify unintended consequences. Journalists can ask probing questions. All of this is part of the democratic tapestry which requires ministers to defend difficult trade-offs, and most importantly, to do it in public. They are not procedural luxuries. They are how better laws are made, especially in complex areas where a small drafting change can have a large effect in the real world.
Ministers have not shown that existing powers are inadequate, nor have they put forward any solutions to stop such an exceptional mechanism quietly becoming the normal way of government.
The Welsh Government has a chance to show that effective government and accountable government are not competing goals.
There is a basic constitutional principle at stake here too. Delegated powers are usually granted for defined purposes, not simply because legislative debate is inconvenient. The wider the subject matter, and the greater the potential effect on rights, duties and public goods, the stronger the case is for democratic oversight. Environmental protection belongs at the demanding end of the spectrum. Damage can accumulate unnoticed, emerging only after years when it is impossible to reverse.
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The Welsh Government has a chance to show that effective government and accountable government are not competing goals. We at Green Alliance believe that the Welsh Government should withdraw this broad power of convenience and return with a precise solution to this particular challenge. Welsh environmental laws must be capable of improvement, but not through a process that could be used to weaken them at will or sidelines Senedd scrutiny.
This is an early test of the new Welsh government’s green promises. Protecting nature and protecting democratic scrutiny are, in this case, the same task.
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