Journal
Natural selection
The end of October saw a debate held in the House of Lords during which the usual elaborately polite language of the lords was abandoned, at least for a moment. The subject was Natural England, the new Government-funded agency charged with protecting and enhancing the natural environment. Formed from a merger between English Nature, the Countryside Agency and part of the Rural Development Service, it was first proposed as a key part of the response by the Governments to the review by Lord Haskins of rural delivery in July 2004. However, by the time Natural England was launched at the start of October 2006, it had already had to cope with more than £12.9m being cut from its budget to help fill an unexpected hole found in the budget of its sponsor department, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). In the House of Lords, the grandly named Countess of Mar was not happy. Questioning Lord Rooker, minister of state at Defra, she said: “…will the noble lord explain who is responsible for what I can only describe as cock-ups in the accountancy at Defra, and are their heads going to roll?”
For all its quaint formality, the House of Lords debate reflects the increasing puzzlement in the country at the erratic attitude of the Government to the environment. The way that Government seems to say one thing then do another was epitomised by the weighty support ministers gave the Treasury-commissioned Stern Review in November, quickly followed by a Pre-Budget Report that contained little that will really force changes in either corporate or personal behaviour.
For Helen Phillips, the chief executive of Natural England, setting up a major new environmental public body with 2,500 staff in the context of such overt political ambivalence must be immensely frustrating. Phillips took up her post in February 2006; the £12.9m cut in the budget of Natural England came a few months later. Although total budget of the organisation for 2006-7 was £500m, more than half of this was ring-fenced European money for agri-environment projects, and another chunk was fixed overheads. So the bulk of the savings had to be found from the remaining £70m. “To be perfectly frank, it is been very painful – the cut was worse than £12.9m,” she says. “Eight million pounds was removed from our budget at Christmas 2005. Then within another few months we had £12.9m removed.” Discuss this article
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