New campaign to counter CBI-led deregulation lobby
January 26, 2005
Scare-mongering by polluting industries on the costs of cleaning up is making the Government back-pedal on environmental protection - prompting a major new campaign launched today by the Environmental Industries Commission (EIC) to counter the "environmental deregulationists".
EIC is urging Government to ensure evidence-based policymaking (in the UK and Brussels) by challenging the exaggerated cost claims of industry and paying full attention to the range of economic benefits created by progressive environmental policies.
Policymakers regularly overlook the positive economic benefits of environmental protection to the health service; to occupational health; to innovation in mainstream industry; and to affected industries (such as tourism, insurance and the UK's environmental technology industry).
DEFRA has just published an independent study into the National Air Quality Strategy which concludes that the original cost calculations were up to seven times greater than the actual costs, while total benefits (over the evaluation period of 1990-2001) were estimated as being as much as £18,370 million, with annual reduction of 4,225 deaths.
Adrian Wilkes, Chairman of EIC, said "This is a vitally important campaign because the scaremongering deregulation lobby from polluting industries, led by the CBI, has captured the policy debate in Downing Street - to the huge detriment of British citizens and to the UK economy."
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