Weaken post-Brexit rules on pesticides in drinking water, farming lobby told minister

The UK’s most powerful farming group lobbied the government to loosen limits on pesticides in drinking water as part of its post-Brexit reforms, according to documents obtained by Unearthed.

Last July, a senior director at the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) met the Earl of Minto, then minister for regulatory reform, to discuss the areas of EU-derived law identified by the farming sector as priorities for reform after Brexit. The list includes key rules on water protection, including those  governing levels of pesticides in drinking water.

“Thresholds for pesticide residues are tiny,” Nick von Westenholz, the NFU’s director of strategy, told the minister according to notes of the meeting obtained by Unearthed using freedom of information rules. There is “no evidence that increasing thresholds would do any harm”, he added.

The NFU identified the Nitrates Directive, designed to curb agricultural pollution of rivers and other water bodies, among its “priorities for replacement”. According to the minutes, von Westenholz argued for the rules on when farmers can fertilise their fields to be relaxed, giving farmers more scope to make “sensible decisions”. He maintained it could “still achieve” the same level of protection on watercourses.

In a statement shared with Unearthed, the NFU disputed the characterisation of the meeting as lobbying, describing it instead as explaining the organisation’s publicly held positions. The group also said it was calling for smarter regulation, not deregulation.

Post-Brexit reforms

When the UK left the EU, it copied over 6,700 EU-derived laws onto its rulebook. It is now engaged in a process of identifying which of these laws can be reformed or scrapped, under the Retained EU Law (REUL) Act. Under the Act, ministers can change or revoke EU-derived laws with limited parliamentary approval. These powers expire in June 2026. 

At a select committee hearing in March, business secretary Kemi Badenoch, who oversees the regulatory reforms, said the government was adopting a “demand-led approach” to identify which laws to reform. The Earl of Minto held meetings with representatives of different sectors last year to gather their views on rules that could be reformed.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), which oversees farming, is responsible for over 1,900 of the laws identified under the REUL process.

The NFU identified nine pieces of EU-derived legislation as “priorities for replacement”, officials’ notes show. These include legislation implementing the Water Framework Directive (WFD) – the centrepiece of European water protection legislation. 

Reform of the WFD was among the areas that “align well with where Defra considers there to be opportunity for review”, a briefing note prepared for the meeting shows. So far none of the EU-derived laws highlighted by the NFU have been reformed or revoked.

Ruth Chambers, senior fellow at Green Alliance, said: “Laws that protect people from potentially harmful pesticides and keep pollution out of our rivers should be strengthened for everyone’s benefit, not weakened to serve the interests of a few. 

“These revelations reinforce the need for public consultation and an independent watchdog to hold the government to account on its promise not to dismantle environmental protections using so-called Brexit freedoms.”

Water laws

The NFU argued that limits on pesticide levels enshrined in the EU’s Drinking Water Directive are a “burden” on farmers and water companies, meeting notes show, because of the “amount they have to invest in systems to meet negligible requirements”. 

The Drinking Water Directive requires that pesticide concentrations in drinking water must not exceed 0.1 micrograms per litre for a single pesticide and 0.5 micrograms per litre for all pesticides.

There is “no evidence that increasing thresholds would do any harm”, von Westenholz told the minister, according to the notes.

In its statement, the NFU said it “questions whether the strict, historic limits on pesticide residues in water are based on up-to-date science” and said “these limits can prevent farmers from accessing important products in tackling pests and diseases”.

“The issue of pesticide residues in drinking water is still being understood,” Dr Gary Fones, professor of environmental aquatic chemistry at the University of Portsmouth, told Unearthed.

The UK’s rivers are potentially exposed to thousands of pesticides, which can harm aquatic ecosystems and affect drinking water.

“We have identified a number of pesticides using the chemcatcher passive sampler that continue to be present in water even after treatment,” Fones added.

Though removing pesticides from the water can be difficult, Fones said, “weakening the drinking water standards is not the solution. Yes the thresholds are strong, but that’s a good thing.”

‘Give the farmer more control’

The NFU also complained about the EU’s Nitrates Directive, which requires a code for good agricultural practice which specifies minimum manure storage capacity and the conditions under which fertiliser and manure can be spread on farmland to limit pollution of rivers. 

In areas already polluted by nitrates, there are mandatory rules on the quantity and timing of applying nitrogen fertilisers and manure, including a strict annual limit on the amount of manure that can be spread. More than half of land in England is designated a nitrogen-vulnerable zone, and the NFU has been supporting legal challenges to these designations.

Farming pollutes more rivers in the UK than sewage, according to an analysis of Environment Agency data by the think-tank Onward. Nutrients from fertilisers washed are the source of around half the nitrates and a quarter of the phosphorus entering the country’s rivers, the report found.

The NFU called for extra flexibility for farmers, allowing them to “be sensible to make decisions as to when to fertilise,” the notes show von Westenholz telling the Earl of Minto. “The legislation can be changed to give the farmer more control and still achieve the same level of protection on watercourses.”

In its statement, the NFU said the well-designed regulation envisaged by the NFU would mean “less run-off into rivers”.

UK legislation designed to prevent agricultural run-off into rivers has already been weakened following the country’s exit from the EU Common Agricultural Policy’s cross compliance rules. These rules forced farmers to create buffer strips to separate agricultural land from water bodies. This change in policy is not related to REUL.

A deregulation wishlist

Of the nine priority areas for reform identified by the NFU, three relate to pesticides. During the meeting with the Earl of Minto, the NFU discussed the process for pesticide approval.

Von Westenholz, formerly the CEO of the UK’s pesticide trade association Croplife, told the minister that British and European farmers have “less access to pesticides than most farmers around the world” due to the EU’s “hazards-based” approach.

The hazards-based approach, also known as the precautionary principle, effectively means refusing to authorise potentially hazardous products unless they are proven safe, whereas the risk-based approach allows for use until the product is proven hazardous.

The NFU has previously made a similar argument, in written testimony for a 2022 parliamentary inquiry into post-Brexit regulation. Then, the union raised concerns that the UK was “not doing anything substantially different on [pesticide] regulation since EU exit” and claimed that removing the minister from day-to-day decisions about implementing regulations could “have a transformational impact” on the authorisation of pesticide and herbicide products. This would reduce the risk of decisions being made for political reasons, the NFU explained.

The NFU’s public position is that the UK should “improve the application of the precautionary principle”  so that it “takes greater account of risk, innovation and the costs of taking action”. 

During the meeting, Von Westenholz also described the Habitats Directive, which is designed to protect the habitats of threatened species, as “obstructive for development for farmers”.

For some farmers, however, the UK’s current environmental standards are looked upon more favourably.

Martin Lines, CEO of the Nature Friendly Farming Network (NFFN), said: “Regulatory standards help to protect our waterways from pollution and agricultural run-off, improve air quality and boost the health of our soils to ensure farm businesses are sustainable into the future as we face the threat of climate change.”

And according to some who live near Britain’s waterways, farmers must do more to tackle pollution. Angela Jones, a wild swimmer and environmental activist for the Wye River, which has suffered nitrogen pollution from nearby intensive poultry farms, told Unearthed: “We need farms, but we need them to farm in a way that’s going to complement the environment and give us the food that we need. And many farmers understand this. A lot of what’s happening by the Wye is not farming, it’s industry.”

Jones continued: “I think it’s terrible to suggest weakening water protections. We need to strengthen them. What’s going on now is obviously not working. We might have food, but we won’t have any nature left.”

The Department for Business and Trade failed to provide comment when contacted