Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs written question – answered at on 17 October 2025.
Euan Stainbank
Labour, Falkirk
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of bringing forward legislative proposals to make ecocide a criminal offence.
Mary Creagh
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
The UK has strong Laws in place to protect the environment. Contravention of many of these is a criminal offence. Convictions are sought to punish significant or persistent environmental offending.
Yes1 person thinks so
No0 people think not
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Secretary of State was originally the title given to the two officials who conducted the Royal Correspondence under Elizabeth I. Now it is the title held by some of the more important Government Ministers, for example the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
Laws are the rules by which a country is governed. Britain has a long history of law making and the laws of this country can be divided into three types:- 1) Statute Laws are the laws that have been made by Parliament. 2) Case Law is law that has been established from cases tried in the courts - the laws arise from test cases. The result of the test case creates a precedent on which future cases are judged. 3) Common Law is a part of English Law, which has not come from Parliament. It consists of rules of law which have developed from customs or judgements made in courts over hundreds of years. For example until 1861 Parliament had never passed a law saying that murder was an offence. From the earliest times courts had judged that murder was a crime so there was no need to make a law.
