It’s the Budget next week, and nature lovers across the country have a sinking feeling. 

An article in the Times a few weeks ago illustrates the mood music. An unnamed Treasury source told the paper that the Chancellor believes “there is more to be done to cut back on red tape and to take out some of the regulators that are still in place. If you look at a body like Natural England it is staffed by environmental purists who don’t necessarily share the government’s growth agenda.”  

This quote encapsulates the untruths that cloud nature policy and seem likely to condemn us to another round of anti-nature announcements next week. 

Environmental regulations and regulators have, so the myth goes, established a chokehold on the British economy without a mandate from the British people, and are now acting against their interests. In the place of the Sheriff of Nottingham stands Natural England, and an army of advisors in branded fleeces. 

Reality is different from myth. Natural England this month published a new Strategy; ‘Recovering Nature for Growth, Health and Security’. The Strategy commits the regulator to raising their risk appetite, to ‘stay focused on outcomes rather than processes’, with key outcomes including the effective conservation of 30% of land and sea and the realisation of nature’s power to sustain growth. 

This a regulator seeking to strike a constructive balance between fulfilling Natural England’s purpose as set out in statute and responding to the stated priorities of the current Government. 

Of the two, statutory purposes need always to be prioritised, for sound democratic reasons. Natural England was established by The Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act, which was voted through by the Commons 2006 and gave the regulator a core purpose of ensuring that the natural environment is conserved. 

In focussing on conservation, Natural England is fulfilling the sovereign will of Parliament. Following the instruction of the MPs who voted in the 2006 Act upholds parliamentary sovereignty. Political and media pressure from outside Parliament to deviate from those instructions undermines parliamentary sovereignty.  

Like any organisation, Natural England has things it needs to work on. However, the attacks against it quoted in the recent Times piece are largely fact free, as are the wider barrages against nature regulations and protections. 

Critically these attacks distract from an actual example of myopic, inflexible policies harming the interests of the British people. When Treasury sources warn of purists getting the way of growth, the call is coming from inside the house.  

The modern Treasury was forged by the Victorian Prime Minister William Gladstone, who defined its core purpose as ‘the saving of candle ends’. Mr Gladstone was a great man for ends, nubs and stumps – his favourite hobby was the cutting down thousands of healthy trees. 

Both Gladstone’s parsimony and his animosity for wild spaces can still be seen in the department he created. Despite the massive loss of wildlife since Gladstone’s day, and the corresponding rise in our understanding of how a strong economy needs a strong natural world, the Treasury still sees the environment as something to hack at. 

Examples abound of this ingrained Treasury animus against nature, and of the damage it does to both the environment and the economy.  

To name but a few: 

• Stark reductions in budgets for environmental regulators in the 2010’s contributed to the ongoing sewage scandal. The Treasury’s demand for more Defra contributions to its austerity drive poisoned our rivers, shook the foundations of the £100 billion water sector and kiboshed investment and growth potential in that sector for the foreseeable future. 
   
• The transition to nature-friendly farming, a post Brexit reform intended to restore the countryside and to secure a prosperous future for English farmers and rural economies, has been held back by sustained Treasury opposition. An ongoing reluctance to sign-off the comparatively modest budgets required to make the transition a success has created huge uncertainty and distress for farmers and has chilled growth in rural areas. 
   
• The potential for nature markets to channel private investment into nature restoration and to grow the economy has been undercut by a lack of Treasury interest. There are concerning suggestions that Biodiversity Net Gain, the only significant nature market currently functioning, could be shortly torpedoed by Treasury-pushed changes to the regulations, risking thousands of jobs. 

Across England, further examples abound of private, public and third sectors being held back from contributing to growth by the Treasury’s dogged refusal to see nature’s economic role.  

Criticisms of the Treasury are not new and can be observed across policy and political fields. However, environmentalists have a strong case that the department’s tunnel vision is particularly narrow for nature, and that consequences of this could be particularly grave. 

Over the coming years we could see an unparalleled opportunity for green growth squandered, and our best chance to restore nature lost, all because one over-mighty department hasn’t updated its environmental thinking since the days of Gladstone and his axe.   

The solutions environmentalists advocate may need to be radical. The record of the past ten years shows attempts to get the Treasury to see the light don’t tend to get very far. 

The evidence-packed, brilliantly written 2021 Dasgupta Review into the economics of biodiversity should have marked the start of a fundamental reappraisal of the Treasury’s relationship with nature. Despite being commissioned by the Treasury, it received little more than official shrug. The then Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, didn’t even grace the report with a foreword. 

Since then, the Review has been conspicuous by its absence from Ministerial speeches and communications. As the department’s response to Dasgupta shows, the current set up of the Treasury is not fit for environmental purpose. Attempts to address the anti-nature forces at the heart of Government should start with an acknowledgement of this fact.  

As environmentalists brace for another wince-inducing Budget next week, it’s time to call out the truth, however uncomfortable it may be. There is an interfering, dogmatic, growth-squishing Government busybody in the environmental sphere. It wears a Treasury lanyard.