Welcome to the Green Alliance podcast. We are the charity and think tank dedicated to achieving ambitious leadership for the environment.

I'm Ruth Chambers, Senior Fellow at Green Alliance. In this episode, I'm joined by Lord Krebs, a cross-bench pier from the House of Lords and Richard Benwell, chief executive of the Environmental Coalition Wildlife and Countryside Link.

And together we reflect on the third anniversary of the Environment Act,

which was passed in 2021.

John, thank you so much for spending the time to share some reflections on the Environment Act,

which was a really big moment for Parliament, for the UK and for the environment sector.

But casting your mind back, could you tell us why environmental laws matter and why this

Act of Parliament in particular was perhaps so eagerly

awaited. Thanks very much for inviting me along, Ruth. It's really good to be able to chat

to you about this. It's sort of self-evident that environment matters. We've got to protect our

water, our air quality, our habitats, our species, our soils and so on.

And most of the protections for our environment before Brexit came from Brussels.

So nearly all of environmental law was European law translated into the UK.

So when we made the decision to leave the European Union, the then government

said we want to match or even exceed those protections. And the Environment Act was part of a suite of

acts. There was also the Agriculture Act and the Fisheries Act that set out how this was going to be

achieved. And my aim, along with others who

scrutinised the bill and tabled amendments, was to try to ensure that this promise that we would

protect our environment at least as well, if not better than we had done before. That promise

was actually embedded in law. And so we tabled amendment

after amendment, and we fought long and hard to try and strengthen the bill to make sure that

our environment was protected for future generations. And I remember those debates well,

...