After months of worry, speculation and campaigning we now have the headline news on the Comprehensive Spending Review announced by George Osborne at 1230 today.
Defra receive a 29% cut in resource spending. These figures are over a four-year period but the pain starts now. All government departments had large 'administration' cuts, and variable resource and capital cuts. It seems Defra did well on the capital end of things - which is good news for flood defence budgets - and compensatingly less well on resource budgets where it had one of the bigger cuts.
Here I will concentrate on Defra's settlement but over the next few days I'll comment on the implications for wildlife on UK Overseas Territories, climate change action, environmental education and local government.
The Defra Secretary of State, Caroline Spelman, has fought hard for the environment over the last few months, and quite honestly 29% is much better than had been feared by us and within Defra. But it is difficult to feel that this level of cuts lives up to the Greenest Government Ever label - but that is hardly Ms Spelman's fault - the Treasury and the Prime Minister must answer on that point.
There is one very good piece of news - our campaigning in favour of wildlife-friendly farming, particularly the Higher Level Scheme, has paid off and that pot of money will increase by 80% over the next four years. And that is definitely thanks to Defra and the Ministerial team. This will be achieved through a technical measure of adjusting the EU co-financing rate and takes advantage of the shift in value of the pound and euro. It accomplishes the remarkable feat of increasing overall spending and yet reducing UK contribution.
This year's spend on agri-environment schemes in England is the highest ever and that pot will continue to grow over the next three financial years. It seems there will be enough cash for about 2000 extra HLS agreements in England each year. This is good - not quite as good as it sounds because about 1000 of them are needed for farmers coming out of ESA and Countryside Stewardship agreements which are at the end of their natural lives (the agreements not the farmers) - but a real and significant increase.
We believe there is also scope, and appetite within Defra, to get better value for money from the Entry Level Scheme and we will be pushing for this to happen - we hear that ELS is included in Defra's effectiveness review.
And, although we will never be thanked for it, I truly believe that things would have been that bit worse for Defra and the natural world had not the RSPB been campaigning for a fair settlement for Nature. To all of the RSPB members and supporters who signed Letter to the Future (over 315,000 - wow!), emailed George Osborne, other Cabinet members or MPs or who supported the campaign in other ways - thank you so much! You have our thanks, and if nature had a voice it would be thanking you too!
And farmers should be thanking the RSPB's members and those of other environmental bodies for speaking up for HLS funding - a subject on which NFU and CLA have been conspicuously silent throughout the last few months.
But 29% is still a socking great cut!
What will these cuts mean in terms of wildlife in the countryside? We will need more detail and more time to evaluate - so we'll come back to it. At least wildlife friendly farming can expand and, if ELS is reviewed and revised, those changes will help restore wildlife to the economically active countryside.
But right now - in headline terms - the RSPB would agree with what we think Defra Ministers and many Defra civil servants will be thinking - 'Not what we wanted, but better than we might have got!'.
Here are links to the Defra Press Release, the Treasury Spending Review Document, and some early news coverage from the Guardian.
No, you don't get any credit for things that don't go wrong - but I'm behind you & Sooty in being convinced it would have been much worse without RSPB and its members - only RSPB was able to shout loud enough in the noisier and nosier contest of so many interest groups to be heard.
One tiny snippet of potentially huge importance - there will be a Renewable Heat Incentive - but what's that got to do with birds ? Well, after farming the second biggest 'wider countryside' problem for birds is woodland - the opposite to farmland, too little management, not too much with 500,000 ha virtually unmanaged, getting darker and disastrous for species like Nightingale which need thick young woodland. RHI is probably the best possible way to get our woods working - and one (rare!) example where green energy and biodiversity can work together with only gains, no damage - so lets hope this is the start of the road back for our woodland birds.
Mark, sorry to come back again. DEFRA now has to decide what to do with the money it now has. There has been a consultation document around for a while which will lead to the White Paper. I have just seen on Bird Guides, advertised though the Wildlife Trusts, a different public consultation document asking the public to put in our 2 pence worth as people who use the environment around us. Today is 21 October (I certainly haven't seen this consultation document before) and the cut off date for any response is 30 October 2010. Unless I have missed something the public has been given 9 days to submit its own response to inform the white paper. I can't see a lot of response as a result and sincerely hope DEFRA don't read that as lack of interest.
GETTING REAL
Mark says – “it is difficult to feel that this level of cuts lives up to the Greenest Government Ever label - but that is hardly Ms Spelman's fault - the Treasury and the Prime Minister must answer on that point”. Wrong Mark!
It’s hardly the PM’s or the Treasury’s fault. The people to ask are messrs (and weren’t they?) Brown & Darling!
If you visit the following link to a recent Spectator article you will see the first graph illustrating “How we got here”
www.spectator.co.uk/.../how-we-got-here-and-where-were-going.thtml
Mark incidentally also refers to “wildlife-friendly farming”. Fine – but as some RSPB bloggers may be aware – as a cattle owner - I’m especially interested in “farming-friendly wildlife”
Coincidentally (?) the steep rate of New Labour’s spending increase parallels that of the rate of increase of TB infected cattle slaughtered throughout New Labour regime.
The graph shows a projected decline in government spending following the Coalition’s Spending Review – I hope the rate of unnecessary cattle slaughtered is likewise reflected!
As to the HLS – folk in the know (including CLA & NFU) always assumed that it was going to be OK. But it didn’t have to be so and I’m sure the RSPB’s membership pressure did actually help.
The RSPB’s fellow-LINK member - The National Trust – has announced that it will permit the culling of TB-infected wildlife on its land – we farmers now await the RSPB’s decision.
Could have been worse by the sound of it. It is really pleasing that the agr-environmental schemes especially the HLS seem to be still on track. As you say Mark congratulations to one and all who took part in the campaign to preserve these schemes, they were potentially a very easy target if nothing had been said in their favour. Special congratulations I think go to you Mark and all the team involved at the RSPB. The fact that you and your colleagues spotted this possible problem so early, way before the general election, and launched the Letter to the Future last winter and all the associated letter and e-mail writing to ministers in such good time, I am sure made a big difference. (Less than a week ago I got an e-mail from a wildlife group asking me to campaign against possible wildlife funding cuts, one wonders where they had been!). I am still not much wiser though as to how the various percentages qouted by the Government are defined. (see my comment on "Caught in a Taxi").
Thank you Mark, I am glad someone understood it. I sat glued to the TV, turned to my wife with the words' What did that mean' and got the same response back. I so glad there is someone of your intellect to explain it. The news on agro -environment is good but as you say that 29% has to come from somewhere.