Ministers’ ‘patchy’ green strategy does more harm, insists NAO

THE Government’s “patchy” environment strategy runs a risk of projects that do more harm than good being commissioned, a damning spending watchdog report has found.

The National Audit Office ( NAO) warned of “perverse outcomes” such as planting trees in inappropriate places due to a lack of central leadership and co-ordination between departments.

A lack of clarity on cost and objectives put the Government’ s much- publicised efforts to improve the environment in jeopardy, the watchdog said. Poorly planned tree-planting is often embraced by organisations pursuing a net-zero strategy but can be detrimental to nature.

In February, Nestlé apologised after it accidentally destroyed a meadow filled with rare flowers by planting it with saplings as part of an eco-drive.

Biomass fuels, which are a growing energy source, also face criticism for transferring environmental risk overseas by causing deforestation and pushing up food prices, the NAO said.

Gareth Davies, the head of the NAO, said “significant action” was needed to meet goals such as the legal emissions targets for air pollution and achieving zero affordable waste by 2050.

“The Government wants this to be the first generation to leave the natural environment in England in a better state than it inherited. However, it is now nine years since [they] set this ambition and it still does not have the right framework to achieve it,” he said.

While individual government departments keep track of their spending on environmental measures, there is no centralised monitoring, the report found, and there is a risk that funding decisions are “piecemeal”.

“[The] Government does not monitor total historic and forecast spend[ing] on delivering its environmental goals, and it is not straightforward to estimate because of the range of activities and organisations involved,” the report said, adding that arrangements for work between departments on environmental issues were “patchy”.

Environment plans are “a mixture of aspirations, legally binding targets and policy commitments, with varying and unclear time scales”, it added. It said it was also unclear how existing commitments and targets would interact with the Environment Bill currently progressing through Parliament.

The 25- year environment plan, launched in 2018, is not a priority beyond the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the NAO said, with no other department mentioning it in its objectives.

Meanwhile, a report from the think tank Green Alliance criticised spending, including £14 billion on roads, arguing that it went against the Government’s zero-carbon ambitions. It said a “net-zero test” should be applied to all Government decisions.