It would be hard to come up with a better example of how not to govern than the fiasco of the government’s attempt to levy inheritance tax on farms. Having won a large number of rural seats for the first time, Labour announced last year a tax that would devastate many family farms and was bound to arouse intense opposition; they then spent 14 months insisting it would go ahead while anger and despair intensified; they tweaked it in last month’s budget without seriously mitigating its impact; and then — and only when faced with 44 Labour MPs refusing to vote in early December — let it be known after parliament had risen for Christmas that they were backing down.
Almost every possible element of bad politics and poor governing has been displayed in one sorry saga: the original policy was badly thought out; the opportunity to solidify rural votes was seemingly not given a thought; the plan was maintained for long enough to entrench dislike of the government; the U-turn still leaves part of the policy in place for further debate; the lesson that Downing Street caves in to pressure, already demonstrated over winter fuel payments and welfare reforms, has been confirmed for all to see. A heavy political price has been paid for negligible financial benefit to the Treasury and the closure of more than 6,000 agricultural, forestry and fishing businesses in the last year is now easily blamed on ministers for this and other mistakes.
At least, you might think, they have learnt their lesson not to mobilise the countryside against them. Not yet. In an animal welfare strategy also slipped out before Christmas, the government pledged to ban trail hunting. Once again, ministers are underestimating the intensity of the opposition that will arise, the pressure their MPs will come under and the extent to which many rural areas see their habits and way of life as under attack from a mindset rooted in Islington.
To insert such a divisive issue into these proposals is a pity because most of the other ideas are commendable. A closed season for killing hares is long overdue. Boiling lobsters alive is entirely unnecessary. Ending colony cages for laying hens and pig farrowing crates could lead to big improvements in animal welfare, provided the same rules are applied to imported food so farmers are not exposed to unfair competition.
Many of these proposals will enjoy strong support because we British are passionate about nature. A recent survey by More in Common found that a great majority cited green spaces, parks and access to nature as the most important things they liked about where they lived. Yet here again, just as on farm taxes, the government has spent the past year stirring up intense opposition for the sake of policies that will produce little benefit.
In yet another pre-Christmas decision, ministers have said they will water down the concept of biodiversity net gain — a requirement that new developments leave nature in a measurably better state. By exempting all sites under 0.2 hectares, they hope to boost the number of houses being built, having set a target of 1.5 million new homes in this parliament. But they are consequently doing great damage to an imaginative policy that had all-party support, provided income to farmers who contributed their land and created a market for supporting nature, while still having no chance of hitting their target for new houses.
Housing targets are difficult to hit for many reasons, including the serious problem that most young people cannot afford to buy their own home. While some provisions to protect nature have become too slow and bureaucratic, and others out of proportion — such as delaying the construction of nuclear power stations — there are ways of speeding up decisions and providing more flexibility without partly damaging such a good and innovative idea as biodiversity net gain.
This time it is not just farmers who are upset. Business leaders and academics, including Sir Partha Dasgupta, who produced a report for the Treasury on the economics of biodiversity, urged the government not to weaken the scheme. David Mooney, chief executive of London Wildlife Trust, put it well: “It’s a classic political dead cat strategy: blame the bats, blame the newts. ‘We’ve got a flatlining economy, I know what’s to blame: hedgehogs’. Really? This is The Thick of It stuff. It’s a farce, a disgrace. It’s desperate.”
It is indeed obvious that short-term desperation is driving many of these faulty decisions about nature and the countryside. We need more money — let’s raid the farmers! Oh no, we need to win a vote — scrub that! We’re not hitting our housing targets — it must be those bats and newts! Yet research examining more than 17,000 planning appeals made last year found bats and newts featured in 3.3 per cent. The economy will not be rescued by making nature a scapegoat.
The prevalence of immediate panic over considered thought was evident again during the passage through parliament of this year’s planning bill. Wildlife charities spent months negotiating with ministers to improve the parts of the bill that threatened nature conservation, only to find all their work disregarded when the Treasury was frantically trying to impress the OBR with apparently pro-growth measures.
The cross-party environmental audit committee found that the bill would not allow the government to meet its targets on either the environment or housing and challenged the “lazy narrative” that nature was the blockage on housebuilding. The pattern is the same across all these policies: the government pays a high political price without achieving much. Unless that changes soon it will deserve its likely fate. Yet there is a wider tragedy of more lasting importance, which is that the chance to pursue a wider vision of a prosperous countryside and pleasant towns thriving alongside nature is being needlessly abandoned. Buried beneath the rubble of these messy errors are more hopeful policies that would form part of such a vision. Funding for sustainable farming is set to rise over the next few years. The ban on destructive bottom trawling is to be extended. The first new national forest in 30 years has been announced. In a country that loves nature but is ever more depleted of it, many local groups, charities and landowners are playing their part with wilding schemes and reintroductions of species.
Britain could have a distinctive, coherent approach to enhancing nature that would leave us richer in every way. Being true to that might be a good new year’s resolution in No 10. Stop picking fights with rural areas. Stop blaming the bats. And start making decisions to support a vision, not to get through the next few weeks.