Office for Environmental Protection
Taking stock: protecting, restoring and improving the environment in England

Strategy and policy integration within Defra

Defra currently faces several inter-related challenges. Notable examples include the reform to payments to farmers and other land managers; improving the sustainability of the food system; contributing to the Net Zero target by reducing net emissions through changes in land use; reducing emissions from agriculture; facilitating a circular economy; addressing risks such as flooding and drought; poor water quality; tackling air pollution; improving health and wellbeing and the enjoyment of nature; protecting the marine environment; reversing biodiversity loss; and embedding environmental net gain and natural capital thinking into economic development.

The NAO, the EAC and HM Treasury have each highlighted the need for Defra to take a lead role in demonstrating the value of more integrated approaches to environmental policy making ^{67 68 69} . Developing integrated approaches can be particularly difficult, but there are immediate opportunities.

In particular, government’s response to the proposed National Food Strategy ⁷⁰ and the enabling provisions of the Agriculture Act⁷¹ provide the chance to consider food, land use, and environmental systems together, to deliver> for the environment as well as the economy and society. To take another example, better integration of policy on accounting for greenhouse gas emissions, natural flood management and enhancing recreation would lead to different policies and locations for planting new trees ⁷².

What is more, Defra has a new mechanism to integrate and brigade key strategies. Future EIPs and the OIF can together provide an overarching framework and focus for Defra and its individual teams when developing strategies and policies to deliver in accordance with the EIP. Regrettably, there is limited evidence of this working in practice at the moment. There is a reasonable expectation that individual policies will show how their delivery will contribute to the 10 goals, but that is not the same as the goals driving strategy and policy, with integration where this would deliver more coherently and more effectively.

In this chapter we focus particularly on strategy and policy, but effective delivery arrangements are also required for success. Defra sponsors 33 agencies and public bodies and works with other delivery partners as well. The 25 YEP APRs provide little analysis on how the strategies and policies designed to deliver the plan’s goals have been integrated into the delivery activities of Arm’s Length Bodies (ALBs) or how well this is working ⁷³ . This is not the subject matter of this report. We are focused on more immediate opportunities, but we recognise that little is achieved by strategy and policy alone.