2. RESPONSIBILITIES
OF GREEN
MINISTERS AND
THE ROLE
OF THE
SDU
Again it is early days for this initiative which
has many encouraging aspects to it including the sharing of best
practice. Our major concern is with the ability of the initiative
to deliver the Government's sustainable development aims.
The original plan for the SDU, described in
"In Trust for Tomorrow", was for it to be placed in
the Cabinet Office where it would have a centralised position
and be within a powerful Department. This was crucial if sustainable
development was to be considered as more than wider interpretation
of environmental policy and if it was to be the overarching strategy
of Government. Instead it has been placed in the DETR which although
it is considerably more powerful than the Department of the Environment
it still represents a positioning of the SDU away from the centre.
In the same way the remit of the SDU and in
many ways that of the Green Ministers appears to be functional
rather than strategic. The SDU, in particular, other than its
responsibility to progress the sustainable development strategy,
appears to play the role of service function to the Green Ministers.
We would like to know what efforts have been
made to ensure that the SDU and the Green Ministers are playing
an active role in strategic thinking about achieving sustainable
development. Our comments concerning the Pre Budget Report contain
two areas where they should have a role. First, in developing
the environmental analysis of the Budget. For example, continuing
the line that the Budget should be analysed against the Government's
CO2 reduction target, the SDU and the Green Ministers
as a team are able to bring a collective overview which will not
only help Treasury to develop a rigorous environmental analysis
but also help the Green Ministers place the policies and activities
of their own Departments in the context of the wider policy aim.
Second, the issue of replacing GDP as a measure of welfare and
correcting it as a measure of economic growth to indicate quality
as well as quantity is one that will require the overview provided
by the SDU and the Green Ministers.
There are also other Government initiatives
that aim to achieve a policy objective across Government which
relate to sustainability but it is unclear what role the SDU and
the Green Ministers have in these. For example, the Minister for
Health announced on 15 January a programme to tackle health inequalities
across Government. Yet in his address he noted the reduction in
VAT on domestic fuel without mentioning the need for other policies
to eradicate fuel poverty such as VAT relief on energy saving
materials and a substantial programme of public investment as
described in the Warm Homes Bill. Friends of the Earth has conducted
research into the related issues of environmental protection,
health and inequalities as a key element of our sustainability
work and we are concerned that initiatives such as the greening
of government and the health inequalities programme are not integrated
in the manner that would achieve the best result for both.
3. GOVERNMENT
ASSESSMENT OF
POLICIES
Our major concern with the policy assessment
at present is that it fails to cover key programmes such as the
Roads Programme and the Non-Fossil Fuel Obligation scheme as a
whole rather than individually. With the Roads Programme in particular
an assessment of the overall policy rather than each scheme within
the programme would allow more fundamental arguments to be raised
and dealt with.
January 1998
