The Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) responded to a call for evidence by the Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) for its inquiry into HM Treasury and the economics of climate and nature earlier this year.
The OEP welcomed the opportunity to assist the work of the committee and to provide evidence to its inquiry.
The main points of the OEP's response are as follows:
• The role of HM Treasury in government achieving its environmental ambition is vital due to its leadership, coordinating and decision-making responsibilities across government and in respect of its own policy areas.
• Directing public sector funding and mobilising private sector finance is a cross cutting theme that we have identified as being key to effective implementation of government’s Environmental Improvement Plan and legally-binding targets. Treasury plays a key role in driving and enabling this.
• Certainty around long-term funding for climate and the environment (in part because of short- term government planning and spending cycles) can be prohibitive to the ambitious action required to meet commitments. A longer term view, which shows how public and private sector finance will come together to fund action would provide greater confidence.
• There is currently no clear baseline of the investment into key areas such as nature recovery, which makes it difficult to assess whether spend is sufficient, effective or appropriately prioritised.
• HM Treasury has taken demonstrable steps to better embed the EPPS duty into the machinery of government policy-making, which we welcome, but more can and should be done.
• Consideration of the Environment Act 2021 legally-binding targets in the 2025 spending review is welcome and should be continued for future spending reviews. Transparency in relation to this and for EPPS assessments, should be improved to aid effective scrutiny and accountability.
The OEP’s full response to the Committee’s call for evidence can be downloaded by pressing the blue button on the side of this page.
