The chancellor’s Budget speech spent 41 seconds on Net Zero. And we’re not impressed.

Hi there,

A single flight from London to Glasgow costs £69. A train fare is £109.

That gap is about to get wider.

A week before hosting COP26, the UK government announced it was halving taxes on domestic flights. Rishi Sunak also followed the practice of previous Conservative chancellors by freezing fuel duty, a measure which reduces the cost of commuting by car.

In the run-up to the Glasgow climate talks, the UK set an ambitious target to reduce emissions by 68% by 2030 (from 1990 levels). Experts have been pointing to the lack of action to match those promises, and this week’s budget has only fuelled the doubts.

As the WWF tweeted, the chancellor spent more time talking about alcohol than he did about Net Zero.

Our reporting over the past year has revealed just how much everyday products sold by UK retailers depend on practices that are ravaging the environment.

This month, our latest investigation found UK farms supplying milk and dairy products for Cathedral City cheddar, Anchor butter and Cadbury chocolate are feeding their cattle soya from an agribusiness accused of contributing to widespread deforestation in Brazil.

Lucy Jordan, a journalist working for our reporting partner Greenpeace Unearthed, discovered a landscape of charred tree trunks and ash on a property whose owner works with a Brazilian business to supply soya to Cargill.

Cargill, a giant US business, is the source of some of the animal feed for farms which sell milk to Saputo, makers of Cathedral City, and Arla, which makes Anchor butter and supplies supermarket milk in the UK.

The farmer in Brazil showed Jordan deforestation licences, which made the destruction legal. Indeed, almost a third of agricultural deforestation in the tropics is legal.

Announcing its Environment Bill last year, the UK government said it would “go further than ever before to clamp down on illegal deforestation and protect rainforests.”

But without including legal deforestation, it will have a limited impact on the problem. A report by the NGO ClientEarth warns that by deliberately excluding legal deforestation from the bill, the UK is “effectively acquiescing to the end of the Amazon.”

Our environment team will be in Glasgow for COP over the next two weeks. Expect countries and companies to make plenty of promises while the world is paying attention.

The real work will be watching the gap between rhetoric and reality...

And in other news…

Earlier this week we saw a transformative win for open justice with a string of rule changes in England and Wales announced by Sir Andrew McFarlane, the head of family courts, that will finally bring transparency, scrutiny and accountability to family courts that make life-changing decisions for parents and children, and allow journalists to report on what takes place in family court hearings.

Some of the state’s most draconian powers – to remove children from their parents, to have them adopted, to deprive children of their liberty – have been exercised by judges in secret courts for more than six decades.

The media is currently banned by law from reporting any of the detail of what happens in these private hearings. Journalists can attend and watch as a case unfolds, but if we report what we see, even anonymously, we risk being found in contempt of court.

The sanction is an unlimited fine, jail, or both.

That’s now set to change.

A raft of sweeping changes include a crucial opening up to journalists, meaning reporters will now be allowed to report on proceedings subject to certain conditions. Rather than starting from a place where reporters are not allowed to report, the new default will be that reporting is permitted.

“It is for me, as president and head of family justice, to take the lead in achieving greater openness,” Sir Andrew said, acknowledging that “a genuine increase in transparency requires a major cultural shift”.

In his report, Sir Andrew said he will now give "active consideration" to a reporting pilot developed by the Bureau, designed by specialist family courts reporter Louise Tickle; its framework provides for accredited journalists to report from family courts on condition of careful anonymisation of family members, rather than having to make expensive and onerous applications to the judge.

Full details can be read in our latest blog.

Thank you for helping us to do more investigations that call out wrongdoing and hold power to account.

Thanks,
Jeevan

Jeevan Vasagar
Environment Editor

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