Welcome, everybody, to the latest meeting of the Environmental Audit Committee. We are delighted to have with us the representatives of the Office for Environmental Protection. Dame Glenys, I will start with you and invite you to introduce yourself—you should need no introduction—and I ask your colleagues to do the same and explain what your role is within the organisation. Then we will make a start.

Thank you very much, Chair. My name is Dame Glenys Stacey, and I am the inaugural Chair of the Office for Environmental Protection. I will hand over to Natalie.

Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Natalie Prosser, and I am the chief executive at the Office for Environmental Protection.

Good afternoon, everybody. I am Professor Cathy Maguire, and I am head of assessments.

Thank you very much. Of course, this is probably the last time that we will have you in front of us, Dame Glenys. I am very sad to say that your five-year term has come to an end. We are all tremendously grateful for the work that you have done, along with your colleagues at the organisation, to give it the credibility and seriousness that I think it holds. I know how hard you have worked, so you certainly have my thanks, and I am sure the thanks of the Committee. I wish we had brought you a card or a cake or something. None the less, you will have to go with our thanks instead.

Thank you. I am delighted to hear that and your good wishes. I suspect what you are going to give me is a lot of hard questions.

I hope so, yes. We will do our best anyway. Let’s start on that. Your most recent report found that in most areas, environmental targets are off track. You found that there have been some improvements. To what extent should the main takeaway be the extent that we are off track or the improvement that has been made in the last year?

It is most certainly that we are way off track. I will come on to the improvements in a minute, but we have not seen the scale of change needed. We have spoken before about the requirement to speed up and scale up and that it should be stacked up. EIP25 shows us a bit about how it can stack up, but we have not seen the speeding up or scaling up needed. When compared to our last progress report, yes, there are a higher proportion of targets and commitments showing good progress—I think 12 out of the 43 that we measure—but that still leaves the vast majority, about three-quarters of them, either mixed or limited progress. So no, it is not a good news story, I am afraid.

The overriding message should be that the country remains off track and that while there is progress in the last year, it is not in any way in the order of magnitude needed to say that we are starting to get back on track?

Not at all. Thank you. That is exactly right.

Yes. The report says that the Government now have a choice of whether to meet or miss the 2030 targets. Just expand on the choices that face the Government briefly.

There is a choice because prospects are not fixed. We have got fast upon us the 2030 targets and one can say that as they are not far away—and we highlight this in our report—it is quite difficult to do any new things now to get us to 2030 where we need to be. The existing actions need to continue, and the work needs to continue to get us into a position where we would be able to reverse the decline in nature, for example, by 2042. We say that it is a year of choice because this Government have been in power now for a little while, and 2030 is coming. We do argue that if the right actions are taken in the year ahead there is still a prospect of hitting those 2030 targets, but not in a year’s time if action does not occur. That is what we mean by this is a decision-making year.

If we saw the same pace of change and progress in the next year, in a year’s time you would not be telling us it was still within the Government’s grasp?

No, my successor will be telling a yet sorrier tale, yes.

How much of your more positive assessment in terms of the progress that has been made would you say is down to policy developments, and how much is due to delivery?

We try to weigh up both of those things. Of course, the relative weight we give to them varies depending on the issue or the goal area that we are looking at actually, because good policy matters and sometimes the policy is there but we need delivery. Cathy, this is one where you could perhaps give some insight.

Yes. When we look across those areas like clean air and chemicals, where we had upgraded our assessment of progress from limited to mixed, that was a mixture of policy development and delivery. In some cases policy development is necessary and it is important we see people trying to tackle long-standing issues and problems. In other cases it is about delivery. If I could just say how we assess progress, we look at whether policies and actions are comprehensive. Do they cover the most important issues? Are they credible? Is their delivery and implementation of high quality? Are they also coherent? Do they work well together? It means we are always looking at policy development and delivery. However, as Dame Glenys said, the relative weight depends on the area. For areas like sustainable soil management, which we said is a significant gap and there has been very limited progress, policy development is necessary because there are clear gaps in the policy and regulatory framework that need to be addressed to make progress. In other areas, and we have looked at this in terms of water and other protected sites, other areas, it is really about implementation and delivery. There is not an issue with the policy. It is about getting on and delivering it. That is what we look at when we look at progress, but when we look at prospects, we would probably give policy development less weight than delivery here because plans or statements of ambition and intent are not action. We need to see what the final policies look like and assess the impact of their implementation to really see and consider the effect on the prospects of meeting targets and commitments. Again, the relative weight we give to things changes when we are looking at progress within the reporting year and looking ahead at prospects.

The Government, as you say, have not shown yet that they are willing to take the magnitude of actions required in order to get on track, and people will make conclusions about the extent to which this is a priority of the Government in comparison to others. We are conscious that on the day that the EIP report was produced, which you were welcoming and saying was a marked improvement to its predecessor, we had the Prime Minister once again effectively repeating the suggestion that nature was a blocker. We also noted on this Committee that we got no oral statement in Parliament on the production of the EIP. We got no oral statement on the production of your report. To what extent do you have a sense that this Government are giving it the priority that it needs? Have you had any conversations that can give us confidence that this is a key priority?

There are some contradictory messages, aren’t there? On the one hand, we were welcoming of the new EIP, EIP25. It is a much better document than its predecessor. We are particularly pleased to see that a lot of the advice that we gave to the Government on how to construct that document and what to aim for has been taken on board. I am pleased that we have those 10 goal areas, and we have the statutory targets that we have, for example. Of course, it is a cross-government document. It is not just DEFRA writing that in a back room. There is on the record a very clear cross-government commitment to what is now needed. We do hear the Government often enough recognising that as well as economic growth, or to actually support economic growth, we do need a healthy environment. There is clear recognition of that in a number of high places, and we welcome that. You are right that the Government are legitimately focused on economic growth. We and others, you included, are pressing that in order to sustain that you need a healthy environment. There is a lot of noisy debate, let’s call it that, and noises off, particularly about the role of environmental regulation. We would argue for effective regulation and for good regulation. It has a massive role to play. We would long sing the praises of good regulation. I think it is regrettable when there are these mixed messages, if I may say, Chair, because you know from your experience that those in government, those in the civil service, we listen carefully and we take steer from the signals that we hear as to what is the flavour of debate in government at the moment. For us, the more it is on message backing the revised EIP the better.

You mentioned noises off there, but in terms of the physical conversations that you have been having, are you getting a sense of the positive messages that you have reflected are being undermined by specific actions or instructions that are going in a different direction?

No, I wouldn’t go that far myself. I do not know if others have had experience of that. I suppose I am getting a little bit—how can I put it politely? I do find it worrisome that we see so much watering down of ambition. If we look at some of the interim targets, for example, or the Government’s position on protected sites, it needs to be stronger and I keep saying it.

On that question about there being no oral statement, the Government are in Parliament making oral statements and urgent questions all the time on all kinds of matters, but when it comes to the environment we very regularly see them making statements on climate change and on energy policy. It is much more difficult, in fact hard to remember, them making a statement on nature. As I say, we did not get one on the OEP report. We did not get one on the EIP. Do you have any communication with them about why they do not think that that is something they should be addressing Parliament with an oral statement on?

Like you, we wait with bated breath to see whether an oral statement is to be made. You are right, the two big opportunities to promote nature have been missed very recently on the EIP progress report and then about the new EIP. We are not consulted about whether or not an oral statement is made. That is rather political in nature, isn’t it? Obviously, we welcome it when it does happen but there are two opportunities missed, as I say.

Yes. Thank you. We will come now to my colleague Martin Rhodes.

What impact has the OEP’s monitoring and reporting processes had on the Government’s progress against their environmental targets?

That is an interesting question. We as an organisation are constantly seeking to see whether or not we have impact. Otherwise what is the point? We do think we have impact, although it is not the easiest thing to measure. For example, the way the new EIP is structured I do think we can claim a fair bit of credit for the advice we gave over many months to the Government about how to do a decent EIP. That is the Government’s commitment to our environment for the next 25 years, so I would certainly say that we have had impact there. We have impact in specific areas as well that may not come to your attention. For example, the work we did on the lack of post-implementation review of legislation had a very big impact because DEFRA was one of the worst offenders. We saw a very rapid programme there to get those reviews done. We can point to impact in a good number of areas. We track our recommendations as well. Some of those recommendations are systemic in nature and it is going to take more than a year to get to a decent position on them. We have also done independent research of our stakeholders because this annual report that we do is addressed to Parliament and it is used—I am teaching my grandma to suck eggs here—by Parliament and parliamentarians extensively. In the research we have done or had done, certainly 89% of our respondents thought our report was a reliable assessment. Half say they use it in their own work, whether that is research or communications, and 81% say that they value our role. The independent research we have done gives us some comfort, but there is always more we can do and always more we would wish for.

You mentioned recommendations. If you go back to the 2023-24 report and think about those recommendations, are there areas where you would say the recommendations have been taken up and there have been improvements from that? Are there areas where you think recommendations are just being ignored or where they have been partly implemented and partly not or done in a half-hearted way?

That is always tricky territory, isn’t it, where it is partly implemented and partly not? As I have said, some of our recommendations are extremely generic: “get nature-friendly farming right”. There is some effort, but there is a lot more to be done. It is often a mixed picture. Cathy, you might want to be more specific here.

We do track progress with our recommendations, and in our last two progress reports we systematically went back to the recommendations and did our own assessment of what progress we think has been made over that past year. We do that with the recognition that quite often in our recommendations we are not the only ones saying this. There are a lot of other factors at play as to why things happen and why they do not. This year one thing that happened that was extremely useful was the Government published their formal response to our report in time for us to take it into account. That meant we were able to see whether they accepted, partially accepted or rejected our recommendations and what actions they said had taken place to either implement or not, or whether or why they had not acted because it was dependent on the EIP25 or other policy developments or pending decisions. That enables us to give a much more considered view of progress with those recommendations because we had that information. We will be able to do this in future as well, because in EIP25 there is now a commitment that as part of the Government’s annual progress reporting they will also include that formal response to the recommendations in our previous report. That helps us all with the coherence of that reporting. It helps us to do a better assessment, so it will become much more useful.

If I may just follow that, the Government’s own annual performance reporting is a requirement in the legislation. There is this rhythm that we are establishing, and it has got better. It was certainly better this last year than it has been before, and it can be better still. That will help us all. It means we might be able to give less resource to our own reporting by relying on what we get there. There is a symbiotic relationship there, Chair, that it is in all our interests that DEFRA does as good a job as possible in its own assessment of progress rather than just what has been done.

Last year, you said that you thought your report could influence the Government in some areas and not others. First of all, do you think that is still the case? Have you any thoughts about which areas you are more able to influence? Is it particular types of policy where you might want types of recommendations, or is it to do with the policy area?

That is an interesting question, and I would need a bit more time to give it a satisfactory answer, but I will give it a shot now. Where the Government are thinking of changing the law, we have a statutory provision that enables us to give advice, whether the Government want it or not in that circumstance. I would say we have used that provision very well. I am thinking here of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill and the interventions we made. The proposals we made to ameliorate what we saw to be regression were largely taken on board. I think when we get that magical opportunity to influence something before it is about to happen, we have a fairly good track record. At the other end of the spectrum where there have been years of neglect and intransigence, it is quite often difficult to get the traction you need. I am thinking here about, for example, protected sites, which we think are such an important piece in the jigsaw. We did, I think, an excellent report on protected sites last year. It is disappointing to see that in the new EIP the commitment to protected sites is no better and actually has been, in my view, watered down. Sometimes you do have to persist, I think. A lesson I have learned is that although you might be repeating something, you are saying it to the current Secretary of State or the current person responsible for decision making. Of course, we continue to build a body of evidence, which is helpful when you are suggesting that something should happen. I would say it is a bit of a mixed picture. Did you want to add anything, Natalie?

We do the progress report every year, and my colleagues have described it not as one report but 10 short reports because the breadth is so substantial. That is really valuable. It is a valuable piece of evidence taking stock, and it has variable degrees of impact. What we try to do at the OEP is to grapple with the substantial environmental issues that face us, and we do not just tackle them through our progress report, although that is a particularly important component. We look at all the things that we can do. For example, on protected sites we have done a very thorough analysis of how the laws are working. In the water environment we have run two investigations. We have done an implementation review, and we have also provided evidential input into the Cunliffe review. What we try to do is to look at these key environmental issues and develop a programme of work using different parts of our toolkit to try to advance them. That does allow us to get traction and move the dial on some of those issues; not all of them, but some of them. The progress report is such a critical anchor point for every year, and the breadth of it covers a whole range of issues that we might not be able to tackle using some of our other functions, so we gradually make progress in some areas by doing that.

It might be worth just noting as well that we have also made progress through investigations. That is a hard-edged tool, but in a couple of significant areas, for example, the permitting of combined sewage overflows, we have certainly made a material difference by taking a formal investigatory and proceedings approach.

In essence, then, where you find it easier is at that final point about investigation, but other than that it is about whether it is more a dynamic policy area—whether it is things changing and, therefore, you can get more easily involved than where things are more entrenched?

It is where we have leverage. We certainly have leverage in investigations and when we get to the decision-making notices and we are all the time in that having discussions with the other side, if you like, about what is required to bring this into compliance. I think we have made considerable progress in a number of areas there. We have leverage there. Then, of course, when legislation is changing we have alert parliamentarians such as yourselves and we have the debates that happen as a Bill progresses, so again we have this opportunity to get on the record how we see things.

Finally, Dame Glenys, as you prepare to leave the OEP, what would your reflections be on what you think your biggest successes have been in the time you have been there and where do you feel there is still more work to do?

I recollect appearing for my pre-appointment scrutiny committee and being asked a lot about independence. There was a lot of concern at the time about how independent this body would be. Well, I hope we have demonstrated that we are. I cannot think of any single issue or moment where we have been anything other than completely independent and I think that pattern is set. I think that is what is needed and what Parliament expected, so that is really good. I think we have got more and more confident over the period on deciding what the big issues are that we should tackle. There is always too much, but I think we have made some pretty good decisions there about what to do in what areas, looking at what others are doing and not trying to replicate and so on. I reflect that we are fairly good as well at looking in a systems-wide way. So many of these things are not isolated things, they are part of a bigger system, and we are doing that. I think you can rely on the OEP in terms of its evidence base. We are very, very good at it. I am desperately proud of it. You can rely on our evidence absolutely and we are getting better and better at that analysis side of things. You can rely on us for understanding environmental law. We are very competent at understanding environmental law in the context of the body of wider public law. We are particularly good at knowing when to investigate and how, so we have some competence. You have asked how we could have done better. Well, of course, we could have done. I think it has taken us years to understand how to use our resources effectively when we produce a substantial body of work and produce a report. We are all very enthusiastic to lift every stone and follow every avenue of investigation and then write extensively, and that can take time and effort and produce a very heavy report. We are getting better and we can get better still at focusing our efforts there to get quicker and more concise. Certainly, our board encourages us to do that. I am sure that we will get better at that. We do our best to look forward in our annual assessment to see whether the Government are going to meet their target or not. Cathy has given some indication of how we make these assessments, but we could get better at that. There is quite a technical area for us to develop there, but we are simply not funded to do it. It takes a chunk of money. We can get better, but in large part we would get better still if we had a few more people, I think. It is just the nature of it. With more, we could do more. That is the long and short of it.

Just on that, you have talked a lot, and I agree with you about the credibility and the way you have established the OEP as an independent and serious organisation. Do you think it would be fair to say that the OEP does not have quite got the profile it could have? If you think of an OEP report and you put that in the context of the OBR reporting on the economy and how significant criticism of the Government’s economy by the OBR would be if it was compared to the OEP report, it does feel like for all the quality of the work you are doing it does not have quite the status that we might have hoped it would have. Is that a fair criticism? I am not pointing at anyone individually, but is that a fair criticism and something for your successor to think about or would you reject that?

It is certainly a view that you can hold. We have had discussions at our board about the extent to which we want as an organisation any significant profile. We recognise that to a large extent we are assisting Parliament. That is a key audience for us, and we know we have impact here. When I think about the influence of our advice, for example, I know my colleagues tell me that the Bill Committee on the Planning and Infrastructure Bill referred to our advice 65 times in one day. No one else was giving that calibre of advice and it was so useful. It is partly how you might then measure profile or influence. We are not a campaign group, and it frustrates me but there is a job we all need to do to make sure that the wider public and our media understand the importance of it here. There is a lesson for us all about how we talk about this in ways that get traction with the media. I cannot tell you how frustrating it is to be on the “Today” programme for 50 seconds. It is just not—

You want to try getting turned down at 7 o’clock in the morning, but okay, we will move on from that.

Following on from that, I wondered if you felt that you needed more teeth as an organisation for your recommendations to land harder in government.

I don’t know whether you have anything specific in mind. All oversight bodies would welcome the widest gamut of powers as a starting point. However, when we reviewed our enabling legislation as it was going through Parliament, watching the debate very closely, we were broadly happy with what came out. That is, we can make a difference with the legislation we have. We do keep a list back at base of things we might want to change if we had an opportunity. We have several pages of it. It is quite technical stuff rather than anything—we do not want fining powers, for example. We find we can achieve what we need to achieve in the strategic approach that we adopt to enforcement. The timescales and timing around our reporting, you could have done it differently, but it is workable. There is a value to annual reporting on our part anyway. Natalie, you may as a CEO have much greater ambitions than I have for our enabling legislation. Do you have anything on your shopping list there?

There is always in the detail things that could be administratively more straightforward. The legislation is open-ended in terms of when we can request or insist on provision of information and how quickly that can come through. That means that we generally have to negotiate that rather than there being a more directive framework there. As Dame Glenys mentioned, the timescales for reporting can in practice be a bit clunky. This is the first year we have had a response to our EIP report in sufficient time to be able to respond to it in our next report. Previously, it has been quite confusing for everybody, including the public, about that timescale, and that is not ideal. On fining, for example, it was often advocated for fining powers early on, but the reality is that we are part of government. If we were exercising fining powers, we would be taking money from one bit of government and then giving it back to another bit of government. It seems superficially attractive, but in practical terms I do not think it would work very well. I have been quite surprised, actually, about our enforcement and investigation powers, which are designed in quite a protracted way in legislation. We have been able to make them work quite well. What we are always trying to do at the OEP is to improve practice and improve outcomes. Where there are legal requirements there, we can use them to try to drive that improvement. What we care about is the change in practice and the improvement. The way that our enforcement powers are set up creates space for good dialogue to happen. What that allows is public authorities, which do want to do the right thing, some space to find the best way to do that. I personally have been pleasantly surprised that although it takes a lot of effort, we are able to really drive change, even though the legislative framework itself is—I think Dame Glenys described it as leisurely in earlier evidence because there are a lot of steps we have to take. However, we have found that that has worked, and we have seen public authorities take and own responsibility for resolving the issues that we bring to them.

Thank you for that. I was trying to see if there was a recommendation we could pull out of that, but that is very helpful. What impact do you expect the introduction of the standing recommendations to have? I have a table of them in front of me, and it is clear that the Government have not accepted any of these fully when they were made in last year’s report. You had found that there is very limited or mixed progress to them. Do you have higher hopes for this next time?

By standing recommendations do you mean recommendations that we have repeated this year?

Yes.

Thank you for that clarification. Many of these are quite significant, strategic, and systemic, like get nature-friendly farming right, and that does not happen in a year. You get progress over time. There is nothing wrong in saying it twice or three times if it is still the pertinent recommendation to make and our board and I agree and have decided that they are. It does not mean there has not been any progress on any of them, but they are still pertinent. I mentioned earlier that it is always good to get those under the nose of the relevant decision makers of the day. I think I have experienced six Secretaries of State in my five-year term, so sometimes it is worth repeating the obvious and trying to get traction. We do not expect these things to all happen in a year, in any event.

Is it less about banging your head against a brick wall and more about the time it is taking to tackle these challenges?

I think our job is to identify the extent to which the Government are set to meet their ambitions for the environment and to do the constructive thing—well, we choose to do the most constructive thing, which is to try to identify what needs to happen to make a difference and state it plainly in a recommendation. If it has not happened in the last year but is still going to make the material difference needed, we state it again. I do not have a problem with that repetition. We press those things home any which way.

Do you have a priority for any order in which these recommendations should be taken? You mentioned farming but there is protected sites in there, the marine environment, all these other ones that have been repeated.

Yes. There are a number of things, and you will help me here, but if the Government do them they will make a very material difference. One is, yes, get nature-friendly farming right. Another one is to regulate effectively. There are so many opportunities now to do that I would really hope that that would happen. Another one is to appropriately fund. It is a lesson from the last five years for me that when we look at the way things are funded and we see more funding needed, we are talking about orders of magnitude, not an extra 10% or something, to fund things properly. The other thing is to make plain, and they are getting better at it, who is responsible for doing what, to plan the delivery. We have seen a bit of that now. Lastly, just garner the efforts of everyone. There are a lot of other organisations and industry that can make a material difference if you can garner that support. Those are all pretty cross-cutting, but if they were each done to a reasonable extent we would be in a much happier place.

Thank you. That is very helpful.

Welcome; it is lovely to see you again, Dame Glenys. My questions relate to a couple of areas that I feel very passionate about: ocean governance and land use. The Committee’s report on ocean governance noted the importance of spatial planning. How effective do you think the Government’s marine spatial prioritisation programme is going to be in achieving those goals?

I should declare that you are my local MP. It is very good to see you here on this Committee. Thank you. You have expressed your own concerns here and we agree with you. Yes, we are concerned. We have highlighted that marine plans are a key component of the UK’s policy framework, but the overarching MPS is just outdated, and I think deemed unfit for purpose by this Committee, so of course we are concerned. The Government need to better understand demands and pressures on the marine environment and really start taking it more seriously.

Have you had any clarity from the Government on the timeline for the marine spatial prioritisation programme?

Cathy or Natalie, do we have anything good to report? No.

No, we do not.

Natalie is shaking her head on that, okay. Thank you. We are also seeing delays with the land use framework.

Yes.

Yes. How interconnected do you see those challenges as being between use of space, use of land, in those two different contexts of marine and relatively dry land? Are there cross-cutting issues and lessons that can be transferred from one of those domains to the other?

It is a good question, and I will ask Natalie to join in a minute. We have long called for the Government to produce some mechanisms for reconciling competing demands on land and sea, and in both land and sea those demands are notably increasing. At sea, we have a real requirement now in terms of the Government’s energy strategy to exploit offshore wind, and then on land the Planning and Infrastructure Bill and the Government’s desire to build eye-watering numbers of housing, which we accept. They are making demands. The land use strategy was consulted upon, and I thought the consultation was welcome myself and there were good things in there. There were some gaps as well. I am not clear about the governance there and how far the approach was really going to be embedded at a local level by those responsible for making planning decisions at that level. It was unclear to me anyway, but I thought some of the principles set out there were very good and it was spelling out pretty plainly to the agricultural community the scale of change that was going to be needed over a period of time. That was welcome. Of course, we have not yet got the strategy. Natalie, have you had a chance to think about the synergies between land and sea? One of the issues that I am raising is governance—that governance could be developed in relation to decisions for use at land and at sea. They are both ripe for development, let’s put it that way.

I will add a couple of things and Cathy may well do, too. It is acutely pressing that the Government are able to reconcile the competing demands on the sea. We know that our marine protected areas are not adequately protected. We know there is an acute issue in terms of protecting our seas, and that is only going to become more acute as we move towards much needed clean energy. These are important demands and they do need to be reconciled and balanced appropriately, but those choices do need to be actively met. I say that in the particular context where we have been concerned about the Government not achieving the good ecological status target, an apex legally binding target for our seas that fell due in 2020. We have and active investigation in relation to that. As part of that, we are calling on the Government to set out how they are going to drive improvement in our seas. It is really important, both from an environmental protection point of view, but also so that we can show that these legally binding targets do carry weight, that they do matter and that the Government need to take them seriously. I just wanted to add that little bit of context. The need to reconcile the usage on the sea is acute, the need to take positive action to deal with our marine protected areas and drive improvement is acute and pressing, and we really want to see that action. Of course, there are lessons to be learned about reconciling use on land as well as sea, and I am going to pass over to my colleague Cathy, because having that land use framework and being able to use it effectively is a key component of so many environmental initiatives. If we can get that right, it could really drive improvement across many different areas.

The similarity in the areas is that they require a consideration of the interlinkages, the synergies and the trade-offs between different actions and policies. This year in the progress report we looked at that a bit in terms of land use and we looked at policy coherence, because that really brings that to the fore. It becomes fundamental here. We looked across a few areas like nature, food, climate, nature markets, planning and devolution and it highlighted the need for a lot of policies that are in place but also ones that are in development to be able to work together. It is quite a lot. It is the EIP25, the farming road map, the food strategy, the land use framework, the circular economy growth plan and a UK marine strategy, alongside things like significant planning and water sector reform. All these things need to be able to work together coherently because they are trying to achieve the same outcomes and that is no easy task. One of the things that we highlighted was the role of the environmental principles policy statement and duty in doing that in policy development. You are trying to consider the same things as well, but also things like revision of the Green Book to try to do that upstream policy coherence when doing policy development. Then you have the aspect of spatial prioritisation, and here things like the land use framework are going to be incredibly important, including how they interact with things like the local nature recovery strategies. Decision-making frameworks—so things like the national planning policy framework—provide that detail at that strategic level, which should help to minimise trade-offs and conflicts at local level as well. There are a lot of different dimensions at play here. It is not an easy task for the Government, I think everybody can acknowledge that, but there are tools and mechanisms already in place that if they are robust and applied effectively could really help with this.

Thank you. May I ask a supplementary question, please, Chair?

Yes, briefly.

Dame Glenys, we have a mutual friend in Dame Fiona Reynolds, and she and I have been talking a lot about land use. She is particularly advocating for the principle of multi-purposing land and how we can get more bang for the buck in the way that we use land. I wonder if that is a principle that you have been exploring and might be able to propose to the Government at some point.

We have not done any work, as far as I am aware, in relation to those principles that are proposed in the land use framework consultation. I know that Fiona has long been engaged in looking at how a land use framework could work well. I am not surprised to hear the suggestion. People do talk a lot about the benefits. I have heard Tony Juniper talk a lot about the benefits of multi-purpose use of land. In fact, Tony Juniper is a good person to talk to about how to make that happen. We are looking—well, I won’t be, but the organisation will—in the next month or so at what our priorities are for the year ahead. What we are unclear about, as we think about land use, is just when we are going to have this framework and what it is going to look like. We have had a consultation, but it could be quite different.

I was interested in your comments about the land use framework and that connection to the future farming strategy. That is another area, isn’t it, where we have seen increased investment but unfortunately that limited impact on the ground in terms of nature protection? Do you feel that the Government have unrealistically high expectations for the ELM schemes to deliver on targets around farm wildlife and species abundance?

The ELM schemes are certainly one of the big levers that the Government can pull. Traditionally—I will vastly oversimplify this—we have seen a lot of investment in what I would call the lower order schemes, although the gate shut, didn’t it, unexpectedly last year?

Sold out I think is the phrase.

That’s right, yes. So that was awkward. They are not on their own able to deliver what the Government wish to achieve by way of those targets. What is needed is more large-scale investment in the higher order thinking. That is in our view what the Government need to concentrate on now, looking at landscape scale. There are some good examples of that, but much more of that needs to be done. I think when I last looked at it, the Government had committed £500 million over 20 years, and I simply question whether that is anywhere near enough, given what has to be done.

Are you inching towards a recommendation that greater resources would be required for that to be effective?

I think we have effectively said that already, yes.

I see Natalie Prosser nodding there. Did you want to add in on what confidence you have in the Government’s plans to do that or what else needs to happen?

It is about getting the maximum return for that investment. As Dame Glenys has said, where we have seen effective investment through agri-environment schemes is at the landscape scale and at the higher tiers. Investment at SFI level, well, it is difficult to know exactly what it has delivered because there are data gaps and lack of information. We have already talked about the fact that there are real weaknesses in spatial prioritisation to make sure that we are getting the environmental outcomes that that investment is meant to deliver. If that money could be spent in a way that is more targeted at those higher tiers and at the landscape scale, that is a very substantial lever that the Government can pull to drive nature’s recovery. I suppose I am an optimist because I can see the potential there and we know that where that money is invested well it can really give us returns. What we do not know yet is that that is going to happen.

What we really need is a transition from the lower order sustainable farming incentive type thing towards those higher order schemes. It would be helpful if the Government could recognise that and set out how they are going to encourage and incentivise farmers to make that move.

It is not just agri schemes. It is effective support for farmers when they are coming together in clusters—which many farmers have done and have done some interesting and innovative work in doing that—and providing effective regulation of agriculture. That is not just more inspections or sanctions, which is providing advice and support to farmers to help them do the right thing. There is a whole package of activities together. When we talk about getting nature-friendly farming right, it is not just about agri-environment schemes. It is that whole approach for getting our agricultural land, which is 70% of our land, working more effectively for nature.

It is interesting. Your report does highlight the need for that greater effectiveness around the support mechanisms. In your view, what is preventing the Government from making improvements to that farm advisory service?

That is a really interesting question. I am long in the tooth, and I can remember we did have a national advisory service for farmers. When I was chief executive of animal health we certainly did. It was just ending then. We have not really seen anything to replace it. There has been a reliance on private industry to provide that advice, and they are able to and do advise farmers in relation to some aspects of profitability, for example, or whatever, but it is not the advice that at a farm level a farmer needs in order to know the best way in which he can help the Government to meet their objectives, while at the same time making a reasonable living. That combination is not there. I do not understand or know why there is a reticence to do that. I made a recommendation for that when I did a review of farm regulation several years ago—more than five years ago because it was before I was at the OEP. The recommendation is there in an independent report, and I would encourage the Government to look at it again.

That is a very helpful recommendation. I am going to bring in Dr Maguire in case she would like to add anything. I think we can all agree that that profitability question is at the heart of how we support farmers to embrace some of these new ideas, and I would be interested as to whether you think the Batters review helps to move forward this agenda that you obviously have concerns on. Did you have any thoughts?

I am afraid that is not an area that I actually have worked on in much detail. We did this year in the progress report, and we have done it over the past two years, look at the role of farming advice and how it could be improved. We do set out what we think a good scheme would be. We have engaged with those providing that advice and receiving that advice to try to do that. We have set out what actions we think could actually make progress in this, and it is for the Government and others to decide whether to act on those or not.

Have you been involved in the revision to the SFI scheme?

If I may say, just on the Batters review, first of all, it is with the Government now and it makes a good number of recommendations. It does provide helpful insight and context, in my view, for the Government to then reflect on what the best ways to go are. The Government are promising a farm road map by this year. The sooner that comes the better. There are real opportunities there to deal with this advice gap. I hope that you would encourage the Government to consider that.

Excellent, for it to be included within that road map. That is a helpful contribution. Thank you all.

Following on from feeling that some of your advice does not make it into the report, you have said that it is not clear whether the new EIP for 2025 interim target on farm wildlife represents a reduction in ambition from the previous EIP in 2023 commitment. I am just wondering why you have not been able to judge this.

It is partly about how the new target is constructed because it is quite different from the old target. Cathy is your woman for this, so I will hand over to her.

It is something that we have looked at and that we are trying to analyse because there is a change in both the percentage of farmers participating and the percentage of land cover. In our initial conclusions, it does seem like a lowering of the level of ambition because when you actually then look across it is a slightly lower proportion of land area and a lower proportion of farmers in the schemes.

Following on from that, have the Government given you any indication of their rationale for changing the target, why they have changed the way that they have measured this?

I do not think the Government have given us a rationale in any case where the level of ambition in a target has been reduced or the timeframe for achieving it has been elongated.

My apologies for arriving late. I wanted to look at air quality or, rather, air pollution. You are the watchdog looking at the homework the Government have set themselves and then marking that homework, but when the homework that they set themselves is not anywhere near what we believe the global standard should be, in fact is half as stringent as the global standard sets in the WHO guidelines, do you feel that you have a pretty hopeless task on your hands?

Thank you, Mr Gardiner. First of all, air quality is a really important subject. We know that between 26,000 and 38,000 people die prematurely in this country because of poor air quality.

If that were knife crime, this place would not stop talking about it.

No, and I don’t think people are very aware of it and they should be, so this is a really important subject. Secondly, we gave advice to the Government at the time that the statutory targets were set. It was very early days for us. I think we might have still been an interim body, and I remember we gave firm written advice and spoke with the then Secretary of State. We welcomed the targets that were proposed for the EIP as being suitably ambitious, but we did not do that in relation to air quality. That was the area where our advice was that it was not sufficiently challenging, the target, and particularly the timeframe within which it was to be achieved. We argued it should be much tighter. Our concerns were duly noted, and I recollect that the response at the time from the then Secretary of State was that it is difficult to achieve in some areas, so rather than have exemptions we will have a general target. Of course, what we have found in practice is it could well have been tighter. There should have been, in my view, a greater level of ambition in those targets. It is a different question whether we adopt those global standards. Those global standards are going to be difficult to achieve for a number of reasons: for example, airflow across continents. That is quite a technical question. We have not put our backs entirely behind adopting the global standards, but we have asked the Government to consider it rather than a complacent view.

That is one of the things that I wanted to explore with you. My view on this is that, as you say, it is a very tall order to achieve and certainly to achieve it instantaneously. However, we have a very good example of how to approach things that are tall orders and it is called the Climate Change Committee. In the Climate Change Act, we set our long-term goal, and that could very well be the WHO guidance, which is five micrograms of PM2.5 or 10 of nitrogen dioxide. We are looking at double that and we are probably not going to achieve it by 2040. Would it not be better to actually have the WHO targets as our long-term goal and then actually work out in phases how we could go about achieving that? Is that something that you have considered or talked through with Ministers about how they might implement something like that?

I haven’t had that conversation. I am not sure that we have at working level either. We have alerted Ministers to the fact that they are not ambitious enough in relation to air quality and that they should consider those global standards. While we recognise there is a huge difficulty in achieving it, what we need now is for the Government to lift their level of ambition most certainly.

There was a slowing down last year in achieving even their own pathetic standards. Is that as a result of the loss of the air quality grant scheme? What other factors do you believe were brought to bear in that?

Natalie, would you like to have a stab at that?

Of course, we have to hold the Government to account to what they have themselves committed to, regardless of our view that it could be more ambitious. It is a core part of our job. With air quality as against the standards the Government have set, we would say that there has been a mixed picture. I can dig into that a little bit and Cathy will have more detail. We have seen actions taken that we think are impactful. The 2030 phase-out date for the sale of combustion vehicles was reinstated. That is very welcome. The levels of funding for active travel schemes are effective as well. You will know from our previous appearances that we had been concerned about revocation of the national air pollution control programme. the Government have taken some steps to fill that governance gap. It is not as robust as what was there before, but those actions have been taken.

I do not want to halt your flow, which is great, but are there specific things that this Committee could point out need addressing in what you have just said?

That was the good news story. If I turn to the areas that we think are relevant, but which have not been addressed, we have recommended that the Government conduct the audit of local authority powers and barriers to delivery, which they committed to in their air quality strategy. We think they should develop an ambitious update to the 2019 clean air strategy and to consider a review of air quality standards to bring them more in line with the international evidence that you have referenced. We have set out multiple opportunities at a sector level across our report, for example, around regulatory gaps in ammonia. One of the things that we would note in particular around the air quality issue is that the challenges with clean air do not affect our population in a way that is even. Individuals who are already vulnerable for a variety of reasons, including their socioeconomic background and it cuts across, are acutely more affected by air quality issues than the general population. Although a lot of our reporting will look at national-level statistics, that can obscure troubling hotspots where people who are already subject to deprivation and inequality are double hit. That is slightly separate to our general reporting, but it is an important and salient issue to bring out, particularly when we have a lot of narrative about nature versus development. I think this issue in particular goes beyond that into people’s wellbeing. Of course, there are broader environmental impacts to poor air quality as well.

I am so glad that you have raised that because it would suggest then that any Government action on improving air quality and tackling pollution would be very progressive and delaying it is regressive because of the double impacts that you are talking about, the way in which it does affect the poorest in our society.

Absolutely.

It does. Could I raise as well, if I may, a governance issue here that you might want to take an interest in? As I understand it, the Government are disbanding their joint air quality unit in March, but they have set up a new governance group, which is four nations, I think.

My colleague is going to come on to that.

No, it is okay, continue.

I am just interested in this group because it brings together representatives from all four nations to consider progress on reducing air pollutant emissions. That is a good forum for dealing with the differentials between one place and another and what is being done about it, but it is not a statutory group and I am not clear myself whether it is going to publish its outcomes for public scrutiny, how often it is going to meet, and how influential and powerful it is going to be. It is really something that a Committee like yours could show a keen interest in, if I may say, and actually make sure that it delivers well.

That is really helpful. Thank you very much.

Yes, I was interested in the plans to disband the joint air quality unit as well, which is why I was nodding vigorously. I am going to ad lib a bit. Thank you for the insightful answers so far, especially about the unequal impact that air quality has on the population. I am very aware that as a former local councillor in an area with poor air quality in parts of Bristol one of the problems is that the national statistics do not use some of the local air quality sensors that are set up and run by local authorities. I wondered if you wanted to comment on the harm that that does in not potentially capturing the more local variation of air pollution, which often follows the areas of deprivation in a town or city.

In any area of endeavour here exposing the relevant data helps, doesn’t it? If you are not using it, you are not necessarily coming to the right conclusions about the situation and getting the right solutions. I think there is a wider issue as well for local authorities in that it would be helpful and, indeed, we have recommended that the Government should carry out an audit now of local authority powers in relation to air quality and the barriers that they see in relation to trying to get air quality up at a localised level. I think that would be helpful just to expose—let it come up for air, so to speak—and see what it is in terms of the powers and the barriers that need to be addressed in order to give local authorities the optimum opportunity of doing the best in their area.

Next I was going to ask you if you are satisfied with the Government’s response to the recommendations you made on clean air last year and how encouraged you are by new commitments on air quality in the most recent environmental improvement plan. I feel like you have answered those questions mostly, but if there is anything extra you want to add, now is a good opportunity. Then I have one other follow-up after that.

I will turn to Natalie in a minute, but we do think the current suite of targets we have discussed could be strengthened, both for the emissions of air pollutants and their concentrations in ambient air. One clear area is just to increase the level of ambition in those targets. Natalie, there will be other things that you wanted to raise.

I think we have already covered this. We see clear opportunity to be more ambitious in this area, and we would encourage the Government to take that opportunity.

That is for the long-term targets. We have seen a change in relation to the interim, but the long-term targets obviously could be better, yes.

Finally from me, in your assessment of how the Government are doing, how do you differentiate between and how do you weigh the importance of outdoor air quality and indoor air quality?

I will turn to Cathy in a moment, but broadly speaking the EIP is not dealing with indoor air quality, and we do not deal with it unless it is embraced in some way within the EIP. I am not that sure we are in a good position to say that we are equally interested in both at the moment. We do not have that statutory remit quite in the way that you might wish us to have.

We have to assess progress with the targets and commitments the Government have set themselves. In the same way indoor air quality does not fall within the EIP, we do not then look at it in detail because the assessment we have to do is so comprehensive. We already have to cover quite a lot of breadth, so we do need to make choices about depth. It just means we do not have the capacity to bring in areas that really are not within the policy framework. Another area that is missing from both EIP23 and EIP25 is environmental noise. It is not there at all. We know it is an issue. It is an issue that affects people’s health and wellbeing, but it is not something that we can analyse or assess progress against because it is not within the EIP.

What impact does it have when Ministers present nature as a blocker to economic growth, other than encouraging constituents to email their MPs?

I understand your interest particularly. This is a Government committed to economic growth. It is the most significant drive I have seen for over a decade in relation to that and it is hard to argue with it. There is so much hanging on economic growth both here and in almost every other developed country. It is the holy grail to get that right. We do see the Government making commitments to nature, recognising the strong relationship between the prospects of sustainable economic growth, and having a good, healthy environment. We have seen that said and recorded enough times, and it is true. Unless we have a healthy natural environment, we are not going to be a prosperous nation over time. We are not going to be healthy, and we are not going to be happy. Yes, it has been a very active debate, hasn’t it? There have been what I might call noises off or the regrettable reliance on exasperation expressed around whatever it is—great crested newts or whatever. Personally, I do not find it helpful because both the public and the Government’s own service, the civil service, take steers from that language. They are looking for messages that tell them the direction of travel. I personally do not find it helpful to have these signals pointing in different directions when there is a united way of travel that we can get economic growth and a natural environment that will support it over time. That is my own personal view, I should say, rather than the OEP’s view. It is my personal view.

Does inconsistent messaging affect markets, nature markets? Does it affect your assessment of the prospects in the report?

We are told—and Cathy will come in I am sure—by those who are close to business that it does affect businesses’ willingness to make the long-term commitments we would wish them to make in relation to their own support for sustainable approaches and the environment. It makes them hesitate. That is what I understand and that is what I am told by people I respect who are connected to these industries. Cathy, do you have anything more specific?

In the work we did on nature markets, it involved engagement with stakeholders and obviously confidence in nature markets is an important thing. We have looked at elements like how to improve governance, but I also think the context in which you are and what you are hearing will affect your judgment. In terms of how we bring this into our assessments, we know that we do these assessments within a certain political and economic context and all that, but we do not actually really take much weight of that when we are thinking about progress and prospects. One way I could sum it up is from when we were down in the House of Commons shop at lunchtime: the suffragettes; deeds, not words. That is what we look at whenever we are doing the assessment.

On the last point, while not trying to defend the Prime Minister, do you also recognise that in some cases, because of regulations and the way regulations have been applied and the practical consequence of them, he does have a point? Examples can be quoted of where it would seem that regulations have been either overly applied or sometimes wrongly applied.

It is a worthwhile point that you have made. I think both Natalie and I are known to be regulation nerds. We like regulation and it makes us happy. However, when I say that, I am talking about good regulation, carefully crafted regulation that is trying to deal with the issue by really understanding it and how you then help people to get the right side of compliance. I think in environment the law is remarkably complex compared to other areas. There is a lot of it and there is a lot of lack of clarity in it, so it has to be interpreted. We know that public law is pretty difficult, but environmental law as a subset of public law is in the really, really difficult category. There is a lot of it, 30,000 instruments or something. You have a complex area, and you are trying to interpret it. A lot of this is not necessarily, though, about the law. It is about how it is being delivered. Our argument is for effective regulation, good regulation, and the whole gamut of regulation, which includes not just the hard-edge rules that you must comply but right through to incentives to comply, advice and so on. It may be that we have not got that balance right. I do think that we have been a bit on the back foot of late because, of course, we have been regulating as part of the European Community. We now have this responsibility of regulating for ourselves and it is a great opportunity, but we have to build our regulatory muscle pretty darn quick as a country in order to do that well. I find with Governments of any persuasion that rarely a Government run their term without criticising regulation, but at the same time Ministers discover that when it comes to making a difference, regulation can do it and do it quickly if it is done well. So I advocate regulation, but good effective regulation, as simple as possible and using the whole gamut, not just a set of complex rules. That is not the way to change behaviour. It is not.

I will turn to planning and infrastructure. In your report you made a number of comments. Initially, you took the approach that the strategic approach was commendable and well implemented and beneficial, though it concluded then that to practise it could reduce the level of environmental protection. Then after the amendments had been made—especially around the EDPs—you concluded that in the round it could be a win-win for nature. There has been a bit of movement there in your view on the infrastructure Bill. Now that you see the final shape of the infrastructure Bill, how does it affect the assessments you have made in your report and what is your view of it now?

As I recollect, we raised a good number of issues in relation to the early drafts of the Bill and a very active debate through Parliament, and in large part our recommendations were accepted. We had very good discussions with the relevant Department and those in large part ameliorated our concerns. We did not say that we were entirely happy, but in large part. Now that it is on the statute books, I think the risks really are around implementation. It is a classic piece of legislation where it is all in the doing, and there is a significant risk category. For example, in relation to the funding and the funding arrangements, who is going to hold that money and how is it to be distributed? Who makes those decisions on how well it is funded and how it is done? There are significant risk areas there. There is also risk in the implementation arrangements and the role of Natural England. Natural England often gets a bad press, but it does have the knowledge to be able to make this work. It needs the freedom to operate in order to be able to do it. If I were the Committee here, I would be extremely interested over time in how that works out and to be hearing from it as to whether it is able to give of its best in the implementation of it. There are a number of significant risk areas. I know that as I move on the OEP’s interest in the implementation of this legislation is not going to go away. It is so significant for the environment. I would predict that the OEP will be right on top of it. Natalie, you might want to say a bit more.

We have responded to amendments to the Bill, which did address most of the specific concerns. We also said that we identified significant risks in implementing part 3 of the Planning and Infrastructure Act, and our concern has not gone away. Our concern is of a level that we are working through programming what our activity will be to monitor the implementation of part 3. That work is in progress, but I expect that we will conclude that within the next few months as we set our next business plan. Dame Glenys has already outlined some of the material risks. This is novel legislation. Although our understanding is that the early EDPs are in areas like nutrient neutrality, where there has been reasonably good experience of strategic mitigation, the Act permits a much, much broader range of implementation. The Government have committed to make a statement to Parliament on their initial learnings from those EDPs once the first ones have been made. Once Parliament has seen that statement, further EDPs will be made. I suggest that you would want to have a significant interest in that statement. We will certainly have a significant interest in that statement. The Act, as legislation often is, is a blank sheet of paper. How it is used will matter materially. But let’s not forget that the purpose of the Planning and Infrastructure Act is to enable development. If part 3 works effectively, the impacts of that development may be offset, but so much will turn on how that is done. At OEP we have looked at the implementation over time of major pieces of environmental law. We consistently find poor implementation issues and drift over time from the original intent to practice. That can happen over 10, 15, 20 years. There is a real risk that could happen with the Planning and Infrastructure Act. Our interest will remain significant, and I am sure that this Committee will have an ongoing interest as well. Part of our interest will be, as the new system is rolled out, where we identify material risks for the implementation to not deliver the win-win for nature that the policy underpinning has committed to, that we can identify and make that plain to everyone with an interest at an early enough point of implementation to course-correct, should those risks start to manifest.

You have identified the risks of the new legislation, bank sheets, the width and so on. It is one of the themes that we have had in other presentations that we have had recently, the implementation and monitoring. There is no point in passing laws and not paying any heed to the implementation or the monitoring of them. How do you plan to monitor and report on the implementation of the Act?

This Act will be implemented, won’t it? It is not one that will sit on the statute books, because it does need to be implemented in order for the Government to meet their housing objectives. So we will see implementation in practice, which is helpful. We will be looking, for example, at the application of the significant improvement test. It is pretty clear to us that to show significant improvement, you will have to demonstrate that the impacts of development are materially outweighed by the positive effects of the remedial actions taken. There is some discretion and interpretation in there and it may well get to court. We will be targeting the application, for example, of a significant improvement test to see how it has been applied in practice. We will have to make some judgments about the quality, the comprehensiveness, and the effectiveness of those early EDPs, the first one being on nutrients. As it happens, because of other work that we have been doing, we know a fair amount about nutrients, so we will be in a good position to evaluate it. We will be looking at specific pinch points—resourcing, where the money has come and gone. We will be looking at material tests, the significant improvement test being one. We will be looking at the overall quality of those early plans so that we can report them, I would guess, although I am leaving on Saturday so I am not sure that I can dictate this, but that is what I would do if I was chairing.

The report indicates that EDPs and the nature restoration fund could support or damage environmental protection. One of the things that you pointed out was that if the nature restoration fund is not well aligned with land use priorities and so on, it could have a detrimental effect. Given what you have said about the lack of information already about land-use priorities, when do you think we will know if it is working, and what further needs to be done to make sure that the nature fund does achieve the targets and the implementation that we want?

That is another very pertinent question and we cannot be clear, but we know of the real priority here. The Government have this as a priority to get housing built, so I do not think that we will be waiting that long. It is difficult to put a timeframe on it, but we will know well within a couple of years, wouldn’t we, Cathy, if this was going off the rails?

Yes. As you said, the implementation of this will happen very quickly, and we would expect initial lessons to appear sooner rather than later. We will be keeping a strong watching brief on this area and on the areas that Dame Glenys and Natalie have indicated.

Given what you have said about aligning with the land-use priorities and the lack of development of the land-use priorities and the slowness on deciding on some of that, do you have any concerns that it might not achieve the goals set out?

At the OEP, like at all public authorities, we have scarce resources and we have to choose quite carefully. You should take as a signal from us that we think that the risks here are of a level of materiality that we are deciding now to invest in that programme of activity. We have been quite transparent about our concerns about the risks. Yes, we are concerned. The legislation as it is drafted has the potential to do some good things. The potential is there but there are many, many hurdles to clear for that system to work effectively and in an appropriate balance. For some EDPs, the assessment as to whether they have materially outweighed the damage that they are offsetting we will not know for potentially up to a decade. It would be very, very regrettable to be sitting here in 10 years’ time and looking backwards at a system that has not worked, which is why we think that our attention now will make it more likely, more likely, that it will be successful and deliver a win-win for nature and growth.

I spoke earlier about our learning as an organisation to make sure that we report in a timely way and not something years on with 200 pages, but we have missed the boat. We are getting better. This is a classic example of that, where we could do a piece of work on the significant improvement test, for example, in the early days. There are opportunities here for timely oversight by the OEP, and I am sure that you will be looking for those, rather than something three years hence that says 68 things have gone wrong. We want to get in there early on the matters of significance, and one of them is the application of the significant improvement test.

Thank you very much. We are probably about to go to vote, but we will give my colleague an opportunity to start and come back to you if we need to.

I want to draw the discussion to a couple of other areas causing concern in the environmental sector. We have the Fingleton review on nuclear regulation. As I am sure you will know, recommendation 11 calls for changes to habitat regulations, including removing the requirement for like-for-like compensation. Recommendation 12 calls for nuclear developers to be allowed to comply with the regulations simply by paying a fixed sum, which would be used by Natural England for nature somewhere else. The Prime Minister has mooted applying this proposal wider elsewhere. That is me out of time.

You started well and you have given a preview of the question that will be asked. Votes are coming, so we will now suspend this sitting and return in a few moments’ time. Sitting suspended. On resuming—

Welcome back, everybody. Chris Hinchliff was outlining his question; we will go back to that. Could you repeat the question?

Thank you, Chair. As I was saying, we have the Fingleton review on nuclear regulation with proposals in relation to the habitats regulations, which certainly seems to me to reopen some of the major debates in relation to paying to offset damage to nature that happened during the discussions around the Planning and Infrastructure Bill as was. We also now have the new draft of the national planning policy framework under consultation, which includes policies that will make it harder for local authorities to set higher biodiversity net gain targets, that will block local authorities from net zero ambitions like zero-carbon housing standards, and specifically remove surface water flooding from the sequential test designed to drive development away from the areas of high flood risk, despite surface water flood risk being a specific risk rising due to climate change. Does the OEP have an assessment of the impact of these proposals. Are you able to assess these within your remit? Have you undertaken an assessment?

We did get the gist of that before you broke to vote. I am grateful that you had the break because it gave us a chance to collect our thoughts on what are technical and complex questions. I will turn to my colleagues because they have been doing the thinking and the collecting.

First on the NPPF consultation, jumping to the end, we will respond to that consultation, so please look out for what we have to say about that. We have not conducted a comprehensive analysis of the Fingleton review, but I will make a couple of observations. First, it is still the matter of some active debate, the range of recommendations made. I will just note that. The review takes a very broadbrush approach, particularly focusing on efficacy of regulation, which we have talked about quite a lot. If we delve into the detail as far as it is salient to our work, one of our concerns is that implementation of that broad disapplication of the habitats’ regulations would inevitably create contradictions within the Government’s own environmental improvement and nature recovery strategies. There are opportunities for mapping and consideration of that, but I see them as being in tension. One of the recommendations that we have had a particular interest in is removal or constraint of the national park duty, which is in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act and only came into force in 2023. We are particularly mindful that those protected landscapes, national parks, are our own national crown jewels and very much loved by the people of this country. More specifically in looking at how that duty is coming into force, we have limited evidence that it is operating as a constraint. We have been told anecdotally, from those working in the area, that it is doing exactly what you might hope that it would do, which is to bring local groups together who have an interest in those spaces so that they can work collegiately and collaboratively to protect those areas. We have certainly not seen any evidence—some cases have already gone through the courts. We do not see that that duty is constraining development that needs to happen in any material way. It is a duty to have regard to and is facilitating good dialogue. We do not see any evidence that it is creating undue constraint. That would be something that we would have a particular interest in because those protected landscapes can play such a critical part in delivering nature’s ambitions. We have some planned work looking specifically at the role that they play. My last observation is that the habitats regulations already contain derogations for nationally significant infrastructure projects, so there is a route through the habitats regulations to allow for that to happen. I am pleased that Nesta—the body most responsible for advice on national infrastructure, as I understand it—is closely involved. I hope that those observations are useful for you on Fingleton.

To follow up on your very useful comments there, if the Government were—as has been indicated but I accept not agreed at this point—to accept all of the recommendations in the Fingleton review, apply it more widely to infrastructure rather than just nuclear, as has also been mooted, and also were to implement the NPPF as it is currently drafted and in consultation, would the OEP at this point be able to say whether you think that risks pushing the Government further off track on their environmental targets?

What we would do in relation to any such implementation is first look at whether that would result in changes in environmental law. We mentioned earlier that our interest is always engaged where we see material changes to environmental law, so we would look quite carefully at that and take a view about whether we needed to provide advice to the Government on that. In doing that, we could consider the Government’s broader commitments. That is one thing that we might do. We have an ongoing interest in planning reform, and we have talked about part 3. That is in the context of the NPPF and other areas. It is something that we have an ongoing interest in and we will continue to have an ongoing interest in. The OEP’s role is engaged in particular circumstances. In our annual progress assessment we consider all of these different policy agendas. That would be an appropriate place to price that in if we saw those changes, and in implementation of environmental law, which we are interested in, or new environmental law. That is not that the OEP will look specifically at the Fingleton implications, but there are lots of components in it that will affect a number of our programmes of work.

You have painted a worst-case scenario there, but it is always worth thinking about the worst-case scenario, isn’t it, and being on the lookout for it? I am sure the OEP will be doing just that.

Thank you very much, Chair. I have pupils from my constituency, so I will give my apologies and go and get some questions myself.

Good luck with those.

Thank you to the witnesses for your insights today. I have some questions about the environmental principles policy statements, which I understand were introduced in 2023 as a suite of principles to guide Government Departments in managing our impact on the environment. I understand that they were welcomed by your organisation, but you have expressed reservations about how well they were being implemented. Can you provide a reflection on that?

I will turn to you, Natalie, in a moment, but last year we did a report on the early implementation of EPPS. We broadly welcomed EPPS. It is a fantastic tool. If you are a sector trying to influence other Departments that are not DEFRA to do the right thing for the environment, the EPPS is such a useful tool. Obviously, there is a concern, which we are aware of and watching, that it becomes a tick-box exercise rather than something meaningful that influences policy decisions. Natalie, do you want to expand on that?

Again it is a mixed picture. We have seen a pretty effective rollout of the EPPS led by DEFRA. We have seen it reflected in some of the government infrastructure in terms of guiding policy professionals what to do, which is helpful, so that is good. What we see less of is actual impact in terms of policy making. DEFRA has reviewed that and found broadly the same finding. One of the major issues there is that—

You say you broadly were aligned to DEFRA’s findings. Is that from its November review?

Yes. However, there is a lack of transparency. Something that we have called for is more transparency about how the EPPS is being applied in practice, and we have not seen that transparency. That makes it all the more difficult for us to assess whether the EPPS is having a material impact on policy, and that is a live issue. We recognise that when making policy Ministers do need some space to do that. That is understandable, of course. However, it would be very helpful for us and for everybody that once those decisions are made, it is clear the degree to which the EPPS influence those decisions, because that would allow us to hold the Government to account, but it would also allow us to assess whether the EPPS is doing its job.

It may be the case that assessments are not frequently published by Ministers. What steps do you think could be taken to provide that clarity to the public?

We have called for transparency on a number of occasions, and we continue to call for it. It would be a joy if they were published and, as Natalie said, if we had the information available to assess the extent to which the exercise has truly influenced policy.

I read that the public have the ability to contact you if they have a concern. Do people do that frequently? Have many members of the public contacted you about the EPPS?

I am not aware that we have had anything on the EPPS specifically, no.

I hope this is not a flippant question, but do you feel the public know who you are?

That is an interesting question. Environmentalist and informed members of the public know who we are. As I recollect, Natalie, the amount of contact that we have with the public is increasing rather than decreasing. We get a lot of general inquiries about the environment, not necessarily things that are going to shape up to be complaints, and we deal with those as constructively as possible and signpost people into the right direction. As I say, we get a fair number of complaints. In terms of how much time and resource we spend on complaints and general inquiries, it looks to me, in a broadbrush view, proportionate compared to the limited amount of our total resources. We are not an ombudsman, are we?

The reality is that it is only a small proportion of complaints that come to us that our remit would allow us to take forward as investigations. That is not an accident, which is because the OEP is set up to look at strategic cost-cutting issues where non-compliance with the law results in harm. Inevitably, the concerns that members of the public have tend to be isolated or site-specific. We do a lot of work directing members of the public, where they bring these issues to us, to the correct public authority to deal with it. In reality, for most of the complaints that we do take forward we piece together the issues from various bits of information that we get from members of the public and from our other work. We did a substantial investigation in Northern Ireland that arose from nine complaints about specific decisions that had been made. We were able to see that there was a significant issue underpinning why those decisions were being made and we took action on that. The reality is that it tends to be those who are more informed about systemic-level issues who are able to bring forward those issues to us. We could encourage more members of the public to bring issues to us, but our experience would tell us that we would almost certainly not be able to address most of the issues that they have, although, as I said, we do a lot of work to signpost them to where they can go, like the ombudsmen, like the frontline regulators, who are the bodies responsible for a lot of those individual issues.

Some of the complaints that we do take forward, which are of strategic significance and represent a serious issue and a priority, are put to us by environmental bodies that represent the public and have large membership numbers. So in a way it is a filtering system where, to an extent, we are in receipt of and rely on those representative bodies to find the serious issues that we should be addressing, that and our own research and information.

They are bringing more issues to us. We have had a definite uptick in our investigatory activity, certainly in the last 12 months.

That is very helpful. Could I ask you about specific Government Departments, because obviously they all have an obligation to implement the EPPS? Are there any specific Departments about which you have concerns and is that due to a lack of awareness within the Department of the importance of this suite of principles, or is there a lack of buy-in from senior leaders or a lack of resources and support to deliver?

I am trying to go back into aeons of time and remember our EPPS report where we did commend one or two, but whether we expressed concern about one or two, I cannot recollect. Can anybody? No. So I am not able to say definitively, but there will be further work on the EPPS. It will not go away.

One more question, if I may, Chair. Those Government Departments that have a wide estate of facilities around the country or that oversee arm’s-length bodies or quangos—the NHS is a good example—are they expected to apply EPPS principles in the decisions that they make?

All Government Departments are expected to apply the EPPS but not local authorities or arm’s-length bodies. One of the things that I would like to see is for that duty to be more widely promulgated and applied so that you could hold other arm’s-length bodies to account, but at the moment it is Departments. Obviously, we want to see those Departments doing a good job of it to start with, but there is scope for that to be extended.

Can I ask some questions about your ability to access information from the Government and the Department? In your answers you mentioned about there having be cross-departmental work. In your report you note that there has been an issue getting information from the Government. Last year it sounded like these issues were improving. What happens now?

You are right that we have had difficulties, certainly in our early years. Some of that was us learning how to ask well and limit our request to what is needed. There has been a good deal of effort in the last couple of years to get those working arrangements on a regular footing, and a lot of discussion about that, particularly with DEFRA, which is the Department that gets many more requests from us than any others. One of the things that has changed has been the real effort put in on both sides to refine that process and be comfortable with it. It is easy to forget that we were a relatively new thing, and that DEFRA and others were trying to work out what we do and why, and why we are asking these questions. There is a level of sensitivity around that we could have in retrospect expected. There is no doubt that things got to a difficult state of affairs but have been improved by determined efforts on our part. Natalie, did you want to say anything else about it? You are closer to it than me.

Cathy will have some specific observations in the context of the environmental improvement monitoring report, whether there are some particular issues. As an oversight body, there is always an inherent degree of tension in the relationship. Hopefully that tension is creative and constructive, but it will inevitably always be there. It is the nature of the beast when you are holding public authorities to account. I think that that will always be a point of tension. We have come a long way. Generally speaking, there is good recognition—particularly with those public authorities that we engage with regularly—that essentially we are all on the same side and we all want the same outcomes, which is helpful. But inevitably what we are doing is seeking information to determine if the Government have complied with the law or not. That is inevitably a challenging business and often requires a lot of dialogue and a lot of back and forth. That can be frustrating for parties on all sides at times. It certainly takes up a considerable amount of time, but that is part and parcel of the nature of what we do. We have not to date been unable to see through any of our pieces of work, whether it is scrutiny, accountability, or investigation, because of not being provided with relevant information. It just sometimes takes some time.

Yes, eventually. Yes.

The only thing that I would add to that is that, as both Natalie and Dame Glenys have said, sometimes it does take time for information and sometimes the type of information that we would like to be able to take into account in our progress report, like more detailed delivery, planning and information, is not forthcoming either at the level of detail or in a timely way that allows us to take it into account in the way that we could. This often means that we cannot credit good work that we know is going on in government because it has not been provided to us in a transparent way that enables us to scrutinise it and give it the credit that we should be able to.

Sufficiency and timeliness is the issue?

Sometimes. Not in all cases, but sometimes.

You mentioned that DEFRA is the one that you request most of the time. Is there any other Department that does better to get you information that you want in a timely manner and get sufficient information?

When we are engaging with arm’s-length bodies, particularly arm’s-length bodies that are themselves regulators, they tend to be more experienced in the nature of oversight because they are oversight bodies themselves. Often when we are dealing with regulators in particular, we can move at a different pace. But that is because, as I said, they are a lot more accustomed to exercising oversight and being subject to oversight.

Finally, in your experience, how could your Department improve the relationship with DEFRA and other Government Departments?

We work exceptionally hard at those relationships. We have always recognised that constructive relationships are what we need with Departments, with Ministers, with NGOs, with Select Committees, with Parliament. We would never achieve what we have achieved without working very hard at constructive relationships. Regrettably, it is just more of the same. There is no magic bullet, it is just working hard. We do have some very able people working across those boundaries, trying to explain carefully and politely what we are asking for and why, and working with others to try to narrow down the request where we can so that it is more acceptable. We are doing all that we can.

My experience has been that DEFRA, DEFRA officials and DEFRA Ministers have been respectful of the OEP’s role. That is certainly the case now. We have the creative tension that I mentioned, but I cannot think of any occasion where our independence has not been respected, and that acknowledgement that what we are doing is part and parcel of our job means that I have not had to deal with that dynamic. I think that relationships are pretty constructive, but inevitably, when you are dealing with issues that are both legally sensitive and politically sensitive, there is always a degree of caution and we have to work very hard to continue to demonstrate that we are a trusted authority and our interest is focused on achieving better outcomes.

We have touched on my questions as we have been going through this session, so this should not take too long. Does the OEP have information needed to make reliable assessments? From my experience of asking the Government, since being elected, 1,451 questions, many of which require data for them to respond in a meaningful way, it is clear that the Government—and this is all Governments, not just this Government—struggle with data. What is your experience? Could you describe your experience of the data gaps that exist when you go to Government Departments and ask for data and what impact does that have on the work that you need to do?

I am sure that my colleagues can answer this very well, but when we first started we found that there were lots of data, but it was not the right data. It did not help the specific questions that we had. Cathy, you are closer to this than either Natalie or me, so do say.

I can talk about it in the context of what we tried to do in the progress report. Because the EIP itself is so comprehensive in scope, there are inevitably gaps in the evidence base. For monitoring purposes, there are challenges in identifying indicators and data that directly relate to specific targets and outcomes, because a lot of established indicators derive from regulations and monitoring and some of the environmental challenges and things that we need to know more information about do not have an established monitoring system or indicator set. There are some areas like soils and things in which there is extremely poor data availability, or there are other areas where data are not very up to date. That means that in our assessment we use a very wide range of evidence that uses that quantitative data. We start from the same indicator base as DEFRA, what is now the environmental indicator framework that they use, but we need to complement that. We use other indicators, but we also use a lot of qualitative research and analysis. We have to be careful in how we use research, because quite often these are more one-off studies rather than long-term data collection or monitoring systems. We cannot limit ourselves to government data. Our analysis of things like opportunities for improvement and challenges are informed by research and practice from a very wide range of sources and stakeholders, although we do make sure that the information that we use is of a very robust and high quality. We adopt the voluntary code of practice for statistics to make sure that we apply those standards. We are also as transparent we can be about the quality of the evidence base in our reports. We flag where there are data gaps, we flag where there are issues of timeliness, we flag where we do not think the evidence base is particularly robust. That is what we can do in our role, because it is not our role to fill data gaps. It is our role to highlight those and to point out what they mean for the Government and others to know whether they are on track to achieve targets and commitments or not, or whether the evidence base is not sufficient to be able to do that. That is why you will see in our report that sometimes we say that we have not been able to assess something, because we do not want to make that judgment call on the basis of what we consider, we do not consider the evidence to be robust enough to do that.

In the report there are eight out of 59 trends that could not be assessed for these reasons. When you engage with Government Departments and describe to them the impact of that and give them examples of data that would be helpful to enable you to make these assessments, do the Departments think about how they can plug those gaps so that when you come back next time they will have a good dataset for you? Do you see continuous improvement from the Departments to plug the gaps that you have identified?

We do not engage with a wide range of Departments on that, although we have been engaging with DEFRA because now under the EIP 2025, we are both looking at our reporting, because we report on a range of targets and commitments, which reflected the previous policy framework. We now need to look at how we are going to align our report. DEFRA is also doing the same for its annual progress reporting. We have agreed together to look at the quality of the evidence base and where there are gaps. It has its development plans on indicators and things. We have agreed to engage on that, and we will start that process shortly. That will help improve for both of us that evidence base that we will need to know whether progress is being met with EIP 2025 or not.

DEFRA has been mentioned quite a few times today, including that it is the “worst offender”, which does not surprise me because I also sit on the Public Accounts Committee and there was an NAO report that has just been released, which you may not be aware of, which says, “DEFRA has one of the most significant legacy IT challenges across government”. It is slow to modernise its systems and these challenges have “hampered regulatory delivery and reduced efficiencies”. There is a correlation here between what we are looking at in PAC and what we are looking at here and there is room for significant improvement within DEFRA. If you were to come up with a few examples of what DEFRA could do to make your lives easier and make the reports that you produce much more reliable because data gaps have been plugged and you can rely on the information that you are getting from them, if I can put you out on a limb, what would you recommend DEFRA needs to do to achieve a better outcome?

That is something that will be the subject of our joint reflections. If you ask that question at the next hearing, I could give you a better answer.

The Environment Act envisages that DEFRA would do a meaningful evaluation of its own progress. That is not an assessment of tasks done, that is looking at have all of these different things that we have done amounted to meaningful environmental improvement. We are quite a way away from that. If DEFRA really invested in that, which would require a degree of transparency, there would be less burden on us in evaluating that. Far more importantly, it would give DEFRA particularly good insight as to whether its policies are delivering. We are talking about very substantial sums of money in some of the investments made. Understanding well whether they are delivering would afford significant value. It would certainly make our lives at the OEP more straightforward because we would not have to fill gaps in the way that we have to now. That would be my biggest ask.

My final question is that you have been quoted as saying that resource issues are preventing you from filling your statutory role, the OEP. Could you talk us through that? What further resources do you require? If you were to have those resources, what more would you deliver, given the dependency for you to have the data and the transparency from the Government and other organisations, which is a blocker to some extent? Could you walk us through your thinking on resourcing at the OEP?

I will start and then go to our accounting officer. There were various projections when the Bill, now the Environment Act, was going through Parliament as to what size our organisation should be. Work was done and commissioned by DEFRA, Ministers made statements, and we were looking at something like 80 to 120 people in the organisation. We have never really been at the top; we have never got anywhere into three figures. We have gradually built up from the start of about 50 and I think peaked at around 85; I do not know what the numbers are now. What we could do with 20 more good people would be significant. Obviously, you have a base that you must cover in running the organisation and getting your comms out and your reports out and so on. An extra 20 to 25 people could make a very material difference so that we could cover more areas of concern. We are not doing what we would like to do on some areas—chemicals for example, soil health. There are a number of pressing issues that we simply do not have the capacity at the moment to deal with. We could certainly do more in relation to sharpening our projections and predictions about whether or not the Government will meet targets. It is the trajectory work that we can do some of, and I am proud of what we do, but we could do much more on that. Investigations do not all come in a smooth line. We have to be quite ruthless about what we take forward there and how we do it. There are a number of areas where we could deliver well for government if we had just a little bit more resource. My argument is that we are still in a way like a fledgling thing. We have not got fully-fledged before the Government are looking across all of their endeavours to try to reduce costs. There is little prospect of us being further resourced, and that means that in the years ahead we will have to make decisions, because of inflationary pressures, to reduce even more what we are able to do. I do not think that that is what Parliament intended. I would hope that you intended that we would be fully fledged before we were facing the piecemeal cuts that we and other bodies are now looking at. Natalie, you may want to say more.

OEP’s funding has been frozen for the last two financial years in England at around £8.8 million. We have had confirmation very recently that our funding will remain frozen at that level for the next three years. The reality of that is a 15% cut in our resourcing over the next three years, which means that we will need to cut our cloth appropriately to do that. So the OEP will now get smaller. We are probably as big as we are going to get for the next three years. That has implications for our programmes of activity. There are programmes that we will not be taking forward because we have to accommodate that real-term cut in our resourcing. There are things that in an ideal world I would like us to do. I would like our assessment of prospects of success to become more sophisticated, more akin to the CCC’s forward assessments. That would be more reliable in terms of accountability for achieving targets. I simply do not have the resourcing unless we cut to the absolute bone some of our other functions, and that would jeopardise our minimum statutory obligations. That is a real issue. I would like to do more work looking at waste in the circular economy. That is a really, really important area and I do not have the capacity to do it. I would also like to dial up our interest in chemicals, because we see that as an unrealised, fairly existential threat that could carry a significant cost to the nation’s purse in the future. Again, I am able to only make a very modest investment in that area. That is the reality for us. We will now have to get smaller.

I have a practical question on the data collection. Data do not come out of thin air. They require a lot of work and sometimes right down to individual levels where forms have to be filled in, information has to be given and then fed up, analysed and presented in a form that eventually is useful to you. Seeing the considerations or the debates that you have with Departments when you are talking about data, how often does the process of collecting the data and the burden that that may impose on businesses or individuals come into discussions?

It does not because that would not be the nature of the discussions, because we are a user of other people’s statistics and data, so we are not involved in that collection, processing, verification, or any of that at all.

If you are asking for new data, which is a flow of information that has to come to you eventually—I am trying to think of an example of where you may ask for new information. You mentioned soils, for example, that you want more information about soils. In the discussion with the Department, would there ever be any talk about what it means for individual farmers or whatever, in giving us the information that we want? You use it, but it is the process of getting it to you in a useful form.

We do not ask a Department more information about soils. We would say, “You have these commitments around this, and this is an important issue”, but what is missing is some of the information to tell you what the current status of play is or whether things are getting better or worse. Or maybe that information is not available at a level that will allow you to do that assessment. We say that these are the things that are needed for government to actually know whether policies are working, the environment is improving, all of these. These gaps are well known. We are not the first to say it. The Departments would recognise these things themselves, that this is information that they need to know. Then it is up to them and their own prioritisation.

We are not making unique requests here. We are looking at statutory commitments and targets made under the Environment Act and in the EIP 25 and identifying what the Government need to know to know whether or not they are on track or whether they need to change policy or approach. We are not asking for 68 things that are nice to have here. We are pointing out to the Government what they need to know in order to know whether or not they are meeting their goals and their targets and commitments. It is set out for Government in EIP25.

There are enormous amounts of data out there. The issue often is that it is not calibrated to tell you whether policies are delivering what they need to do. In some circumstances, we are investing hundreds of millions of pounds in initiatives without knowing what they are delivering, because the data collection is not calibrated towards the ambition. I fully appreciate that you should always take into account regulatory burden when you are gathering data, but you should also make sure that when you are investing significant amounts of money with a particular target in mind that you know whether you are on track to achieve it or not. It makes good financial sense to do that because good and accurate data will tell you whether you are making those investments soundly or whether you need to change direction. Often that is the issue. It is not a lack; it is just that it is not calibrated to tell us the answers to the questions that are most pertinent.

Ms Prosser and Professor Maguire, thank you very much indeed for that evidence. Dame Glenys, here we are, a final appearance in front of our Committee before you go off and take up bowls or book that cruise. As a final valedictory message from you to anyone who cares to listen to it, what would your message be to the Government and to those who look to the OEP to provide that guidance? The floor is yours.

Thank you so very much for that and thank you for being such a supportive Committee and for all the work that you as a Committee do in furthering good work on the environment. We have always regarded you as a partner in this and we have been able to develop expertise together. Thank you very much for that. My final thoughts are that you do have a partner here in the OEP. We have a wide remit and limited resource, but we have been trying and using our best endeavours to not stray beyond our remit, but to use our remit to the full for the good. I hope and I know that the organisation will continue to do that. Yes, I am leaving, but I am leaving some very, very competent people who are very committed to doing the best for the environment within the remit of the OEP. I hope that you can continue to rely on this organisation. You should, in my view, rely on its evidence base, rely on its competence, and rely on its ability to make a difference. Thank you for your support in our early years. It has been very much appreciated. Thank you.

You go with our gratitude, and we will bring this session to an end. Thank you very much.