Rachel Reeves has been urged not to cut the government’s environment funding in the budget as analysis shows the department’s finances were slashed at twice the rate of other departments in the austerity years.
Between 2009/10 and 2018/19, the environment department budget declined by 35% in monetary terms and 45% in real terms, according to Guardian analysis of annual reports from the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), the Environment Agency and Natural England. By comparison, the average cut across government departments during the Conservative austerity programme was about 20%. During the first five years of austerity, it was the most cut department.
The budget for the department rose in the years between 2018/19 and 2021/22, but this is because it was given many new roles after Brexit, including taking on the £2.4bn a year farming budget which once came from the EU, and hiring staff to go through the EU statute book to see which environmental laws should 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 ringfenced for new functions Defra did not previously perform.
Reeves is aiming to make £40bn worth of tax rises and spending cuts in the budget, and billions of this are expected to come out of government departments. The Guardian understands that Defra is likely to see particularly severe cuts.
Treasury sources have told the Guardian that the environment secretary, Steve Reed, was keen to offer up parts of the Defra budget when the chancellor was looking for cuts. He is understood to have written to Reeves to say he was happy to play his part to help “with the appalling inheritance from the Conservative government … but I will not agree to decisions that I know are unsustainable.”
A spokesperson for Reed told the Guardian: “The Conservatives left Britain facing the worst economic inheritance since the second world war because they refused to make the tough decisions and spent money that didn’t exist. The chancellor has been clear that difficult decisions lie 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 that will be taken at the budget in the round.”
At Defra, these cuts are understood to largely fall on nature and flood protections. Plans to cut about £100m a year from England’s nature-friendly farming budget have been proposeed. As part of the EU, British farmers were allotted funding based on how much land they managed. The new post-Brexit scheme is financed by the UK government and pays farmers to protect nature. As 60% of land in England is farmed, this scheme is supposed to be the main driver in reducing species decline and restoring nature.
Reed has also refused to commit to flooding payments promised by the Conservatives, and Defra insiders have indicated this money is to be shaved 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 Wildlife Trusts, said: “Defra’s funding was slashed during austerity, hampering its ability to protect nature and stop river pollution. Nature is dying and without a substantial increase in funding – particularly 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 environment targets to replace EU nature legislation, pledging to halt 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 a £448m annual deficit. They found that it 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 agriculture budget would have serious consequences; stalling progress towards vital nature and climate targets and undermining the efforts of nature-friendly farmers who are already transitioning to a more sustainable and nature-rich future.”
Defra has historically fared worse in budgets than other departments, and it has been led by ministers who have not defended its spending levels. Caroline Spelman, who was secretary of state between 2010 and 2012, had to row back on plans to sell off the country’s forests after public anger. She presided over cuts to the Defra budget of 30%, with deep damage done to flood defences. There were thousands of job losses during austerity, especially in the Environment Agency and Forestry Commission, the bodies responsible for protecting nature.
Liz Truss, environment secretary from 2014 to 2016, boasted of cutting farm inspections in a parliamentary exchange. This made it easier for farmers to dump waste, including pesticides and animal faeces, 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 WildFish calculated that at that rate, farms could expect an inspection every 263 years. Truss also cut £24m from a government grant for environmental protection, including surveillance of water companies to prevent the dumping of raw sewage, between 2014-15 and 2016-17, according to the National Audit Office.
The Environment Agency has continued to suffer, and has faced an overall cut of 50% during the past decade. Freedom of information requests show that in 2018 staff attended 5,013 pollution incidents; by 2023, that number had fallen by 36%. Almost half of England’s nature reserves have not been monitored by government ecologists in recent years, and only 39% of sites of special scientific interest are deemed to be in “favourable condition”.
• This article was amended on 29 October 2024.
