Blog post by Prof Richard Gregory, Head of Species Monitoring and Research, RSPB Centre for Conservation Science and Centre for Biodiversity & Environment Research, University College London

You may not have heard of the National Audit Office (NAO) or have any sense of what it might do for you, but it does quite a lot, and its latest report puts a spotlight on how the government plans to report on the natural environment.

In brief, the NAO scrutinises public spending for Parliament and so helps to hold government to account and improve public services. They can ‘snoop’ on all government departments, agencies and other public bodies and report their independent findings directly to Parliament. They save you millions and millions of pounds each year and oil the cogs of efficient and effective government.

Their latest report (released 16th January) casts a cold, clinical eye on the government’s environmental metrics in a praise sandwich. At the outset, the NAO stress that it is essential for government to have an effective system for measuring its environmental performance to understand whether it is on track to meet its long-term environmental goals (including those for air quality, carbon emissions and the environment), to assess the effectiveness of new and existing policy intervention, and to fulfil its international obligations on environmental reporting. All good. The metrics have taken on a significance now because the government has published its 25-Year Environment Plan, which sets out its ambition to improve the natural environment in England within a generation, and so it must audit that desire. 

Figure 3 from the National Audit Office latest report 

In places there is genuine praise, where the government’s progressive approach to metrics is good and compares favourably with other countries. The UK for example has progressed furthest with developing data for a set of globally agreed indicators for the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and the report welcomes the government’s plans for a new framework of metrics to measure progress against its 25-Year Environment Plan. The proposed ‘whole-systems’ approach, which is in development, should help decision-makers understand whether government’s actions are consistent with its ambition for the environment as a whole, and it should help to highlight potential conflicts or interactions between different policy areas. There is also the promise of regular transparent public reporting, as the draft Environment Bill would require government to report annually to Parliament on progress. This is all positive.

However, on the downside the report describes a patchwork of sets of environmental metrics that do not align clearly with government’s overall objectives, or with each other, and many are out of date. Put simply, there is a muddle of overlapping metrics and there are a lot of them – a muddle being a new collective noun. In addition, while the government collects and reports on a wide range of environmental data, there remains some important gaps too. More insidiously, the NAO raise concern about how effectively metrics are used to inform decision-making in practice, because that is their ultimate purpose. Depressingly, the report’s conclusions echo those made by the NAO in their 2015 briefing on environmental and sustainability metrics. Ground hog day. This is all negative.

Figure 6 from the National Audit Office latest report 

But in that respect, the draft Environment Bill promises to establish a new watchdog, as the Office of Environmental Protection, with an obligation to report annually and independently on implementation of the 25‑Year Environment Plan. While they express some concerns over the true independence of this new body, which others share, this potentially represents a big step forward for the environment and how it is managed. Plainly, and as NAO say, the proposed new environmental watchdog needs ‘teeth’ to provide effective scrutiny over the natural environment.

So if you hadn’t heard of the NAO before, you do now. Their new report on environmental metrics is meticulous and impressive, and it does not hold any punches. Let’s hope their wise words are listened to.

Sir Amyas Morse, who is the head of the NAO, sums it up rather nicely by concluding: “Robust performance data and transparent reporting is essential for Parliament and the public to hold government to account on its ambition to improve the natural environment within a generation. Government’s new system of environmental metrics could transform its approach. But the critical tests will be whether all parts of government actually use this information to monitor progress and take action, and whether the new environmental watchdog has the ‘teeth’ to play its part effectively.”