Time is running out on improving environment, MPs warn

The Public Accounts Committee has warned that government progress on improving the natural environment is disappointing and that ministers must ‘move on from aspirational words’ and start ‘taking the hard decisions’.

The 25 Year Environment Plan, published in 2018, saw the government claim that it would improve the environment ‘within a generation’. However, the Public Accounts Committee has stressed that it does not contain a coherent set of long-term objectives or interim milestones, and the responsible department, Defra, does not have ‘the clout to lead the rest of government … hold other departments to account or manage trade-offs between policy areas’.

Additionally, the committee says that the government still does not understand the total costs of delivering its environmental goals, funding has been piecemeal and environmental impacts are still not being taken into account in spending decisions.

Meg Hillier, chair of the Public Accounts Committee, 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, 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."