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The UK parliament's Environmental Audit Committee has published the report of its inquiry on An Environmental Scorecard for the UK.  It finds that the UK government, despite policy commitments, has fallen short in a number of key respects.  In summary:

The committee recommends the government should develop an overarching Environment Strategy to:

• set out strategic principles to guide the action needed to improve the quality of protection over the next 5, 10 and 25 years;
• include the actions and good practices required in local government, as well as the actions needed in central Government to help bring those changes about;
• facilitate a more informed discussion between central and local government about environment resource funding requirements for local authorities;
• encompass a clear assessment of the state of the environment including in each of the 10 environmental areas covered in our report;
• identify the research and analysis work that needs to be done and coordinated to fill gaps in the data that that such assessment requires;
• map appropriate policy levers to each environmental area and set out a clear statement on the place of regulation, public engagement and fiscal incentives as complementary measures. Such a Strategy should involve, for example, a reconsideration of the scope for greater hypothecation of environmental taxes to support expenditure on environmental protection programmes;

It also recommends the establishment of an Office for Environmental Resposibility to:

1. review the Environment Strategy we advocate;
2. advise Government on appropriate targets;
3. advise Government on policies, both those in Government programmes and new ones that could be brought forward to support the
4. environment;
5. advise Government about the adequacy of the resources (in both central and local government) made available for delivering the Strategy; and
6. monitor and publish performance against the Strategy and its targets