The government’s environment department is facing a £500m real-terms cut after last week’s autumn statement, as critics say this will leave it unable to properly tackle issues including sewage spillages.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) oversees all things to do with the environment and agriculture, from farming inspections and nature restoration to cracking down on environmental vandalism including fly-tipping and sewage spills.
As a result of last week’s autumn statement, the department is facing a real-terms cut of 10.6% over the next two years, equating to £496.8m, according to analysis by the Liberal Democrats.
In real terms, Defra’s budget for 2022-23 is £4.6bn and is expected to drop to £4.3bn in 2023-24 and to £4.1bn in 2024-25.
Campaigners have previously said the budget is already cut to the bone, with huge reductions made during the period of austerity started by David Cameron’s Conservative government. The funding decreased significantly under austerity, with real-terms reductions in spending of 33% in 2016-17 compared with 2010-11.
The Liberal Democrats have pointed out that the under-funded department has failed so far to crack down on sewage spills into England’s waterways, and that further cuts are likely to make it even more inefficient.
Water companies have dumped sewage 775,568 times for a total of more than 5.7m hours over the last two years. Meanwhile, water company bosses have paid themselves £51.1m in remuneration including £30.6m in bonuses.
The Liberal Democrat spokesperson for the environment, Tim Farron, said: “Whilst banks are being unjustly rewarded with slashed taxes, the department which is supposed to deal with the sewage crisis is getting their budgets slashed. Frankly, the whole thing stinks.
“This budget cut gives a licence for companies to pump sewage into our precious rivers and Britain’s treasured coastlines.
“Funding to stop sewage poisoning in our waterways should be protected at all costs. We have otters being poisoned and children getting ill because water companies dump sewage where they want. All whilst they make multimillion pound profits and pay their execs eye-watering bonuses.
“This government’s priorities are all wrong. They put big banks and water companies over wildlife and children’s health.”
There have also been fears that the government’s inability to put in place post-Brexit nature-friendly farming payments will cause the Treasury to slash the budget for it, leaving agriculture businesses unable to function. Food and farming makes up more than 80% of the day-to-day spending budget, driven by £1.8bn in rural payments to farmers.
It is unclear how the department plans to marry its cuts with spending commitments made in the 2020 spending review, including doubling the flood and coastal defence investment to £5.2bn over six years, £2.4bn in 2021-22 to maintain current annual budget to farmers and tackling climate change and emissions with £92m for the Nature For Climate Fund, £75m for national parks and an extra £40m for nature recovery through the green recovery challenge fund.
A Defra spokesperson claimed the Lib Dem analysis was incorrect because the overall budget, which includes future capital spending, was increasing.
They said: “These claims are incorrect. The autumn statement confirmed that departmental budgets will be maintained at least in line with the budgets set at the 2021 spending review, which announced that Defra’s total budget will grow from £6.6bn to £7.1bn.”
However, the Lib Dem analysis refers to day-to-day spending, which is being cut. When combined with the capital budget, Defra total spending in real terms is £6.6bn in 2022-23, rising to £7.1bn in 2023-24 and then dropping to £6.8bn in 2024-25.
Resource spending is money that is spent on day-to-day resources. Capital spending is money that is spent on investment and things that will create growth in the future.
Given the sewage enforcement, farming payments and other day-to-day activities are not capital expenditure but will come from day-to-day spending it means that the government is cutting money for these services.
This comes after the government was criticised for an £18bn “giveaway” to big banks, after the budget cut the bank surcharge from 8% to just 3% from April next year.
Next year, the two bank taxes will raise a combined £2.5bn – down from £4.7bn in 2016-17 – a cut of 56%. This means banks operating in the UK will pay £18bn less in these taxes over the next five years, the Lib Dems said.
