Government first set its ambition to improve the natural environment ‘within a generation’ in 2011, but nine years on the Public Accounts Committee says ‘progress is disappointing’.
In the Committee’s report, ‘Achieving government’s long-term environmental goals’, it says that the complexity of environmental issues ‘is not a good enough excuse’ for serious delays in tackling ‘critical environmental issues like air quality, water quality and wildlife loss’ where the pace has been ‘painfully slow’.
The 25 Year Environment Plan, published in 2018, set out how Government would improve the environment ‘within a generation’ – but, according to the findings of the Committee, it does not contain a coherent set of long-term objectives or interim milestones.
It also says the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) does not have ‘the clout to lead the rest of government… hold other departments to account or manage trade-offs between policy areas’.
It says the UK government ‘still does not understand’ the total costs of delivering its environmental goals, funding has been ‘piecemeal’ and environmental impacts are still not being taken into account in spending decisions.
Government must move on from aspirational words and start taking the hard decisions across a wide range of policy areas required to deliver real results – time is running out
It is not clear how much of an additional total £1 billion promised to Defra in the 2020 Spending Review is ‘genuinely new money’, the Committee says, which says it is known to include previously announced increases in flood defence spending spread over the next five years.
Ahead of the last Spending Review – in the year the UK was due to host the upcoming COP26 climate change conference – it says the departments struggled to provide the Treasury with requested information about how their proposals would contribute towards the UK’s statutory carbon targets or the 25 Year Plan.
Meg Hillier MP, Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, said: ‘These ‘generations’ will soon be coming of age with no sign of the critical improvements to air and water quality Government has promised them, much less a serious plan to halt environmental destruction.
‘Our national environmental response is left to one Department, and months from hosting an international conference on climate change, the government struggles to determine the environmental impact of its own latest spending round.
‘Government must move on from aspirational words and start taking the hard decisions across a wide range of policy areas required to deliver real results – time is running out.’
The report is published just a week after it was announced by the UK government that the Environment Bill would be postponed due to the pandemic and following criticism that UK government has not immediately followed suit of the EU in banning plastic exports to developing nations.
In December, the Green Alliance calculated that it would take an extra £22 billion every year, on top of the £21 billion already committed until the end of this parliament in 2024, for the government to reach its targets on the environment.
