Rachel Reeves has been urged not to cut the government’s environment funding in the budget, as analysis shows the department’s finances have been cut at twice the rate of other departments in the austerity years.
Between 2009/10 and 2018/19, the environment department’s budget fell by 35% in monetary terms and 45% in real terms, according to Guardian analysis of annual reports from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). Environment Agency and Natural England. By comparison, the average cut across government departments during the Conservative austerity program was around 20%. During the first five years of austerity it was the most cut section.
The budget for the department has risen in the years between 2018/19 and 2021/22, but this is because it has been given many new roles after Brexit, including the £2.4 billion a year farming budget that once came from the EU , and hire staff to go through the EU law book to see which environmental laws need to be replicated in the UK. This new money, analysts argue, did not fill the gap left by deep cuts made under austerity because it was earmarked for new functions that Defra had not previously carried out.
Reeves aims to make £40bn of tax rises and spending cuts in the budget, with billions of these expected to come from government departments. The Guardian understands that Defra is likely to see particularly serious cuts.
Steve Reed, the environment secretary, was reportedly not among the group of state secretaries who wrote to the chancellor strongly opposing budget cuts. Instead, Treasury sources said the Guardian Reed was keen to present parts of the Defra budget. He is understood to have written to Reeves to say he was happy to play his part in helping “with the terrible legacy of the Conservative government… but I will not agree to decisions that I know are not sustainable. “
A spokesman for Reed told the Guardian: “The Conservatives have left Britain with the worst economic legacy since the Second World War because they refused to take the hard decisions and spent money that did not exist. The chancellor was clear that tough decisions lay on department spending to repair the colossal damage left by the Conservatives and address the £22bn hole in the public finances. Decisions on how to do this will be made around the budget.”
Defra understands that these cuts fall largely on nature and flood protection. Plans to cut around £100 million a year from England’s nature-friendly farming budget was proposed. As part of the EU, UK farmers were allocated funding based on how much land they managed. The new post-Brexit scheme is funded by the UK government and pays farmers to protect nature. As 60% of the land in England is farmed, this scheme is supposed to be the most important driver to reduce species decline and restore nature.
Reed also refused to commit to flood payments promised by the Conservatives, and Defra insiders have indicated this money will be clawed back. As it stands, the Defra budget faces cuts of at least 20%, according to sources at the department.
Elliot Chapman-Jones, head of public affairs at The Game Trusts, said: “Defra’s funding has been cut during austerity, hampering its ability to protect nature and stop river pollution. Nature is dying and without a significant increase in funding – especially for nature-friendly farming – the government’s target to halt nature’s decline by the end of the decade will be unachievable.”
After Brexit, the UK also set legally binding environmental targets to replace EU nature legislation, promised to stop the decline of species by 2030 and then increase populations by at least 10% above current levels by 2042. New RSPB research has found that the current farming budget is already at least 17% below the amount needed to meet the government’s legally binding environmental targets in England, creating an annual shortfall of £448m. They found that this would lead to nearly 700,000 fewer hectares of land under nature-friendly farming practices. This is an area three times the size of the Lake District national park.
Kevin Austin, director of policy at the RSPB, said: “Any reduction in the agricultural budget will have serious consequences; to stall progress towards essential nature and climate targets and undermine the efforts of nature-friendly farmers who are already transitioning to a more sustainable and nature-rich future.”
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Defra has historically performed worse on budgets than other departments, and it has been led by ministers who have not defended its spending levels. Caroline Spelman, who was foreign minister between 2010 and 2012, had to back down on plans to sell off the country’s forests to public anger. She presided over cuts to the Defra budget of 30%, causing deep damage flood defense. There were thousands of job losses during austerity, particularly in the Environment Agency and Forestry Commissionthe bodies responsible for the protection of nature.
Liz Truss, environment secretary from 2014 to 2016, boasted about cutting farm inspections in a parliamentary exchange. This made it easier for farmers to dump waste, including pesticides and animal excrement, into rivers.
In 2018-19, inspectors visited just 403 of England’s 106,000 registered farm businesses to check for activities and practices that could cause water pollution. Campaign group Wild fish calculate that at that rate farms can expect an inspection every 263 years. Truss also cut £24 million from a government grant for environmental protection between 2014-15 and 2016-17, including oversight of water companies to prevent the dumping of raw sewage, according to the National Audit Office.
The Environment Agency has continued to suffer, facing an overall cut of 50% over the past decade. Freedom of information requests show that staff attended 5,013 pollution incidents in 2018; by 2023, that number had dropped by 36%. Almost half of England’s nature reserves have was not monitored by government ecologists in recent years, and only 39% of sites of special scientific interest are considered to be in “favorable condition”.