What the Planning and Infrastructure Bill tells us about the government’s approach to nature recovery

This post is by Beccy Speight, chief executive officer of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.

As the UK government has bulldozed on with the new Planning and Infrastructure Bill, we’ve seen some simplistic populist tropes at play. Whether that’s the frequent demonising of the so-called ‘cauldron’ species of nature as a blocker to growth, or the ordering (and wearing) of a lot of baseball caps.

The bill approached the end of its parliamentary journey last week. It returned to the House of Lords after the government rejected three vital amendments advocated by the conservation sector, and which would have helped safeguard nature from the worst of the new planning system.

The first (Amendment 40) would have ensured more of our most precious species and habitats would continue to benefit from the same protections they have now. The second (Amendment 38) would have given more protection to rare chalk streams (85 per cent of the world’s chalk streams are found in England). And the third (Amendment 148) would have ensured further legal safeguards were included.

Nature’s fate is now exposed to the whims of government
But, last Monday, these amendments were either withdrawn or voted down. In their place? An untried and untested process, not backed by science and now underpinned only by government reassurances. History tells us that nature is best protected by law, not promises. Whilst it was good to hear these last minute commitments, this is very far from the win-win promised by the government at the outset for nature and the economy. A booby prize nobody wanted. And a retrogressive outcome that leaves nature exposed to the whims of this and future governments.

Somewhere along the line, the government stopped listening.  Nature is in freefall. Yet we have a government and a Treasury that are intent on shifting the blame for lack of growth onto nature.  All the evidence, including from the Environmental Audit Committee, has shown that nature is not the problem.  But the government doesn’t seem to be letting up.

We are hearing rumours that the use of Biodiversity Net Gain will be severely restricted, so that an estimated 97 per cent of sites will no longer be eligible, a move that would destroy this new and emerging market, vital for delivering private investment in nature recovery, just as it was getting going. And we have seen recommendations from a new nuclear energy taskforce to exempt the most important nature protections for the development of new nuclear sites. It remains to be seen how the government will respond.

The approach is disastrous
This feels like death by a thousand cuts. The laws protecting UK nature have been constantly challenged by this government, with some already being chiselled away. If the government is truly serious about nature recovery and the commitments it made in its manifesto, then this approach is disastrous.

We will keep saying it: nature is not a luxury. It is a necessity for us all that underpins our economy, the air we breathe, the water we need and the food we eat. Crucially, nature is a vote-winner. Polling consistently shows that people care about it deeply, across the political spectrum. A recent More in Common report showed that two thirds of the population (67 per cent) think politicians are out of touch with their values on nature. If that’s not something for any politician to take heed of, then I don’t know what is.

We need to take a bird’s eye view and grasp the bigger picture of what is needed from UK nature, for wildlife, climate and people, and to meet our legally binding targets for its restoration. We need truly ambitious leadership that facilitates and activates change at a scale we’ve probably never seen before, and we need everyone involved in tackling this crisis. Taking a short term view and making nature a scapegoat is absolutely not the answer.