Leading economists, ecologists, and former government advisers are urging MPs to amend a controversial section of the government’s planning and infrastructure bill, warning it effectively grants a “licence to kill nature.”

In a letter to MPs, signatories including Sir Partha Dasgupta, professor emeritus of economics at the University of Cambridge, Sir John Lawton, professor of ecology, and Dr Tom Tew, former chief scientist at Natural England, argue that part three of the bill would allow developers to bypass environmental laws by paying into a national “nature levy”—a system they describe as “cash to trash.”

The group warns the bill, which mainly affects England and Wales, undermines long-standing environmental protections and promotes the false narrative that safeguarding wildlife hinders economic growth.

“It is a blunt instrument that rewards bad planning and penalises good practice, all the while adding cost and delay to the planning and development process,” the letter said.

In the letter to MPs the signatories said: “The nature levy is not a tool for ecological recovery: it is a licence to kill nature, with no evidence to suggest this would in any way help our economy.” They want the section removed and put out to proper consultation and review.

The letter raises concerns that the bill creates a conflict of interest for Natural England, which would be responsible for designing and evaluating conservation schemes while simultaneously depending on levy funds for its operations.

It also criticises a provision giving final decision-making power to the housing secretary, Angela Rayner, rather than the environment secretary or an independent body, allowing political interests to override ecological science.

Dasgupta said that the proposal enables companies to “buy out” of their environmental responsibilities, dismantling decades of progress in nature protection.

Rather than accelerating development, he warned, the levy would harm both nature and long-term economic growth.

“Part three of the bill will cause economic harm by introducing overlapping and clashing nature laws, and slowing development with complex viability-based levy systems that critically undermine the investment case for nature in the UK,” said Dasgupta, the author of a once-in-a-generation review of economic policy commissioned by the Treasury in 2019, which said nature was a crucial asset, and its decline was undermining economies and wellbeing.

The signatories firmly reject the government’s repeated claims that nature is a barrier to development, calling such rhetoric misleading and unsupported by evidence.

“In our collective experience, delays are driven by under-resourced planning authorities, infrastructure bottlenecks, and industry-led viability constraints. Environmental licensing, when done well, is not the problem,” they said.

Another signatory to the letter, Prof David Hill, a former deputy chair of Natural England, said: “I cannot believe we have come to this position. Under the watch of previous governments, the debate had always been around how far we should progress to increase protection and funding for nature and green growth.

“Now regressive laws are being quietly accelerated through parliament with no public consultation, impact assessments or pilots. Part three of the bill harms our economy, rather than helps it, and will deliver a profoundly unacceptable blow to our natural environment, which, unlike the economy, may never recover.”

 

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