The Public Accounts Committee (PAC), which examines the value for money of government projects, programmes and service delivery, says progress towards meeting the government’s pledge to improve the natural environment within a generation was “disappointing”. This ambition was first set in 2011 and reiterated in the 25 Year Environment Plan of 2018.
Today (3 February), the PAC published a report called Achieving government’s long-term environmental goals .
It says the government’s 25 Year Plan does not contain a “coherent” set of long-term objectives or interim milestones. It adds Defra does not have the “clout” to lead the rest of government, hold other departments to account or manage trade-offs between policy areas.
And, the committee says the government still does not understand the total costs of delivering its environmental goals. It claims funding has been “piecemeal” and environmental impacts are still not being considered in spending decisions.
It says is “not clear” how much of an additional £1 billion promised to Defra in the 2020 Spending Review is “genuinely” new money. It also says that ahead of the last Spending Review departments struggled to provide the Treasury with information about how their proposals would contribute towards the UK’s statutory carbon targets or the 25 Year Plan.
Natural environment
Meg Hillier, the PAC’s chair, 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”
“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.”
Waste
In terms of policies on waste, the PAC says it was told by the Environment Agency it had a particular risk of skills loss in nuclear and hazardous waste management. This was said is said to be largely due to its inability to pay the market rate offered in the private sector, though it seeks to mitigate this by topping up salaries where possible and developing in-house talent.
And, the report says the government’s capacity to take forward goals in the 25 Year Plan had been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. However, it adds the Resources and Waste Strategy of 2018 had already encountered delays. In pointed to the fact that more detailed proposals on the Resources and Waste Strategy were originally due to be published in early 2020 and are now expected in early 2021.
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