‘Even bankers need clean air’: Natural England chief warns Truss over threat to green rules

Liz Truss has been issued a veiled warning over new government policies by the head of Natural England, who says “even bankers need to eat, drink and inhale clean air”.

Tony Juniper, chair of the nature watchdog, has outlined the vital relationship between the economy and nature in Wednesday’s Guardian, as charities across the country revolt over government plans to slash nature protections and potentially remove environmental requirements from farming subsidies.

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From the National Trust to the RSPB, the Church of England to the Campaign to Protect Rural England, groups have vowed to mobilise their members “to fight the biggest attack on nature in a generation”.

Now Juniper has written that plans for growth that are at odds with nature will only lead to peril.

He warned: “Growth that results in the destruction of nature will, in the end, cease. Economic development that by contrast drives toward net zero greenhouse gas emissions and the recovery of nature is a very different prospect.”

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Nature organisations have raised a number of concerns with the government’s new policies, including:

• The removal from the statute books of 570 laws derived from EU directives that make up the bedrock of environmental regulations in the UK, covering sewage pollution, water quality and clean air. These include the habitat regulations, which have protected areas for wildlife for more than 30 years.

• The ending of the moratorium on fracking.

• The creation of low-tax investment zones from Cornwall to Cumbria where environmental protections would be relaxed to encourage development.

• The feared scrapping of the post-Brexit environmental land management scheme (Elms), which pays farmers to enhance nature.

Juniper highlights a few of these in his opinion piece, writing: “The UK has been on a path that could deliver the joined-up economic recovery that is necessary in the face of the climate and nature emergencies, one which generates jobs and wealth at the same time as net zero carbon emissions and recovery of the natural world.”

He picked out two which are at risk, writing: “The post-EU farming policy and the tool kit in the 2021 Environment Act are among the powerful new levers we have to drive forward on targets for environmental recovery, in the process stimulating innovation, resilience and food and water security.

“The opportunity to use these and other policies and targets to foster both economic and environmental growth for the long term is an historic opportunity, and one that government and its partners have invested a great deal of effort into during recent years.”