First of all, I want to thank everyone who has taken the time to tweet or email their MP following our call to #DefendNature last week.  And thanks to those who have shared their MPs responses with us.   

Frustratingly, many of the responses we have seen from Conservative MPs have dismissed our concerns as being “wholly untrue” and most have said that the Government is not rowing back on its environmental commitments. Unhelpfully, rather than providing proper clear answers to our very reasonable questions, Government has simply dismissed our concerns, saying we are peddling a false narrative as a marketing strategy, or that we are part of an anti-growth coalition that wants to hold Britain back. They are saying we are wrong. 

We would love to be wrong. 

However, the direction of travel is very clear following speeches at the Conservative Party Conference by the Chancellor, the Environment Secretary, the Business Secretary, and the Prime Minister.  We are not reassured and we have questions.   

EU-derived environmental laws 

We now know that by the end of next year “all EU-inspired red tape will be history.”   

The Retained EU Law Bill will allow ministers to revoke hundreds of laws that protect wild places and ensure standards for water quality, pollution, and the use of pesticides.  Unless they are specifically preserved, these will all expire on 31 December 2023. 

There are currently 570 environmental laws on the statute books derived from EU directives  that make up the bedrock of environmental regulations in the UK, covering wildlife protection, sewage pollution, water quality, protection of our seas, and clean air.   

These include the Habitat Regulations, which have protected areas for wildlife for more than 30 years and under which our Special Protection Areas and Special Areas of Conservation have been  designated.  The UK was one of the key architects in developing these laws which have been strengthened and improved over decades of case law and have delivered significant improvements for nature in that time.   

There is no evidence that these regulations are responsible for holding back economic growth, but this has not stopped the Government dubbing them as a “burden”.   

Whilst in theory the REUL Bill allows some elements of EU law to be preserved, in practice this is a colossal task especially for Defra which has the largest number of laws to review.  With only around 310 working days until the end of 2023, Defra will have about 4 working hours to review each one of the 570 laws before they expire.  And even if some of these are chosen to be preserved, the job of assimilating these into domestic law having had the special EU law features removed, is highly unlikely to be done in this timeframe.  It is inevitable there will be a gap at best, and at worst our strongest environmental laws will be consigned to history.   

Qs:  Will the UK Government commit to retaining the key nature protections in the Habitats Regulations in UK law beyond December 2023, with no weakening of protections anywhere?  And will it reassure us that other environmental standards including for air and water will not be weakened?  Will all current protections be maintained until they are superseded or improved? 

Growth plan and investment zones  

The overarching theme of the Government’s plan is growth, growth, growth.  The narrative is that environmental rules are partly responsible for stagnant growth, and that these will be reformed and streamlined, reducing burdens to speed up the delivery of housing and infrastructure.  The plan says that red tape will be reviewed to ensure that “regulation is pro-business and pro-growth”.  

The announcement of new Investment Zones goes further by creating areas where planning rules are liberalised and development is accelerated by “disapplying legacy EU red tape” where needed to unlock growth.   

We have significant concerns that environmental protections will simply not apply within these Investment Zones.   

Qs: Will the UK Government assure us that they will keep the legal requirement that developers everywhere, including in Investment Zones, must carry out proper wildlife surveys and environmental assessment of qualifying development sites, and follow the ‘mitigation hierarchy’ of avoid, mitigate, compensate, in that order, to ensure no net loss for nature? 

Farming and nature 

One of the key positives from Brexit was the move away from the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) to a system based on ‘public money for public goods’ meaning that farmers would need to protect and enhance the natural environment in order to access government funding.  The creation of the new Environmental Land Management (ELM) schemes was set to be a key mechanism to achieve nature’s recovery – with Landscape Recovery projects a particularly exciting part.  The first funded projects were only recently announced in early September, but recent government comments have thrown these and the wider ELM schemes into doubt.  

There is now another ‘review’ underway.  The growth plan says that frameworks for regulation and investment that impact farmers will be rapidly reviewed.  Comments by the NFU and Defra minister Mark Spencer have confirmed that these schemes are being tweaked and that there could be a return to area-based payments (similar to CAP).  The NFU have even said that private money should be used to pay farmers for wildlife recovery, rather than public funds.  If these changes happen this breaks a key manifesto commitment and takes us backward on the promise of support for nature friendly farming.   

Over the last 5 years, we’ve seen a sea-change in the farming sector with thousands of farmers stepping forward to play a crucial role in the restoration of nature and tackle climate change, alongside producing food in a sustainable way. Nature friendly farmers deserve a scheme that rewards them for this, not one that takes us all backwards. And with 70% of England farmed, we will never recover nature without farmers leading the way. We cannot return to the days when farmers were simply paid for the amount of land they own, meaning that the largest landowners received the most money.   

Qs:  Will the Government categorically state that it will not return to area-based payments, and ensure the Environment Land Management Scheme genuinely delivers for nature to its original timetable?  Will the original budget set aside for delivering ELMS be protected?  Will the Local Nature Recovery part of ELMS be funded as planned to allow farmers to do more for nature, climate, and water quality?  Will the Government commit to Landscape Recovery and provide funding to support further rounds of projects as promised? 

Nature recovery  

Whilst many MPs have reassured us of the Government’s commitments to nature recovery and have reminded us of their legal obligations in the Environment Act 2021, we are seeing big changes being proposed to how wildlife will be protected and restored in England.  It’s one thing to have a target to restore nature but if the laws and mechanisms that help achieve that are dismantled it doesn’t add up.  

The overall messages coming from Government is one of growth at all costs, with the environment and nature either seen as a barrier or not really featuring in their thinking.  The new Environment Secretary even rebranded Defra as an economic growth department rather than a regulatory one.   

There are only 8 years to 2030 – the year we are supposed to be seeing nature on the road to recovery.  Our focus should be on delivering restoration at scale, not going back to the drawing board on protection. 

We resent being called alarmist, anti-growth or that somehow nature is responsible for holding Britain back.  We feel we are asking reasonable questions.  We would like some answers.   

We need to know if the UK government is still committed to nature recovery, or as we suspect, does it think that it needs to wait until we have a strong enough economy to “afford it”, or worse, that it doesn’t matter?   

This is outdated and irresponsible thinking.  Undermining nature will only serve to damage our economy, and our wellbeing in the long run.  As William Hague recently wrote in a very helpful piece, “The idea that we can choose faster growth at the expense of our environment shows an inadequate understanding of those trends — that we are biological creatures that need a thriving ecosystem around us, not gods who can dispense with it if we wish. Crucially, it also reveals a misunderstanding of the future of growth. The great prizes for growth in the coming decades will go to cities that can breathe, with the trees that help that and the wildlife that proves it.” 

We agree.  We are not anti-growth, we are anti deregulated, unfettered growth that disregards nature.  What we need is an economic approach that allows us to thrive within planetary boundaries, where we have growth in natural capital, growth in biodiversity, growth in green jobs, growth in clean air and water, growth in renewables, and growth in quality of life for all.  

So, we need to keep asking questions about the detail.  Because the detail really matters.  

Please do go back to your MP with some of these questions and do use the content of this blog and other information being provided by our fellow NGOs to try and get more answers. 

Thank you.