Spending Round: Defra wins funding boost but BEIS nets just £30m for Net Zero

Sajid Javid made delivered his first major speech as Chancellor today

Spending Round was slim pickings for green economy, but did include more cash for greener buses, £30m for Net Zero projects, and more money for air quality and biodiversity

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs emerged as a winner of extra green funds from this afternoon's Spending Round, with new Chancellor Sajid Javid announcing a 3.3 per cent rise (£100m) in the Department's budget for next year.

Declaring that "a healthy environment is a pre-condition for a healthy population", Javid said an extra £432m would also be allocated to Defra to ensure that Britain has "world leading environmental standards" post Brexit.

Some £30m of Defra's budget increase is earmarked for action to improve UK air quality, with another £30m for biodiversity - including cash to expand the UK's 'Blue Belt' marine protection scheme which was trailed by the Prime Minister at last month's G7 summit.

It was not clear whether that money would feed through into a funding increase for the Environment Agency, which has suffered heavy budget cuts in recent years leading environmental campaigners to warn of a huge "enforcement gap" for green rules.

Meanwhile the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) was awarded a 2.2 per cent increase in its resource budget for 2020-2021, with an extra £30m going towards new projects to accelerate the UK's progress to net zero emissions.

Ahead of today's speech a coalition of climate, environment and health NGOs wrote to the Chancellor calling for a doubling of green investment to at least £42bn to combat climate breakdown and deliver net zero by 2050.

As such, campaigners and politicians were quick to criticise the amount of cash earmarked for the net zero, with Greenpeace's head of politics Rebecca Newsom describing the Spending Round as falling "woefully short" on addressing climate change.

"What Boris Johnson touted as the 'the most ambitious spending round for more than a decade' has fallen woefully short of addressing the single biggest issue of our time - the climate emergency," said Newsom. "Today's statement missed the opportunity and simply kicked the can down the road. We cannot allow the net zero target to become just another empty politician's promise. All other long-term investments become worthless if we don't protect the life-support systems our survival depends on."

She called on the Chancellor to ensure his upcoming Budget devotes at least five per cent of government spending to "preserving the climate and nature".

Responding to the Spending Round announcements, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell said Javid "has given no sign that he understands the scale of climate emergency facing us and the urgency with which a significant government response is needed. He mentions the issue but allocates miniscule amounts of funding incapable of addressing this existential threat."

Meanwhile Labour MP Matthew Pennycook said the Spending Round represented a "staggering failure to act" on the climate crisis. "Eighteen weeks ago Parliament declared a climate emergency," he wrote on Twitter. "The Committee on Climate Change has made clear that two per cent of GDP needs to be directed toward decarbonisation if we are to meet our 2050 net zero target. Yet the Chancellor today only allocated £30m toward it. A staggering failure to act."

And Richard Howard of Aurora Research pointed out that the £30m allocated for net zero spending at BEIS was just 0.1 per cent of the £20bn-£40bn the Committee on Climate Change said was needed to reach the net zero target.

Elsewhere in the Spending Round, the Department for Transport got an 11.4 per cent funding increase in its budget, with £200m earmarked to improve bus services including rolling out a greener fleet, and £275m for maintaining rail infrastructure.

The Department for International Development won a 1.5 per cent budget increase, with at least £250m going to the international climate and environment funds, including the Green Climate Fund. An additional £30m was also announced to support developing nations improve their biodiversity. In addition, £87m of Official Development Assistance funding from BEIS is earmarked to help developing countries reduce their carbon emissions and adapt to the effects of climate change.

Javid said further detail on the government's domestic decarbonisation agenda would be included in the Infrastructure Strategy, due to be released later this year.

But there is little certainty that even the announcements of extra funding made today will hold fast, given the political turbulence in Westminster. A no-deal Brexit could hit the UK economy, forcing the government to rapidly rethink its spending plans. Perhaps even more pressingly, a General Election could usher in an entirely new government and spending agenda. Perhaps that was why, in an event that usually packs out the Commons, the green benches were only half full.