Recommendation 12

HM Government Accepted

The Government accepts that monitoring costs and spend is important and have agreed, as part of the Spending Review 2020 settlement, a set of priority outcomes against which Defra group will report progress. This includes a cross-cutting environment goal. The governance of the 25 Year Environment Plan within Defra will track the effectiveness of spend as part of our performance reporting. The government does, however, already publish data on biodiversity expenditure in the UK and England as part of its annual biodiversity indicator publications, which were last published in October 2020. In England, public sector funding for biodiversity shows a fall between 2013/14 and 2017/18 but rose to an estimated £335m in 2018/19. We have introduced or announced significant new funding for nature in England which is not yet included in the biodiversity indicators, for example our £640m Nature for Climate and £80m Green Recovery Challenge funds. The indicators will next be updated in the autumn and Defra is currently supporting new research to review and update our assessments. The government also knows that while public expenditure has a significant role to play, it alone will not be enough to tackle biodiversity loss. Defra has therefore been working on a range of measures to leverage in greater levels of private finance, for example through the upcoming biodiversity net gain measure and through schemes such as the Natural Environment Investment Readiness Fund.