New laws intended to make polluters pay for cleaning up the damage they cause to Scotland’s environment could be undermined by the Scottish Executive, say Scotland’s two leading conservation charities.

The Scottish Wildlife Trust (SWT) and RSPB Scotland today have submitted their responses to the Executive’s consultation on the Environmental Liability Directive, warning it could result in taxpayers footing the bill for pollution and other damage to the environment.

The EU Environmental Liability Directive is intended to prevent and remedy environmental damage and will be introduced into domestic law later this year, but environmentalists fear that the Scottish Executive is really only taking onboard its minimum demands.

Stuart Brooks, SWT’s head of conservation, said: “The whole point of the directive, namely to ‘make the polluter pay’ will be seriously undermined if the Executive’s preferred approach is taken.

“The directive is intended to place a duty on operators who cause a risk of significant damage to land, water or biodiversity. In practice, this means there will be so many ‘get out’ clauses that the polluter will not end up footing the bill. In many cases this will fall to the taxpayer.

“Agencies such as SEPA and SNH are likely to be nominated as the public bodies charged with implementing the directive and are likely to find their finite resources stretched further.“

Lloyd Austin, head of conservation policy for RSPB Scotland, added: “This directive allows the Executive to demonstrate it means business on implementing the ‘polluter pays’ principle which is at the heart of its own Sustainable Development Strategy, and the protection of biodiversity, another of its own stated objectives.

“Yet, when given the opportunity, they have failed to deliver. The half-hearted proposals in this consultation would create a more complex system, with numerous loopholes, as well as potentially undermining the positive steps taken in recent years by the Nature Conservation and Water Environment Acts.

“After 3 May, the new Executive should re-visit these proposals, in the light of the consultation responses, and seek to implement this directive in the spirit intended, rather than purely meet the letter of the law.”