The UK Government has been given a ‘red card’ from the Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) for its efforts to reduce health-damaging air pollution, protect biodiversity and prevent flooding, and has been charged with ‘unsatisfactory progress’ in all of the ten environmental areas examined, including ‘resource efficiency and waste’.

The environmental scorecard was produced by the EAC, a group of 16 MPs including Dan Rogerson, Caroline Lucas and Zac Goldsmith, appointed by the House of Commons to review government policies and programmes’ contribution to environmental protection and sustainable development.

Setting out the report, the EAC commented: ‘The Prime Minister stated in May 2010 “I want us to be the greenest government ever”. The government has made some progress in some areas, including publishing a Natural Environment White Paper in 2011 and establishing the natural Capital Committee. The White Paper set out an ambition for this to be “the first generation to leave the natural environment of England in a better state than it inherited”. It is not possible to measure precisely whether overall such ambitions have been achieved, but it is possible to identify the state of progress in particular areas of the environment.’

The ten environmental areas considered are: emissions and climate change; air pollution; biodiversity; forests; soils; flooding and coastal protection; resource efficiency and waste; freshwater environment; water availability; and marine environment.

Seven of them received an amber card, meaning ‘unsatisfactory progress’, and three received a red card, which equates to ‘deterioration since 2010, or progress at a pace unlikely to put improvement on a satisfactory trajectory by the end of the 2015-2020 Parliament’. It found failings in several policies, such as the number of airborne pollutants increasing in 2013 and 2.4 million properties still being at risk of flooding.

Resource efficiency and waste

According to the report, ‘the current way our economy consumes resources is not sustainable’. It found that household recycling rates have ‘plateaued’ at 43 per cent in England, ‘jeopardising the prospect of meeting a 50 per cent target for 2020’.

The committee recommended ‘supporting a circular economy, including embedding the circular economy in industrial strategy, differential VAT rates linked to the environmental impact of products and the introduction of Government advice on a standard approach to recycling for local authorities’.

It’s believed that a circular economy would ‘reduce arising waste, through design, reuse and remanufacture’. But the economy would be dependant on private sector innovation, as well as government playing a facilitating role.

Other recommendations

The committee has called for the creation of new legal commitments to protect the environment, to be overseen by a new ‘Office for Environmental Responsibility’ in order to ensure all government policies are compatible with those commitments.

The report also recommends:

• Government should put the Natural Capital Committee on a ‘permanent footing to allow it to coordinate a programme to improve environmental monitoring data’;
• Government should use the development of the UN Sustainable Development Goals as an opportunity to identify any data gaps between databases, to produce a single dataset on the state of the environment;
• Systems currently focussed on embedding sustainable development should be strengthened and extended to explicitly address environmental and natural capital risks; and
• Government should establish an overarching Environmental Strategy to: set out strategic principles to guide action; include the actions and good practices required in local government, as well as the actions needed in central government; facilitate a more informed discussion between central and local government about environmental resource funding requirements for local authorities; encompass a clear assessment of the state of the environment; map appropriate policy levers to each environmental area.

Urgent action required

In support of the report, Committee Chair, Joan Walley MP, said: "A whole generation of young people in our cities will potentially have their health impaired by pollution before the Government meets air quality safety standards. That is not acceptable. We need to see much more urgent action in this area and we will be looking at this area in more detail when we publish the results of our inquiry later this year."

She added: "Effective action on environmental protection is essential, both during the current parliament and beyond. Parties should therefore be considering credible environmental protection in their manifestos. I want them to use our report as both a wake-up call and a template for the measured that need to be put forward. Consistent action by successive Governments will help ensure that the benefits of nature are available to future generations as much as they are to ours."

In a statement, the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) disagreed with the report’s findings, saying: ‘We are deeply committed to improving our natural environment. That is why we will be spending more than £3.2 billion - compared to £2.7 billion in the last parliament - on protecting the country from floods. We are also working to improve air and water quality; and to protect wildlife habitats both on land and at sea.’

Read the full report.