Examination of witnesses (Questions 318
- 329)
TUESDAY 21 APRIL 1998
MR CHARLES
SECRETT and MR
DUNCAN MCLAREN
Chairman
318. We would like to welcome Mr Secrett
and Mr McLaren. We are very glad to have you with us. As you were
sitting at the back you have heard all the questions we put to
the CPRE and I hope it is not too boring or too predictable if
we put some of the same questions to you. We are very interested
to have your individual views about all this. Thank you very much
indeed for the memorandum that you have submitted to us, which
was admirably short, if I may say so. We get a lot of rather long
pieces and you have focussed on things very well. Could I just
take that up because the first point in your memorandum to us
was about the role of the Cabinet Environment Committee and the
fact that it has a wide remit. One of the points that came out
of our discussion with Ms Reynolds was that she was concerned
about the remit of the Cabinet Environment Committee: was it just
considering environmental policies per se, i.e. the business of
the DETR, or did it have an overriding role over the whole business
of greening of Government. What is your view about that? Do you
think it should have a wider remit?
(Mr Secrett) Chairman, I wonder if I could step
back a little bit before going straight into answering this specific
question, if that would be acceptable to you, because there are
one or two opening remarks that I would like to make.
319. Of course.
(Mr Secrett) Thanks very much for the opportunity
to be able to provide oral evidence to you, which we welcome a
great deal. We are pleased that you found our written evidence,
so far, brief and to the point. I would like to point out though
that this was not our whole written evidence which we were intending
to submit but came about as a note that you asked a colleague
of ours to provide some preliminary thoughts to you on the greening
of Government. The note, while we want to keep any evidence that
we give short and to the point, does not cover all the areas that
we think are absolutely crucial. I think that we have to begin
by recognising that Government is struggling to come to terms
with a sustainable development agenda. The last Government did,
this Government is; so are governments all over the world. This
is a big problem when it comes to assessing progress that is being
made because we do not think that the very welcome commitment
that was in Labour's election manifesto to put concerns for the
environment at the heart of all Government decision making is
taking place. More worryingly, we do not think that the framework
for Government is there to put it in place, and we do not think
that the political impetus is evident within Government to be
able to fulfil that commitment. We are not talking about sustainable
development as something that can be simply added on to existing
policies, or is a light green wash on the existing structure of
Government. We are looking at something that calls intellectually
for a fundamental sea change in the way political decision making
occurs, and that, therefore, it is much more a question of systematically
redesigning and rebuilding Government to be able to deal with
this challenge. We would certainly say that, on the one hand,
problems caused by the pervading environmental crisis which is
evident globally as well as nationally, and on the other hand,
the benefits in economic and social terms on delivering on effective
wildlife habit protection, resource conservation and pollution
control are so considerable that the incentives should be there
to ensure that the law, policy appraisal mechanisms in institutions
of government, public expenditure and financial matters, all have
to be systematically overhauled to ensure that those environmental
priorities are there. The rewards are well worth the effort. We
do not think that the effort is currently being made. Do we think
therefore that nothing positive has happened? No, we do not think
that either. We think that there has been incremental change for
the good. For example, we think that the efforts, if we may say
so, of the Deputy Prime Minister and of Michael Meacher have been
considerable over the past year, and echo and reflect similar
efforts that were made under the previous administration by Mr
Gummer. However, as with the previous administration, we do not
see those efforts supported or matched by Cabinet colleagues and
particularly by the role of very influential Departments—as
your Committee itself has pointed out, like the Treasury. Until
we have, in the felicitous phrase, "joined-up thinking"
and real evidence of a joined-up Government promoting this sustainability
agenda, it is always going to fall short. There is one other thing
we would like to say by way of introduction. We think that the
most tangible evidence and the best step forward that has been
taken by the Government to fulfil that promise has been the establishment
of this Committee, which we believe is a very important institutional
reform and we think that it is that sort of initiative that has
to carry forward elsewhere. But until we see the Prime Minister,
the Chancellor and the Minister responsible for integration and
coordination of Government policy taking forward sustainability
objectives, we are always going to be falling very far short of
what is necessary.
320. Thank you very much indeed. Does that
mean for example that the mechanisms which have been set up, which
Ms Reynolds was criticising for their lack of connection between
various parts of it, namely the Cabinet Sub-Committee chaired
by John Prescott, the Green Ministers' Committee chaired by Michael
Meacher, all of that simply is not good enough and that the essence
of what you are saying is that what you really need is a Cabinet
Sub-Committee chaired by the Prime Minister with an Environment
Minister on it, with the Green Ministers reporting to that Committee
chaired by the Prime Minister with Cabinet support, maybe the
Minister without Portfolio also on the Committee, and all the
rest of it, only that at the heart of Government will be good
enough?
(Mr Secrett) Yes.
321. That is your position?
(Mr Secrett) Yes, because a Sustainable Development
Strategy emphasises the integration of the three key policy goals
that any nation is concerned about, whether it is within the public
sector or the private sector, which is the environment that we
live within, the economic conditions in which we fulfil our needs,
and the social conditions where our aspirations can be realised.
Sustainable development is about integrating particular objectives
that have to be set to fulfil goals in all those areas, to minimise
problems or inadequacies on the one hand, and to realise benefits
and opportunities on the other hand. Sustainable development is
therefore about all decision making. It is about all Government.
It is about the whole of society. It is not about any particular
part of it. Therefore, we believe that the seeds for the right
institutional mechanisms are being sown. They were being sown
under the previous Government and it is being continued by this
Government. The Green Ministers have a role to play but they are
not playing the right role yet. The Cabinet Committee and No.
10 Policy Unit have roles to play. The Sustainable Development
Unit has a role to play. They have to be integrated, coordinated
and prioritised around this agenda. That is why the simple answer
to your question is yes.
Joan Walley
322. You seem to be putting all emphasis
on leadership and on environmental leadership.
(Mr Secrett) Yes.
323. I wonder if you could give the Committee
an indication of a country which has perhaps taken that whole
issue of environmental leadership to an even greater extent than
you are now recommending. To whom should we be looking for the
best practice?
(Mr Secrett) I think that there is probably no
model nation that one would turn to where our ideal is being realised.
Both in cultural and economic terms, as well as best practice,
we would point to some of the Northern European nations as being
where we could most focus: the Dutch for example. The Dutch have
been extremely systematic over the last few years in helping to
green Government at all these levels and work in a constructive
partnership between the public sector and the private sector.
I am sure that Duncan, who is our Senior Research Coordinator
at Friends of the Earth, and who has been working for four years
now on a Friends of the Earth project across Europe to help define
a sustainable Europe both as a geopolitical entity and within
each Member nation, would like to provide a bit more detail on
that answer.
(Mr McLaren) The only comment I would like to
add is that in looking at leadership, the nation which stands
out almost head and shoulders above others in Europe is Denmark,
and I particularly point to their recent initiatives in leadership
on climate change and their desire to set targets for the energy
sector that are based on what they call "ecological scope",
which is their interpretation of the concept of "Environmental
Space" which has been developed and promoted throughout Europe
by Friends of the Earth as part of this project: we will happily
submit some information to the Committee on that.
Mr Savidge
324. May I probe you a little further on
your earlier answer to the Chairman's question. Were you really
saying that the Cabinet Committee has to be chaired by the Prime
Minister? Obviously the Prime Minister cannot chair every Committee
of Cabinet. Do you really feel that Deputy Prime Minister level
is not high enough?
(Mr Secrett) I think it depends on what sort of
political message one is trying to send. We think that, in the
case of the importance of this agenda, as I mention again, both
in terms of the problems that we currently have to grapple with
as a society as a result of environmental degradation and other
problems that are looming that we are creating for future generations,
the seriousness of the adverse impacts that current social and
economic activity are having on the environment, as well as the
benefits that are available in economic and social as well as
environmental terms from really delivering on a commitment that
has concern for the environment at the heart of all policy making,
it is very hard to see, and I do not say this lightly, any other
political challenge that is more serious. Therefore we would say
that at the very least the Prime Minister should be chairing this
Committee, at least in name, with the Deputy Prime Minister there
ready to step in when other commitments that the Prime Minister
obviously has dictate that he has to be elsewhere. One of the
things that is true about environmental issues and is probably
one of the main reasons why they are not taken as seriously as
they should be is that they are often incremental in their impact
and effect, and politics, like daily life, is very much taken
up with the immediate: what do we have to decide now because of
today's problems that we can only solve today? I think this is
where we have a cultural shift that has to occur both throughout
Westminster and throughout Whitehall as we are focusing on Government,
which is best flagged up by saying that, in the same way that
Mr Blair, for example, has been taking a leadership role over
a future problem to do with millennium bugs and the computer system,
here is another opportunity where he can be taking a more systematic
role to drive forward such a crucial set of policy areas. Chairing
this Committee we would think would be a very important symbolic
as well as practical step to show that commitment and sincerity.
325. I do not disagree for a moment with
you about the importance of sustainable development and its central
and comprehensive nature. It is just that I am not totally convinced
that on an organisational basis that means automatically every
Committee has to be chaired by the Prime Minister. I think one
could end up with a situation where that could be exaggerated.
(Mr Secrett) I agree, but that is why we are focusing
particularly on this Committee and the importance of the Prime
Minister's role, and that is not—and I emphasise this—to
take away anything from the role that the Deputy Prime Minister
has played up to now or would continue to play in the future.
It is the perfect partnership role for the Prime Minister and
the Deputy Prime Minister.
Mrs Brinton
326. I think we were all encouraged by your
comments on our pre-Budget report. I was interested to hear our
previous guests today talking about the Budget themselves because
they felt it had been rather patchy. In the area of climate change,
in which this Government has made great play of cutting emissions,
do you think that the Budget that Gordon Brown introduced actually
did enough to encourage alternative and more friendly forms of
fuel and, if it did not, what more should it be doing? My second
point is a question we put to Dawn Primarolo as part of our inquiries
for the previous report. That was about having a Green Book. That
seems to have fallen out of favour. I do not personally feel that
the rather brief environmental appraisal statement tacked on to
the end of the Budget and in fact just dealing with those things
that came under the letter E, "Environment", are sufficient.
What is your view on it? Would you like to see the pressure for
a proper full green Budget book?
(Mr Secrett) In their earlier evidence CPRE focused
on the inadequacy of the Budget in being able to support moves
being made in DETR to carry forward a very important area, namely
housing and new build. Again, to be honest, we believe that that
same failing is true of the whole of the Budget and that in terms
of greening the public expenditure system and in terms of greening
the tax system, this Budget, as previous Budgets, has been a major
missed opportunity. In terms of both the relative slightness of
the environmentally positive decisions that were taken but, more
importantly, in terms of those decisions that were not taken,
the Budget in our view failed. The Treasury did not take the opportunities
available to drive forward other policy areas, of which the carbon
dioxide reduction target is a classic example. We produced a very
comprehensive Budget briefing and Budget commentary, and I would
like very briefly to highlight some examples of where we believe
that failure to act occurred. For example, in the transport area
where there was the most progress we believe that it was a very,
very cautionary and probably tokenistic step to introduce the
variable VED at the levels that were done. In Belgium, for example,
there is over £1,000 difference between road tax on the most
gas-guzzling car, which happens to be a make of Ferrari, and the
most fuel-efficient car, which happens to be a Suzuki. That is
sending out a real signal both to the industry and to individual
purchasers about what is best practice. This is a way that government
can reward virtuous environmental behaviour whether it is by industry
or by individual consumers and ensure that the polluter pays.
Certainly there was much more that could be done in our view to
increase differentials for the cleaner fuels that your question
touched on. Again, we have to say that we felt the previous Chancellor,
Mr Clarke, was more ambitious in the differentials that he introduced
and there is no reason why Mr Brown could not carry that forward.
If we move to the energy sector, for example, on the taxation
side, you asked CPRE a question about what is happening at the
moment in the North Sea in terms of North Sea oil. We have a ridiculous
situation at the moment where through Petroleum RevenueTax we
give a subsidy to the largest companies in the world of £1.3
billion per year to go and find more oil. Why are we doing this?
These are very profitable companies and we do not want to encourage
more oil if we are going to have a CO2 target so why
do we not take those subsidies away? We think it is a very small
step to be reducing VAT on energy-saving goods and equipment only
for a very small number of publicly-funded energy efficiency schemes.
We know that there is a European issue here but our legal advice
is different to the Government's and again we point to the example
of Belgium. A couple of years ago the Belgians managed to reduce
their VAT on energy-saving goods and equipment from 22 to 6 per
cent. We just do not think the defence that has been put up that
the UK will run into terrible problems with the Commission over
tax harmonisation laws stands up. We have many other examples
of where we would want to see the greening of the tax system occur
specifically, and we will send you our full Budget Briefing. I
appreciate this is a long answer but it is such an important question.
We also believe that there is huge scope in terms of public expenditure
priorities. Estimates have been made that currently in the energy,
agriculture and transport sectors Government is currently spending
something like a minimum of £7 billion a year on activities
which by the Government's own definition of what is sustainable
are unsustainable activities. We need to be not trying to change
the system over night but setting out a clear strategic approach
to introducing these reforms systematically at each Budget. There
are two areas where there is such enormous scope to realise economic
and social benefits which fit entirely with what people believe
is good and what we want to see more of and what Government itself
has said are desirable outcomes in employment or equity terms.
One is on housing. We would like to see the revenues that are
raised from taxing energy be re-spent through hypothecation—and
here is a cultural block which is preventing the country from
moving down the path of sustainable development—through
hypothecation into building up, on the one hand, a substantive
home energy conservation programme which particularly targets
the households of the fuel poor. It is a scandal in our country
that 30,000 people die every single year on average simply because
they live in homes that leak energy and waste warmth. There is
no other modern industrial state in the world that has anything
like our rates of "extra winter deaths", as they are
called. We should be, through public and private sector initiatives
(and redirecting tax revenues is one way of achieving this), eradicating
that problem. At the same time, we will be lowering greenhouse
gases and emissions of carbon dioxide. We could be creating relatively
large numbers of jobs, between 20,000 and 50,000 now depending
on which study you look at. They would be created at all levels
of skills, both for manual labour, semi-skilled and high-skilled.
They would be in retail, manufacturing and servicing and they
would be created in the areas where they are needed which is particularly
in urban areas. That is one example. Another example of redirecting
expenditure would be—again to back up what we know is coming
from the Department of Environment, Transport and the Regions—public
transport investment of a significant sort. 500 million quid over
three years does not go anywhere, particularly when most of it
is going to be taken up by London Underground, in building a modern,
efficient, reliable public transport system nationwide. Again
studies we have done, and FoE have got a lot of work on this,
not just in energy and transport but in a whole range of other
sectors, shows that investments in building up modern public transport
systems locally and nationally lead to far more jobs being created
than comparable investments in road building. The wider economic
knock-on effects in helping to regenerate local town and inner
city economies is much greater than if you go down the road-building
route. Now this is the sort of package approach—and I really
have only just touched on it despite the length that I have taken—we
would want to see coming forward from the Treasury, that would
be evidence that the Treasury and DETR and the whole of the Cabinet
speak with one voice on the sustainable development agenda, particularly
on this crucial target, welcome as it is, of a 20 per cent. reduction.
We do hope that Mr Brown's mention of an eight per cent. target
in his Budget speech was not the first signs of softening up that
we are now going to recommit to the European target and not keep
to our own.
Chairman: We have
spotted that as well. Mr Thomas?
Mr Thomas
327. I wanted to press you on your initial
comment about the need for a systematic redesigning of government.
The CPRE in their comments suggested that the structures and mechanisms
that we have got at the moment are good enough in terms of monitoring
government policy and initiating appropriate environmental improvements.
You seem to be saying almost the complete opposite. I wonder what
changes you want within the mechanisms to monitor policy across
government departments.
(Mr Secrett) I think many of the recommendations
the CPRE put forward in detail we have no problem with at all.
It is a bit like my answer to the earlier question that many of
the right mechanisms are there potentially but it is how they
are used and how they are co-ordinated, and we think the Green
Ministers is a very good idea. But in the discussions that you
were having with CPRE and with other witnesses it is quite clear
that there is near universal opinion, perhaps not from the incumbents,
that the Green Ministers system is not working. Do we think we
should do away with the Green Ministers? No, we do not. We think
they should be elevated and they themselves should take their
responsibilities more seriously than they currently do. We have
remarked on the Cabinet Committee and also on the role of the
Minister Without Portfolio. These are all opportunities to integrate
further along the lines that we think are necessary just like
CPRE did. We can talk about various agencies and indeed about
the role of the Sustainable Development Unit but I am sure that
Duncan would have other things that he would want to emphasise.
(Mr McLaren) In this respect I particularly want
to emphasise the need for the Green Ministers to act as a team
rather than purely as individuals, though, to be honest, we do
not see adequate evidence of their effectiveness as individuals
within their departments. I know that you have seen the Green
Minister from the Treasury and gave her a very hard questioning,
which I think was important. Those Ministers are not being evangelistic
within their departments. They seem to be more defensive as you
noted earlier about the Minister in the Department of Defence.
Green Ministers acting as individuals is only part of the story.
It is the need for them to act as a team to ensure that the crosscutting
questions are dealt with and then effective reports are reported
up to the Cabinet Committee. Similarly with the role of the Sustainable
Development Unit. CPRE mentioned the fact that it had perhaps
less input and effect on other departments beyond DETR at present
and I think it is essential that the Sustainable Development Unit
has a role which goes across all departments in assessing all
policy initiatives, which is why in our evidence we suggested
that it would perhaps be better located in the Cabinet Office
as indeed In Trust for Tomorrow had originally proposed.
That is perhaps because we see so little evidence of its ability
as yet to influence, for example, the Prime Minister and, for
another example, the Treasury. However, what I would say is that
we are most concerned to see outputs, ie, effective integration
of policy in the way Charles has explained, rather than structures.
328. Often the two are interlinked.
(Mr Secrett) For example, in terms of specific
ways of strengthening the structure, to add to what we have said,
we would think it would be a good thing if the Environment Minister
sat in Cabinet and not the Transport Minister. That sends a message
about the importance within Government about the whole team of
Green Ministers. We think those Green Ministers should be senior
ministers within the departments, not junior ministers. If I can
take an example here from local government, the Agenda 21 processes
are driven forward best at local government where it is the chief
executive and the head of council who are driving it forward.
You relegate it to a junior officer and it sinks without trace.
So it is that type of approach. We certainly think that reporting
to an oversight committee like your own on a regular basis against
measurable targets and timetables is also part of both improving
the transparency of the policy-making process and the role of
the Green Ministers, as well as having that essential review by
an independent cross party body that helps to keep an iterative
process of improvement going. And we think, as you were touching
upon in some of your earlier sessions, that the role of the Audit
Committee both on the legislative side and on the policy side
to be initiators of driving forward an agenda for greening government
is a crucial embryonic role that is just beginning to flower,
if I can put it like that. We would want to see the Committee
doing more of that and not just sitting in review, critical as
review is. But that is passing judgment after the fact and we
think so many problems in terms of greening of government can
be avoided if, both within the Parliamentary system and within
the Whitehall system, there is more of this proactive role through
central integrative committees like your own.
Mr Loughton
329. Your comment that the setting up of
this Committee is probably the biggest achievement so far is a
double-edged sword. Anybody can set up a committee; it is a question
of whether they are going to listen and respond to some of the
findings we come up with. I think what we have been struggling
to do on our initial remit—and I would like your comments
on the feasibility of it—is to try and institute some form
of benchmarking system so that proactively—and we have heard
further examples today of the environmental implications of legislation
which is added on as a codicil later or a memo that was forgotten
goes round, when legislation is being considered, the benchmarks
of, will this piece of legislation reduce CO2 emissions?
Will this piece of legislation use fewer resource and add to recycling?",
specific criteria like that, come in at an earlier stage. I would
be interested in your comments as to whether we can achieve such
a simplistic mechanism and how detailed that should be. Carrying
on from that, you mentioned a bit about Belgium, a bit about Denmark
and a little bit about Holland. Nowhere in your submission to
us and nowhere in your comments do you talk about the European
dimension of environmental concerns. Again, I would like you to
elaborate on whether you think we can achieve much more than the
Government is doing here, with or without the Prime Minister chairing
every environmental committee going, or whether he ought to be
pressing far more aggressively for things within in Europe which
on environmental concerns seem to be taking something of a back
seat at the moment?
(Mr Secrett) If I can give you a brief overview
answer on both, and then I think Duncan will come in with some
more detailed specifics. The question really boils down to integration.
There taking a strategic approach is crucial. Sustainable development
strategy is going to be a very important part of helping to set
targets and timetables and the right batch of indicators. We think
there is confusion in some government departments about what the
difference is between the target that drives forward policy and
what an indicator is. We need to be clear about the distinction
between the two because they are different beasts. Obviously the
sustainable development strategy is providing the right intellectual
framework where we can identify potentially difficult tradeoffs.
It is not all win win situations where you get environmental and
economic and social benefits being realised simultaneously, although
as we have indicated we think there is huge potential there. Whether
it is this Committee or other relevant committees, they need to
be able to articulate what the trade-offs are. What are the choices?
What are the choices of inaction, and what are the choices of
action and where should that action be taken? I think that that
will help us to appreciate the potential benefits far more. So
again we would see the Audit Committee as playing a very important
role in doing that. As far as Europe is concerned, in the 1980s,
of course, and perhaps the early 1990s, it was European legislative
initiatives that really were responsible for most, not all but
most, of the progress that this country made as a Member State
in conserving habitats, cutting pollution or using natural resources
sustainably. We had in the publication of the Fifth Environmental
Action Programme a really quite radical document from a government
body, if you can term the Commission that, about what sustainable
development was all about and what needed to happen on this crosscutting
approach to be able to realise those sorts of social, environmental
and economic goals. Another interesting innovation in policy analysis
terms of the Fifth Environmental Action Programme was how much
it stressed the importance of civil society and industry and the
market delivering on these objectives. It was not something you
could leave all to government. Since then very little progress
has been made. I think we would just note that the Environmental
Action Programme has rather sunk without trace. There are real
questions about whether it is going to be superseded by a Sixth
Environmental Action Programme or if that was "Five A",
whether we are going to be getting a "Five B" model
rather than an entirely new one.
(Mr McLaren) If I could comment on two or three
dimensions of the question particularly in the light of your enquiry
about benchmarking. I think it is clear that where there are adequate
policy targets it is relatively easy to take that sort of benchmarking
approach. With CO2 emissions the Government has got
a very clear target and it makes it much easier to take that approach.
At present it is unclear whether equivalent targets will be set
for the other environmental resources on which we all depend.
I return here to the Environmental Space methodology as a way
of setting those targets. I will happily provide further information
on this to the Committee, but those targets must be measurable.
It is not good enough to simply have indicators which can go up
and down but which are not related to a target. Certainly that
makes it much more difficult to do the sort of benchmarking you
are talking about. The second broad issue on indicators where
a major problem arises is essentially that of contradictory pressures.
A simple example would be the short-term spending targets that
departments are required to meet which make it very difficult—I
think we definitely concede this—for them to plan the sort
of expenditure or investment programme that the Warm Homes Programme
would imply. However, that long-term programme is clearly the
more sustainable approach. So there are contradictory pressures.
The largest and most pervasive of these is the belief, or more
than belief, the formal or informal requirement to assess the
impact of the policy or the proposal on the rate of growth of
GDP. It is widely accepted that this is misleading as an indicator
of well-being. The Labour policy document In Trust for Tomorrow
pledged to introduce a replacement or an alternative indicator
of well-being at this headline level. What is clear at the moment
is that whenever initiatives are judged against this, and they
are judged against this, indeed the Labour manifesto pledges to
increase the trend rate of growth, this is unhelpful and unconstructive
when it comes to sustainability because there is a built-in assumption
here that increasing the trend rate of growth is necessary as
the basis for providing increasing social equity and improving
the environment. I will try and encapsulate it as saying that
economic growth is not essential to those processes but consequential.
That is the evidence that is growing in international circles,
in documents from the OECD and the World Bank, about how projects
inclusive of such a process and with environmentally sensitive
development lead in fact to higher economic growth. However, the
growth is not the important fact. It is the fact you are delivering
on social and environmental needs that is important and that is
where a headline indicator which measures progress towards improving
well-being such as the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare would
be far more effective in helping departments in their policy-making
processes to assess whether those policies are going to contribute
to sustainable development.
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