Two years ago, in his speech at Labour Party Conference 2023, Keir Starmer relayed a conversation he had recently had with a woman about the cost of living. She had told him she was living on ‘survival mode - I can’t think oh let’s do something nice’. This prompted the Labour leader to reflect in his speech on the importance of ‘the little things we love…days out, meals out, holidays’ and to warn against policy decisions that ‘whittle away at our joy’. 

Two years on, another Labour Conference looms, with very different mood music. Commitments to boost economic growth fill every Government announcement, with Ministers repeatedly pledging that growth is ‘the Government’s foremost priority’. Every Ministerial decision is viewed through the prism of growth; policies thought capable of increasing GDP are backed, whatever the wider costs may be. 

A particular weight is being placed on unrestricted building as an engine of growth, with Housing Secretary Steve Reed pledging this week to ‘tear down all the barriers to development’. Rumours swirl about what this might mean. Given that the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has accused snails, bats and newts as being ‘blockers’ and wanted the already nature-damaging Planning and Infrastructure Bill to go further, speculation is rife that these potentially-soon-to-be-torn down barriers could include the laws that protect wildlife. 

Aside from being a colossal environmental mistake, such a step would mark a final break with the sentiments Keir Starmer expressed just two years ago. Environmental regulations don’t just protect wildlife; they safeguard people’s enjoyment of it. 

The Habitats Regulations, our most effective and value for money nature laws, provide a good example. The regulations have protected some of our most precious and threatened wildlife for decades. 

Walking amidst the butterflies in Epping Forest, spotting seals on Norfolk beaches, catching the flash of a kingfisher in the Fens – all these experiences, and so many more, are enjoyed because the Habitats Regulations are there. These and other environmental regulations are the guarantors of little, wild joys that enrich the lives of millions every day.  

The public are crystal clear about how much they cherish these wild joys:

• Research by Wildlife and Countryside Link and eftec has suggested that when people are asked to put a monetary value on the benefits provided by the Habitats Regulations, it comes to over £1 billion.
• The Wildlife Trusts’ work shows rising public interest in the health aspect of these benefits, in how time spent in wildlife-rich places boosts mental and physical wellbeing.
• Polling by More in Common for Climate Outreach, published this month, aligns with this, finding that 83% of those polled said they always found beauty in nature with similar numbers saying that nature made them very happy. These high numbers were shared across the political spectrum; in an age of division, our appreciation of nature brings people together.

A hacking down of nature regulations would loosen the ties that bind us and cut into our shared budget for joy.

Such a move would be all the more tragic for also being futile...

Environmental deregulation will not lead to economic growth 

The Westminster lobbyists who keep up a constant drumbeat demanding cuts to ‘red tape’ make a professional virtue of short political memories. They overlook the fact that environmental deregulation has been tried repeatedly over the past two decades, with economic results that range from negligible to disastrous. 

Liz Truss’s tenure as Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs from 2014 to 2016 provides an illustrative example. She pursued an explicitly deregulatory agenda, boasting of cutting red tape by reducing farm inspections and trimming down regulators overseen by Defra in order to ‘make savings as a department’. 

Cuts included an £80 million reduction in the budget the Environment Agency relied on for sewage monitoring. The fact that regulations had been put in place and regulators given responsibilities by previous Parliaments for good reasons were disregarded; deregulation was the priority.  

With the benefit of a decade’s hindsight we can see how these decisions contributed to the sewage and agricultural pollution crisis in our rivers, a crisis that has shaken the fiscal foundations of the water sector and risks billions of pounds of taxpayer money being used for bailouts.  
 

Environmental crisis events can lead to serious economic disruption 

With The Times reporting that the new Defra Secretary of State, Emma Reynolds, has been asked by the Chancellor to do more to ‘cut back on red tape’ and rein in the regulators in her department, the Truss era constitutes a warning beacon. 

Regulations and their implementation can of course be improved, but previous all-out assaults on environmental regulation have failed to produce good economic results. ‘Green tape’ has an important economic function, to provide stability and prevent environmental crisis events which can cause serious economic disruption. As Liz Truss showed with water regulation, the short-term rush of deregulation can lead to a long and costly hangover. 

The Wildlife Trusts will be at Labour Conference next week to provide this warning. We will urge Emma Reynolds at Defra and Steve Reed at MHCLG not to heed the siren voices calling for the weakening of environmental regulations and regulators, and to reject the false premise that environmental sacrifice will magically conjure up economic growth.

With rumours that the Planning and Infrastructure Bill could be shortly amended to weaken protections for National Parks, making the Bill even more worrying for nature, this message is urgent. 

Most of all, we will remind Ministers of the wisdom of their leader’s 2023 speech. The little joys in life matter, including the wild ones – the family days out in nature reserves, the picnics at scenic spots, the holidays in National Parks. 

An attack on nature regulations is an attack on the safeguards that make these happy days possible. With every diminishment of these wildlife-protecting, happiness-giving environmental regulations, a little bit more of our collective joy is whittled away.