We were delighted this year to host events at both the Liberal Democrat and Labour party conferences, ensuring chemical pollution and the policy solutions needed to address it were on the agenda.
First, we headed to Bournemouth for the Liberal Democrat party conference for our joint event with the Green Liberal Democrats, ‘Turning over a green leaf: how closer UK-EU collaboration could benefit the environment’. We were delighted to be joined by Baroness Grender, Defra spokesperson in the House of Lords, Emma Knaggs from the European Movement, Dr Michael Warhurst from CHEM Trust, and Keith Melton, founder of the Green Liberal Democrats, as our Chair.
Baroness Grender laid out the severity of chemical pollution in the UK, the failure of UK REACH to address this pollution, and the Liberal Democrats’ intention to restore strong environmental protections through greater cooperation and alignment with the EU.
Emma Knaggs highlighted the brilliant new report by the European Movement on how the UK and EU can work more closely on energy, climate and the environment. She also outlined the strength of the British public’s support for this agenda, an angle often left out of mainstream media coverage.
To round off the discussion Dr Michael Warhurst reflected on the necessity of regulating harmful chemicals at source, and the extent to which the UK has fallen behind EU protections since the UK’s independent regime began operating.
There were some brilliant questions from the audience following these speeches, such as ‘How do we communicate this invisible crisis to the general public?’ as well as questions on UK-EU divergence on other areas such as sewage sludge and toy safety regulations. We were grateful to Keith Melton for chairing our session and the Green Liberal Democrats as joint organisers.
The following week we hosted an event at the Labour party Conference in Liverpool. The focus of our event was PFAS pollution, and we were thrilled to have another distinguished panel discussing this topic: MPs Anna Gelderd and Lorraine Beavers, Sarah Moore, partner at law firm Leigh Day, and CHEM Trust’s Dr Shubhi Sharma.
As an MP for a coastal constituency, Anna Gelderd outlined her concern about the impacts of PFAS on the marine environment. She also underscored the need for the polluter pays principle to be followed.
MP Lorraine Beavers spoke about the ongoing investigation into PFAS pollution in her constituency led by a number of government agencies and local councils. She shared that one of the findings of the investigation thus far was that produce grown in allotments close to a PFAS manufacturing site in her constituency had eight times the assumed safe level of exposure to the classified carcinogen, PFOA, which was of great concern to residents.
Sarah Moore highlighted that Leigh Day have been involved in legal cases on PFAS in the UK, including in Lorraine Beavers’ constituency. She warned that ‘the UK may well become a polluters’ paradise, in contrast with our EU neighbours who are now more fully invested in identifying, monitoring and properly remediating the impact of PFAS’ and that ‘this outcome is not inevitable, but to prevent it – concerted and joined up action is needed urgently’.
Finally, to add to this strong message, Dr Shubhi Sharma, from CHEM Trust, rounded off the panel highlighting that we won’t get on top of this pollution without stopping it at source and regulating PFAS as a group. She also outlined how far the UK has been lagging behind the EU on PFAS, and the extent of the public support for government action on harmful chemicals.
Again, our audience had some thought-provoking questions for the panellists, including the need to consider the health impacts on future generations when regulating PFAS, how Labour party members can do more campaigning on this topic and on the gendered impacts of PFAS. The discussion was rich and insightful and we are grateful to all our panellists and audiences at both events for their interest in these issues.
We produced briefings for each of our events, providing further insight into the fringe topics. Check out our Labour briefing on PFAS here, and our Lib Dem briefing on the UK-EU relationship and environmental protection here.
