ENDS Interview

Toby Perkins
Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee
By Tess Colley • 30 January 2025

“Is it poacher turned gamekeeper, or the other way around?”, muses Toby Perkins as we sit in one of Parliament’s grander, draughtier, rooms, overlooking the Thames.

Perkins, the MP for Chesterfield and the new chair of the Environmental Audit Committee (EAC), was elected into his role late last year by fellow MPs, after many years serving as a shadow minister while the Labour Party was in opposition.

“I know what we were saying internally when we were discussing [environmental] issues in opposition,” he says, and that this gives him an “interesting” perspective now as EAC chairman when it comes scrutinising his former shadow ministerial colleagues.

“You can maybe scrutinise delivery against the things that, you know, we might have wanted to [do] in a perfect world.”

A legacy of the last time Labour was in government, the EAC’s remit differs to its sibling – the Environment, Farming, and Rural Affairs (EFRA) committee – in its cross-governmental scope, and proved itself an influential force in the last parliament on raising the profile of water pollution as a political issue.

So what’s Perkins’ plan now he holds the reins?

While he freely admits it was “a bit of a disappointment” to not be selected to serve in DEFRA as a minister, it clearly has not knocked his enthusiasm for the portfolio.

Perkins joins me for our interview following a morning of “guesting” on the EFRA committee, and in the few months that the committee has been sitting, he has launched three new inquiries – including on the environmental hot potato of the moment: how to build 1.5 million homes without destroying our natural world. Or in Parliament-speak, ‘Environmental sustainability and housing growth’.

“The question’s around if this is done badly, then it could be disastrous, and that’s why we’re doing this review,” he says, but adds that he doesn’t think the number of houses set to be built – whether 500,000 or 1.5 million – is “the big thing”.

“I think the big thing – in terms of nature – is about the safeguards that are put in place, about […] the message that’s heard in town halls across the country, the message that’s heard by developers. So I think there’s a lot at stake, but I think it’s too early in our review to come to conclusions.”

This question about the message heard by players across the country is one that Perkins is keen on.

In December, when Sir Keir Starmer appeared before the Liaison Committee, Perkins used his time to push the prime minister on it, asking what message he wanted the so-called “blockers” – local planning authorities and community groups – to hear on nature.

A careful Starmer said the message was: “It’s important but we want to build, we want to grow”. Watch the recording back, and Perkins sounds sceptical – does he buy the line?

“I think he does think it’s important, and I’m sure his colleagues do”, he says. “But you know, it’s all about what sort of teeth are given to local authorities to protect it, and what is that message that they’re supposed to hear? What’s the message that the planning inspector, in the event of appeals, is supposed to hear? These are the key things.”

Since Starmer’s appearance in December, the government has published a Nature and Development Working Paper, which proposes that developers should pay for mitigation upfront but that the burden should fall on the state’s famously under-resourced green regulators to work out exactly what needs doing, and then do it.

“I think it’s potentially a very good idea”, says Perkins but that the “proof in the pudding” will be whether those bodies are “sufficiently resourced and sufficiently expert to be able to ensure that we get really ambitious and innovative nature wins”. If they are, “then I think there’s a lot to welcome in that approach”, he says, but “legitimate questions” will arise “if the opposite exists”.

However, look around at the budget cuts looming – and already realised – for regulators such as Natural England and the Environment Agency, and it is hard to think this pudding’s fate – and that of the bats and newts in the headlines – hasn’t already been baked in by the Treasury.

And never mind the money – in the week before I meet Perkins, the chancellor Rachel Reeves was splashed across national papers stating that the chief executives of key regulators, including the Environment Agency and Natural England, must “tear down regulatory barriers” that are holding back economic growth.

If the government does believe nature is important, as Perkins says, then are we to believe that this is all just political bluff?

“I’m not sure that I can answer whether Rachel is bluffing or not,” he says. “I think that everything I’ve heard is, there is a real commitment to nature. There’s also clearly a real commitment to growth. And I think from my perspective, it’s the reason that, firstly, we set up the [inquiry], secondly, why I’d pushed the prime minister on those [points in Liaison Committee] and thirdly, why we will be pushing other ministers through the review that we’re doing.”

I wonder, as I note his smartwatch lighting up with the Labour Whips WhatsApp chat as we’re speaking, what his approach is to striking the balance between being both loyal MP – and interrogator on the EAC committee.

“Select committees only work when everyone in the room recognises we have a joint responsibility here. And you know, in select committees, the evidence is the evidence. And it’s our job as a committee to try and reveal that evidence to push if people are being obstructive.”

“Whilst these ministers are my colleagues and friends, I am here to make sure we get to the truth”, he says, adding that while “the tone will be slightly different [on occasions], I think that the way that you go about it as a good select committee chair should be pretty fearless in terms of trying to get to the bottom of this.”

“I’m certainly not in the business of taking on this chairship to prevent proper scrutiny happening. I absolutely want to do a proper job of the one I’ve got.”

Working with Steve Reed

When Perkins was asked to be a shadow minister in DEFRA, after having been in Labour’s shadow education and business teams, he arrived alongside the now environment secretary, Steve Reed.

“It was great to work with him”, says Perkins. “I think both of us arrived in the shadow DEFRA team slightly surprised to arrive there, but also, we learned together how exciting the opportunities were in that environment, and how much we could get our teeth into.”

When I ask what he thinks about how Reed has steered the department since taking the helm, Perkins hones in on water as an issue, saying that Reed has “really hit the ground running” on it.

“I think both the Water Special Measures Bill and the broader review of water regulations are tremendously welcome. I’m also broadly pleased about the price review process. I think there is going to be some real investment coming out of that.”

However, he’s not all unqualified praise. “In terms of delivery on nature, I think the jury’s still very much more out on that. And I don’t think that’s because of any lack of enthusiasm on the shadow DEFRA team”.

Perkins says that while the government has been willing “front up with money on things like energy” that is not the case on nature yet.

“I think that’s a test for [Reed] in future budget rounds, because one of the key tasks that he’s inherited has been to try and make the Environmental Land Management schemes (ELMs) work, and Daniel Zeichner [the farming minister], I know will be very conscious of that.”

Farmers, the government – and pragmatism

While ELMs and making farming more environmentally sustainable are – at least in the view of most green groups – the axis around which environmental policy must turn if the ambitions of the Environment Act are to be met, the government cannot be said to have got off to a good start with the sector.

The chancellor’s decision to hike the amount of inheritance tax farmers are liable to pay in the Autumn Budget – and from what Perkins says, it was indeed the chancellor’s rather than Reed’s – has gone down like a fox in a chicken coop. Since November, tractors have rolled into Westminster twice, with the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) saying that the policy will see family
farms going bust, while fat cat investors find loopholes around the law.

Just a matter of months into the new parliament, has Labour already blown it with farmers – and with them, any chance of seeing environmental farming reforms through?

“I think it’s certainly difficult to say the least”, says Perkins, in a bid for understatement of the month.

However, he continues, it is pragmatism that may ultimately see relations get back on track.

“The government needs farmers. Farmers, ultimately, are going to have to work with the government – they need support. And so whilst that relationship is on rocky grounds right now, […] there is mutual interest on both sides.”

ELMs, Perkins says, is “one of the last opportunities, very early into this government, to convince the farming sector that it’s got a government that really does understand some of the issues they’re facing”.

“So I think the relationship’s rocky, it will probably continue to be rocky for some time, but there will ultimately be the pragmatic need for the two sides to work together, you know, no matter how they feel really.”

ENDS has heard in recent months an anxiety fermenting in some quarters of the environment sector, from green groups to lawyers, that with relations between farmers and the government so poor, ministers will now avoid pushing forward with nature-positive agricultural policies they think may face opposition from the sector – namely from the NFU.

Licensing policy for the wild reintroduction of beavers, for example, has faced opposition from the NFU for years and has been on ice for months in government despite only requiring final sign-off, according to campaigners. The NFU has also maintained for years that the more basic level of ELMs needs more funding, rather than the levels which promote larger-scale landscape restoration. Is there a risk that the Treasury’s budget will turn the government meeker on areas such as these to appease the farming sector?

“I think it would be tremendously regrettable if things that need to happen to support farming to be sustainable in the future don’t happen as a result of tensions, and the relationship”, says Perkins.

“But I think it’s a very legitimate question to be asking ministers, when we have them in front of us,” he says, before adding that “it’s worth making the point” that while the government will say “there’s one government […] ultimately the cause of this is a Treasury policy” which as far as he is aware was not in any way “the brain child of the department for environment”.

“Now they will have to go out and defend it.”

Sympathy for the chancellor

And DEFRA could soon be put in defensive mode on even more politically difficult fronts. The day before we meet, reports emerged that the Treasury is seeking to keep money in the Water Restoration Fund levied from water company fines, rather than returning it to DEFRA and the Environment Agency. The fund, established by the Tories, was intended to see the money reinvested into local water projects.

The story was not denied by a government spokesperson.

“I think the government would be wise to think about any decisions it makes that might be seen as backing down on a full-throated commitment to improving the quality of our waterways”, says Perkins, but adds that he has “sympathy with the chancellor on what she has inherited financially”.

“What’s become clear is the previous government was making a whole raft of financial commitments that [it] had no way of paying for, and so the government can only sort of go back and re-look at any of those things. Having said that, we clearly need significant investment in water quality.”

With Reed having his work cut out for him with the Treasury, the conclusion of the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP)’s most recent report on the government’s green progress, that the government continues to be siloed on environmental policy, seems timely.

However, this is an area that Perkins is hopeful on. “I actually hear quite positive feedback in terms of the role that the new government has played in trying to make sure government is more joined up,” he says, noting that OEP report was reporting on a period that finished in March 2024, “so it was entirely based on their findings under the last government”.

The OEP’s report made for sobering reading – but, it must be said, also very similar reading to the year before. I wonder if Perkins thinks such reports make much impact on politicians, governments, and policy-makers, when the results seem to suggest that nothing changes.

But it seems he’s less cynical than this journalist – or at least, he’s thinking about how the watchdog is set to appear before the EAC in a few weeks time.

“I think it does have an impact”, Perkins says, adding that he was however “disappointed that we didn’t get a government statement” on it. “And I think, and I’ve said that to Steve [Reed], I think that [the] government could have helped show that it thought the OEP report was an important moment by making a statement to Parliament.”

He says that the OEP report itself is important as it “provides a moment in time” and various specific suggestions to governments and that “it actually strengthens Steve Reed’s hands [when he is] going into the Treasury to speak about what’s happening there.”

Where next?

While the EAC of the last Parliament dedicated significant time to scrutinising the government’s approach to tackling water pollution – and playing a key role in raising the political profile of the issue – Perkins says the new committee will likely place its eggs in different baskets, with the sewage scandal sufficiently accepted as an issue.

“That doesn’t mean that we won’t go back and look at progress later into the parliament”, he says, but for now his attention is elsewhere.

The committee has revived a previous inquiry into natural capital and the Antarctic environment, as well as opening new ones – other than that on sustainable housing -into governing the marine environment, and flooding.

But Perkins is keen to say that the committee will be looking for more issues in the near future – and along with lead pollution and soil health, forever chemicals are on his radar.

The substances, used in various manufacturing processes for their useful fire-resistant and grease-proof qualities, have been building up in the natural environment – and in our own bodies – for decades. They are linked to cancers, hormone-related diseases, obesity and fertility issues in humans, and similar health issues in wildlife.

Nonetheless, most people have never heard of them. But that is changing, with ENDS’ reporting and investigations into the impact of PFAS pollution on public health and the environment prompting national attention, and two law firms to battle it out to bring the UK’s first forever chemical pollution lawsuit.

“I think that’s really important. So we encourage you to keep going”, says Perkins. “I do think the amount of focus that PFAS has had in this country, in comparison to others, has been below the radar. And I think it is an issue that is growing in salience.

“We’re learning more about what those who produced them knew at the time, and so it feeds into that whole kind of issue around wilful, if you like, profiteering at the expense of the environment. So I think it is tremendously important. It might well be an issue that the committee will want to look at in the near future.”

It’s time to wrap up. Perkins, who has maintained a seriousness throughout our interview, is amused as he is directed by ENDS’ photographer to pose for photos for this piece, not used, it would seem, to the photoshoot treatment.

He’s got a busy afternoon ahead, he says, and with his new position of influence over the environmental issues of the day, that’s unlikely to change. “Life in the EAC fast lane?”, I ask, and he laughs.

Perkins’ quiet seriousness may well stand him in good stead in his new role, but with the government having doubled down on rhetoric about growth-hindering bats and newts, airport expansions on the horizon, and Trump in the White House, I can’t help but think – he might be needing his sense of humour.