Secretary of State Michael Gove has set out his vision on the future of our environment post Brexit. The Heritage Alliance will be meeting Mr Gove in October to discuss how we can better protect rural heritage once we have left the CAP. We also recently attended a round table organised by Historic England looking at how we can work to achieve the best possible outcome for the heritage sector.
In his speech Mr Gove said: ‘We now have an historic opportunity to review our policies on agriculture, on land use, on biodiversity, on woodlands, marine conservation, fisheries, pesticide licensing, chemical regulation, animal welfare, habitat management, waste, water purity, air quality and so much more…
I have no intention of weakening the environmental protections that we have put in place while in the European Union… But the two areas where the EU has most clearly failed to achieve its stated environmental goals are the Common Agricultural Policy and the Common Fisheries Policy…
The Common Agricultural Policy rewards size of land-holding ahead of good environmental practice, and all too often puts resources in the hands of the already wealthy rather than into the common good of our shared natural environment. It also encourages patterns of land use which are wasteful of natural resources and often intrinsically poor value rather than encouraging imaginative and environmentally enriching alternatives…
This Government has pledged that when we leave the EU we will match the £3 billion that farmers currently receive in support from the CAP until 2022. And I want to ensure that we go on generously supporting farmers for many more years to come. But that support can only be argued for against other competing public goods if the environmental benefits of that spending are clear…
70% of our land is farmed – and the beautiful landscape that we enjoy in so many cases has not happened by accident but has been actively managed. The Lake District, which recently secured World Heritage Site status from UNESCO, is both a breath-taking natural landscape but also a home to upland farmers whose work keeps those lakes and hills as Wordsworth saw them, to the delight every year of millions of visitors…
As we prepare to leave the EU we must give thought to how we can create new institutions to demonstrate environmental leadership and even greater ambition. Not least because we have to ensure that the powerful are held to account and progress towards meeting our environmental goals is fairly measured…
I hope we can say more in this area not just in the BEIS Clean Growth Plan but also in what will be its sister document – DEFRA’s 25-year Environment Plan… I have written to Professor Dieter Helm, the Chair of the Natural Capital Committee, to ask his Committee to draw up advice on what our Plan should aim to achieve and how it should seek to do so’.
Responding to the speech the National Trust [Alliance member] said: ‘Michael Gove’s speech shows there’s a strong consensus that funding for farmers and land managers should be based on public money buying clear public benefits. There’s no longer any real debate about whether change will happen – the key questions are now when and how it happens. Putting environmental benefits at the heart of the system that replaces CAP will help safeguard natural resources and ensure a long-term future for farming’.