Jeremy's Blog 4th November 2022: The Government has Work to Do
This article by Jeremy Moody first appeared in the CAAV e-Briefing of 3rd November 2022
We have seen that our system can remove Prime Ministers in whom it has lost confidence. Doing this twice in four months means that the Government’s in-tray is now bulging. After some years of welcome continuity, DEFRA civil servants are briefing their second Secretary of State in two months with many unmade decisions now urgent. Some departments now have their fourth team in four months. Yet, existing issues need answers, new ones keep coming and the logjam needs to be broken.
The financial situation, energy prices, Ukraine, climate change and other overarching issues all properly take attention. The November 17th
Medium Term Fiscal Plan seems to have become a Budget to answer deteriorating public finances as well as market confidence, foreseen to bring cuts in departmental spending and tax rises. Bank rate today returns to what is only the bottom end of their historic range. Markets have responded to the change of government and its new measures with rates down from their later September levels: 10 year gilts have fallen from 4.4 per cent to 3.4 per cent.
For agriculture, we think we are still due the policy statement heralded in September. With the “rapid review” of productivity and environmental stewardship seeming to be no more than “kicking the tyres”, an understandable stocktake of emerging schemes after a couple of years of development, Thérèse Coffey will be reviewing again for the two years perhaps left to this government.
DEFRA has just had to explain its failing to meet its Environment Act 2021’s statutory deadline to set long run environmental targets by the deadline of October 31st – and taken the criticism of the Office of Environmental Protection for that. The Spring consultation on this had 180,000 responses.
DEFRA has still to respond to two consultations on the practical operation of Biodiversity Net Gain, due to be fully in place within 12 months. Conservation covenants may have been available for a month but the structures to make them work are not yet in place. The Levelling Up department was to publish a revised National Planning Policy Framework for England in July. Local Nature Recovery Strategies need to be developed.
Alongside pressure on water quality issues, a report on air quality, also potentially relevant to slurry management, awaits while the first round of the Slurry Investment Scheme has yet to be launched.
With the Northern Ireland’s political situation and the Protocol unresolved, even the caretaker ministers remaining in post since May have now had to stand own with the prospect of new elections. While Scotland’s September Programme for Government repeated that half of payments would be conditional in 2025, that could now slip at least a year.
The long run direction of policy is more clear than short run decisions with climate change perhaps now more salient than when the Agricultural Transition Plan was published. One moral for farmers is to get on with reviewing their businesses now, not to wait on governments to guide them but to recognise and manage the need for change. The Government has much to catch up with and we have practical work to do.