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MartinHarper

The announcement (here) of the world’s largest marine protected areas in Pitcairn rightly stole the environmental headlines from yesterday’s budget. Yet, as ever, the Chancellor's speech and the accompanying report had wider implications for the environment. Here are five things we learnt from yesterday’s budget...

  1. Public spending is not going to increase until 2019-2020 at the earliest. This means that the Defra budget will, at best, flatline (at £1.7 billion compared to £2.4 billion in 2009-10) but most likely will experience a further dip over the next three years. This means that, to stand any chance of meeting biodiversity and water quality targets (many of which are legal commitments), the next government needs to be creative at making the existing funds work hard for nature and the determination to secure extra resources, for example, through transferring the full 15% of the CAP budget into agri-environment schemes.
  2. 20 housing zones have been announced, 11 of which can now be viewed on a map. This had been previously announced but the locations do not appear to threaten problems for wildlife. Yet, I am a little more concerned about proposals for management of government land. There is a section in the budget that suggests government would like to start charging departments rent for all of their assets to encourage them to put them to “productive use”. Given the significant environmental value of large areas of public land, I hope that “productive use” includes meeting government’s biodiversity targets for SSSIs, species and habitats.
  3. There is growing interest in wellbeing research and indicators offering the prospect that these measures will gain greater traction in government policy appraisal in coming years. This was reinforced by £14 million made available for an “Advanced Wellbeing Research Centre (AWRC) in Sheffield, which will be a world-leading research centre to design, develop and implement physical activity interventions and products to improve wellbeing”.
  4. Swansea tidal lagoon scheme has been given a boost as “...the government has decided to enter in to the first phase of negotiations on a Contract for Difference for Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon (without prejudice to the planning decision on the project) to determine whether the project is affordable and value for money for consumers, and whether it will drive down costs for tidal lagoon energy in the UK.” Here is our take on the latest proposal for harnessing the power of the Severn. In short, we think more needs to be done to properly understand ad mitigate the impact on the international important estuarine environmental.
  5. I still await the day when the state of our natural assets features as prominently in political debate as our financial assets.

What did you think of yesterday's Budget?

It would be great to hear your views.

  • Like most things from the Government "the devil will be in the detail" so it is difficult to comment with confidence at this early stage. The announcement of the Pitcairn Marine Reserve is of course to be very welcome indeed, but I understand it has been a real struggle to achieve this when really it should not have been so difficult. I understand it is also currently a struggle to achieve marine reserves around Ascension Island and the South Sandwich Islands. So nothing is normally obtained from this Government on the wildlife/ conservation front without an aweful lot of hard work.

    Like many statements it is often what is not said rather than what is said that is important. I would have been a lot happier if they had cancelled the upgrade of the Trident Missile System, for which I see no real purpose. The cancellation of HS2 would also have been very welcome.

    The money from these two projects alone would prevent a lot of excessive cuts in Government expenditure, which are likely to come especially related to our wildlife. To that end I am sure some of their long term aims is to; do away with Natural England and weaken our wildlife protection laws. I also don't think they are really being interested in meeting our biodiversity targets.

    So overall I think the budget confirms that threats to our wildlife from Government actions and non actions in the future remain very real.  

    redkite