THE government held an open door consultation on its 25-year strategy for the Environment during the week. 

Personally I never know what is more worrying – when a government comes to you with a blank sheet of paper – or when they have clearly made their mind up and are paying lip service to the process of developing something important.

Anyway taking Michael Gove at his word he has clearly decided that what went before was so unworthy that he has torn it up and started again. 

Now the government has been pursuing this goal of the 25-year strategy for some time. 

Given the importance of the environment post-Brexit in that much of our legislation and regulation in this field has come from the EU it behoves any administration to tread carefully.

The strategy will be accompanied by two White Papers on farming and fishing so this area of policy will be undergoing a complete makeover over the coming eighteen months.

This gives us an opportunity to enhance and improve on our environmental standards and to revisit the Climate Change Act of 2008 to monitor progress on whether or not we are achieving our targets of carbon reduction. 

However there are many more threats in this process. 

Thus the environment will take centre stage in the arguments over the Brexit Bill as has been witnessed of late. 

Clearly there are those who care as much for the environment as Trump appears to. 

They must be taken on and defeated for as the last few weeks have demonstrated we are starting to live through unprecedented climatic disturbance and those who do not see this must be marginalised.

In the UK the devil of the forthcoming strategy will be in the detail. 

There will be some early skirmishes over issues such as neonicotinoids – if we are to protect our bees we must continue with a ban – and longer term over whether we should have any truck with GMOs – a real threat if we ever signed a trade deal with the US. 

For the rest though it may not get headlines it is vital that we take soil erosion, water management and field boundary protection seriously if we are to in any way feel that we have an environmental legacy worth handing on to the next generation.

Only time will tell whether we have achieved those goals.

David Drew

MP for the Stroud constituency