Monday, December 28, 2020
Deal will erode workers’ rights and environmental protections
It is a few days now since Boris Johnson sold the UK down the river with his Brexit deal and as people and organisations start to digest the 1200 page document more details are emerging of exactly what the new 'independent UK' will have to content with in the post-Brexit world.
The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) have contributed to this discussion with a paper that warns workers’ rights and environmental protections can be watered down easily under the Brexit trade deal.
As the Independent reports, the IPPR suggests that the so-called “level playing field” safeguards the EU believes it secured – one of the key clashes that threatened the agreement – will be “difficult to enforce”:
“The protections it offers on labour and environmental standards are surprisingly weak and appear to leave considerable scope for a UK government to weaken EU-derived protections,” warned Marley Morris, its associate director.
“This leaves protections for workers, climate and the environment at serious risk of being eroded.”
The Christmas Eve agreement forced the UK to accept an independent dispute resolution process if labour, consumer and environmental protections are diluted, to prevent unfair competition.
However, a breach will only be committed if the panel rules a lowering of standards has actually affected trade and investment, rather than simply taken place.
The IPPR said the compromise meant the commitments “are considerably weaker than expected” and that a breach “would be difficult to prove”.
Furthermore, the requirement for the UK to keep pace with improvements in protections across the Channel – the so-called “rebalancing mechanism” – was even weaker.
Any assessment of the impact of divergence must be based on “reliable evidence” and not mere “conjecture or remote possibility”, the agreement states.
And proposed “rebalancing measures” – sanctions in the form of tariffs, designed to compensate one side for an unfair disadvantage – would be referred to the “complex arbitration system” first.
As a result, the IPPR paper said, “rebalancing measures are only likely to be used in a rare number of scenarios”.
The other interesting feature of the agreement is the way it replaces open and transparent European mechanisms and systems, which maintained the free trade area, and which all the Brexiteers railed against as bureaucratic and undemocratic, with a complex bureaucratic web of opaque committees and standing bodies carrying out the same job behind closwd doors with no accountabilty.
The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) have contributed to this discussion with a paper that warns workers’ rights and environmental protections can be watered down easily under the Brexit trade deal.
As the Independent reports, the IPPR suggests that the so-called “level playing field” safeguards the EU believes it secured – one of the key clashes that threatened the agreement – will be “difficult to enforce”:
“The protections it offers on labour and environmental standards are surprisingly weak and appear to leave considerable scope for a UK government to weaken EU-derived protections,” warned Marley Morris, its associate director.
“This leaves protections for workers, climate and the environment at serious risk of being eroded.”
The Christmas Eve agreement forced the UK to accept an independent dispute resolution process if labour, consumer and environmental protections are diluted, to prevent unfair competition.
However, a breach will only be committed if the panel rules a lowering of standards has actually affected trade and investment, rather than simply taken place.
The IPPR said the compromise meant the commitments “are considerably weaker than expected” and that a breach “would be difficult to prove”.
Furthermore, the requirement for the UK to keep pace with improvements in protections across the Channel – the so-called “rebalancing mechanism” – was even weaker.
Any assessment of the impact of divergence must be based on “reliable evidence” and not mere “conjecture or remote possibility”, the agreement states.
And proposed “rebalancing measures” – sanctions in the form of tariffs, designed to compensate one side for an unfair disadvantage – would be referred to the “complex arbitration system” first.
As a result, the IPPR paper said, “rebalancing measures are only likely to be used in a rare number of scenarios”.
The other interesting feature of the agreement is the way it replaces open and transparent European mechanisms and systems, which maintained the free trade area, and which all the Brexiteers railed against as bureaucratic and undemocratic, with a complex bureaucratic web of opaque committees and standing bodies carrying out the same job behind closwd doors with no accountabilty.
So much for taking back control and sovereignty.
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It was nothing to do with taking back control etc but to ensure the billionaire tories etc could keep their tax havens and allow the Tory party to reign supreme.
Oh! And the Magna Carta was NOT to 'help' the poor but to allow the Barons to keep what they had,likewise what is happening now.
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Oh! And the Magna Carta was NOT to 'help' the poor but to allow the Barons to keep what they had,likewise what is happening now.
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