Recommendation 8

The Committee accepts that creating a new offence in law requires a balance to be struck between having a clear intelligible offence, the parameters of which are broadly understood and avoiding an excessively "technical" and detailed drafting approach that may create difficulties of its own. In the case of the ecocide offence, there is evidence that it is insufficiently robust and may give rise to uncertainty in practice. For instance, there are questions over terms such “widespread”, “long-term” and “serious adverse effects”, which, some witnesses consider, are ambiguous in ways that risk creating uncertainty or may not accurately capture the gravity of ecocide. There are also differences of views as to whether the Bill takes the right approach in re-using a definition of "environmental harm" used for slightly different purposes in another statute. The Committee also takes seriously concerns from prosecutors as to whether the Bill sets sufficiently clear terms to give confidence to people called to be an expert witness. The Committee would be very concerned by the Bill becoming law without proper consideration of all these matters.