The last week was remarkable in terms of the political dynamics, but there are practical consequences. Three emerge.

Losing Bills
The Fisheries Bill and Agriculture Bill are both likely to fall this week. In part because of the proroguing of Parliament and probably compounded by the likelihood of another election. As of Friday afternoon no ‘Carry over motion’ had been agreed. Neither Bill had made much progress recently. The Environment Bill was never introduced formally.

Laura Grant ‘Theresa Villiers has just told the EFRA Committee that the Agriculture and Fisheries Bills will fall but she will re-introduce them in the next session/parliament’ All of this is very unusual.

Luke Pollard MP: ‘Jacob Rees-Mogg confirms the Fisheries Bill will fall when Parliament is prorogued on Monday. The U.K. needs a Fisheries bill before no deal as all fisheries rules falls away on exit day. This is a gross betrayal of fishers and coastal communities.’ Richard Barnes ‘There are a couple of pieces of secondary legislation that will part fill the gap, but these are intimately connected to the “fallen” Fisheries Bill. Critically only the latter removes equal access and deals with allocation of fishing entitlements. All very messy & wasteful.’

Therese Coffey has moved to The Department of Work and Pensions since the resignation of Amber Rudd. This is a great pity because recently she has begun show both her commitment and mastery of the issues on marine. She did a remarkable speech at the Restoring Estuaries (REACH) conference where she spoke without reference to any notes, off the cuff – it was a revelation. Given that an election is just round the corner it is difficult to take any recent pronouncements on funding etc seriously.

In the spending review the Government show their lack of commitment to the Climate Change agenda. NEF Commentary: What Planet is the Chancellor Living on – Comment on the latest budget – if it can be called that.

A wide range of organisations had produced a report suggesting how Government should be spending at least 2% of GDP on climate change. The Government replied with £30m.

Clare Perry, chair of COP26 – a Tory who understands Climate change – also resigning at the next election.