Thank you for all your recent campaign emails about nature protection and biodiversity, including the impact the Fingleton Review will have on the Habitats Regulations.
We have a duty to protect and restore nature. In December, the Government published its Environmental Improvement Plan and Ministers are committed to accelerating progress towards our targets under the Environment Act. This includes improving species abundance, reducing species extinction risk and restoring more than 500,000 hectares of wildlife-rich land. In addition, we are working to deliver the UK’s international commitment to protect 30% of the UK’s land and sea by 2030.
On the Nuclear Regulatory Review (the Fingleton Review), I recognise the concerns that organisations such as the Wildlife Trust and the RSPB have over the implications of the review for nature protection. I share the view that there is no conflict between, on the one hand, protecting our country’s unique wildlife and the landscapes that we know and love, and, on the other, delivering the infrastructure that we desperately need.
I therefore welcome the Government’s reassurance that it will not lower environmental protections. I believe the approach it sets out in its response to the Fingleton Review, published on 13 March 2026, is the right one – one that will provide better outcomes for both environmental protection and the delivery of crucial infrastructure.
As the Government states, the current system too often acts as a barrier to infrastructure projects while doing little to prevent or reverse environmental decline. There is therefore room for improvements that will make regulation more proportionate, focused on real risk, rooted in evidence and designed to effectively protect nature and biodiversity.
This includes, for example, improvements to how the 2017 Habitats Regulations are applied so that the process does not focus on hypothetical or speculative risks and does not require assessments to be duplicated where there has been no change on the ground. It also includes allowing consideration of proven mitigation measures earlier in the habitats regulation assessment process and providing alternative pathways to comply with the Habitats Regulations in a way that can deliver more strategic, larger-scale environmental improvements for protected sites and species.
I will continue to monitor this important issue and would like to assure my constituents that I am committed to backing action that works for both the environment and infrastructure.