The UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has become increasingly dysfunctional because of its heavier post-Brexit workload and the rapid turnover of ministers, according to Whitehall officials and lobby groups.
Civil servants and lobbyists told the Financial Times that they believed Defra was struggling to handle its large workload, which includes implementing strict new environmental targets and developing a post-Brexit subsidy regime for farmers.
Defra is also grappling with the requirements of Rishi Sunak’s retained EU law bill, which requires government departments to review nearly 4,000 laws and regulations inherited from the EU before the end of 2023. Defra has by far the largest review exercise of any Whitehall department.
Whitehall officials said the process was putting serious pressure on the department’s administrative capacity just as it was struggling to roll out other major policies, including new pollution targets and farm reforms.
A senior Whitehall insider said Defra’s problems stemmed from a lack of political consistency since the Brexit referendum, with the department having seven different secretaries of state since 2016.
“The retained EU law bill is part of the problem but they have flip-flopped from the pro-environment Michael Gove era through to the very anti ‘green tape’ position of [Liz] Truss,” added the insider. “Under Sunak, it’s just unclear. Basically, their agenda has been all over the shop.”
One adviser to a UK trade body said that its dealings with Defra had become “increasingly dysfunctional”, with ministers and officials divided on key areas of policy, including air and water pollution targets issued under the 2021 Environment Act.
“There appears to be a total lack of co-ordination within the department,” added the adviser. “On the targets from the Environment Act, you get one story from officials and another from ministers, right up to the secretary of state.”
A report published on Friday by the National Audit Office, parliament’s spending watchdog, found “serious weaknesses” in Defra’s administration, particularly because of a backlog of 63 reviews of existing environmental regulations.
“Defra hasn’t received the additional staffing or resources to cope with everything that came with Brexit — whether finalising green farming reforms or fulfilling promises to implement world leading nature laws,” said Ruth Chambers of Greener UK, a coalition of environmental groups.
“Now it is being lumbered with the massive and ultimately unnecessary job that is [the retained EU law bill].”
Defra has identified 1,781 pieces of EU legislation to review by the end of the year, roughly 40 per cent of the total across Whitehall, according to the Cabinet Office.
While Defra staffing levels have increased sharply since 2016, critics said that was not sufficient to meet the department’s post-Brexit workload.
Nick Mole of the Pesticide Action Network UK, a charity, highlighted Defra’s delay with the implementation of post-Brexit rules on pesticides.
“We’re replacing a well-functioning pesticide regulatory system in the EU with our own, as yet to be defined, pesticide standards, which is a massive bureaucratic undertaking,” he said.
Other areas of concern for environmental groups include Defra’s handling of the latest bird flu outbreak.
“It’s a massive crisis,” said Jeff Knott, director of policy and advocacy at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. “Defra’s response hasn’t matched the scale of the challenge we face.”
Defra said that it was “patently untrue” that the department was unable to handle its workload, and that its plans to improve water quality and the environment would leave nature in a better state.
“The new legally binding targets in our Environment Act will further drive our efforts to restore our natural environment and protect our much-loved landscapes, green spaces and marine environment — as well as help tackle climate change,” Defra added.
