Examination of witnesses (Questions 560
- 579)
WEDNESDAY 6 MAY 1998
MR MARK
BARTHEL and MR
BRIAN BANNISTER
Chairman
560. Hello, Mr Barthel. It is very nice
of you to come along, and I am sure you found the previous session
quite useful too, I think you see we are quite kind really. We
are very glad to have your assistance in this investigation into
how effective the Government is being in putting forward its environmental
policies and its attitude towards sustainable development, and
I think you understand the drift of our approach. Is there anything
you would particularly like to say, before we ask you some questions
about your procedures?
(Mr Barthel) Perhaps if I could explain a little
what BSI is, we are actually quite a strange beast really. BSI
stands for the British Standards Institution, we are the national
standards body, so we are responsible for standardisation in the
UK, input into the European arena and into the international standards-making
arena as well; that is a part of our business, we call it standards
development, or standards facilitation. The way it works is that
we facilitate standards writing by industry and consumer groups
and other interested parties in order to make UK plc more competitive,
both within the UK and internationally. We also have a range of
commercial activities, but I have to add a rider to that, we are
a not-for-profit organisation so any profit we make from the commercial
activity is ploughed back into the business, and we hope that
that helps us to actually service our commercial clients more
effectively and our standards writing audience more effectively.
It is an unusual organisation, we are a Royal Charter organisation
as well.
(Mr Bannister) I think it is worth adding that
we have 25,000 members in the UK, predominantly industry but also
local authorities.
561. Public sector as well as private sector?
(Mr Barthel) Absolutely, yes.
(Mr Bannister) Yes; and around 32,000, 33,000
clients around the world.
(Mr Barthel) And some 28,000 technical committee
members, people that come to BSI to write standards, so we have
quite a wide audience.
562. Thank you very much. Obviously, environmental
audit and management systems are a growing area, I imagine, for
this?
(Mr Barthel) Yes.
563. Could I just ask one question, before
I bring in Mr Robertson, that is just the use of two words, namely,
appraisal, on the one hand, and environmental management, on the
other. As far as I can see, if I understand it correctly, appraisal
may be when you look at, say, how do we tackle the problem of
reducing CO2 emissions and what targets we should set
for that, i.e. what sort of policy we should have, we are appraising
different alternative policies; whereas an EMS system, the environmental
management system, is saying we have got a policy, we have got
it so how does it impact on people, how do we measure that, how
do we monitor it, how do we review it, from time to time. Would
that be a fair description of the difference between appraisal,
on the one hand, and audit and management, on the other?
(Mr Barthel) Yes. The appraisal is, if you like,
I would say, the more high-level approach, whereas the audit is
more an operational, tactical response, or approach.
Mr Robertson
564. I wonder if I can ask you just one
or two questions about the environmental management system, perhaps
you could tell us what one is and how accreditation fits in with
that, please?
(Mr Barthel) An environmental management system
is a broad management framework, it is a tool that people can
use to understand the environmental impacts of their business
activities, the products they produce, the services they provide.
It is a very simple model, it is not rocket science, you start
off, you assess where your environmental impacts lie within a
business; that, potentially, may be a very long list, so you need
to develop some form of significance criteria to understand which
are the key impacts within the business, because most businesses
could not address a long list of 200 impacts at the same time.
The idea is that the management system is used to provide a holistic
approach of the environmental impacts within a business but then
you actually hone down to those impacts that are the most significant
at that time. That would involve actually consulting with interested
parties, it is not just the inward view of the business on what
is significant to them, so part of the management system would
indicate, certainly with the 14001 model and EMAS, that you actually
should go out and you should consult your local community, the
broadest range of stakeholders. It is probably where it is most
different in its approach to the old ISO 9000 quality management
systems approach, where there were really two people that were
talking about the customer under contract; here we are talking
about a much broader stakeholder consensus that we are looking
for. Anyway, having identified which impacts are the most significant,
you then need to frame some form of environmental policy within
a business; that policy, under both EMAS and 14000, must include
a commitment to regulatory compliance, a commitment to continual
improvement in overall environmental performance, and that must
be able to be demonstrated, and that is where the certification,
accreditation element comes in. Having structured the policy,
it should also set a framework for the setting of targets and
objectives; you then need to be able to track your performance
against those targets and objectives you have set, so let me give
you an example. If you have done your preliminary review of your
business activities and you discover that you are using 50 litres
of water to produce one unit of product, the key impact is obviously
the water consumption, and it may be something that the business
considers to be very important that it needs to reduce that water
usage per unit of product, so it sets itself a target and it says
that, "in six or 12 months' time, our aim should be to reduce
our water consumption per unit of product by half, by 50 per cent,"
and you then build in a timetable, almost like a project plan,
to actually work out how you can improve your manufacturing processes,
your water consumption, whether you can recycle water within a
process, and move towards that target. In order to track that
performance, you need to audit the system, you need to look at
what you are doing on the shop floor, you need to meter the water,
and so on, and you then use that audit framework, the internal
audit programme, to see whether you have achieved those targets,
and, if necessary, you conduct a review of the system to see if
it is effective, suitable or adequate. There are a number of more,
I guess, less mainstream issues within the management system,
but ones that are equally important; you need to look at the operational
control of the business, so you need to understand your management
control of your processes on a site in order to check that you
are legally compliant, for example. There is a requirement in
ISO 14001, that is not an EMAS, which strays into the health and
safety field, it is a requirement for emergency preparedness and
response, so each site should have an emergency plan, so that
should an incident occur on the site, an industrial accident or
an incident of spill, of chemicals, or something like that, the
site is fully prepared for that spill and has a response plan
to deal with it, and that is all part of the management system.
So we are starting to see, I guess, the coming together of different
management systems, and that, I have to say, does seem to be a
trend in industry, that most companies can only afford one management
system, they do not want a separate system for quality with ISO
9000, or a separate system for environment with 14001, or a separate
health and safety system, which they are required to have by the
Health and Safety at Work Act and the underlying legislation to
that. What they want is an integrated management system that does
all of those jobs whilst addressing the requirements of the standards
legislation and workplace health and safety; so that is a trend
in industry. They believe it will save them money and they believe
it actually reduces the costs of implementing a system and of
certifying it.
565. But, if I am understanding it correctly
though, to get the accreditation means that you have got a system
of checks and balances but against your own standards, not against
any nationally or internationally accepted standards. Now is there
not a weakness there, because you could set your standards very
low and get this accreditation; and have you actually done anything,
have you actually achieved anything, if you do that?
(Mr Barthel) There are a number of issues there;
this is a question that is frequently asked, because in 14001
and in EMAS there is no performance requirement, there is no benchmark
within the standard that says, "Thou shalt meet this level
of performance." Both standards actually do mention best
available technology, and that is something that most companies
feel they have to be working towards, if they do not have it already.
The problem we had when we framed the standard was that we had
a conflict between wanting to ensure improved environmental performance
and not creating a technical barrier to trade, because if we laid
down, certainly in an international standard, like ISO 14001,
a performance requirement it may well be that third world countries
could not achieve that performance benchmark, and that would then
be subject to WTO rules. We have a slight complication of that,
in as far that the WTO Environment and Trade Committee actually
have a remit that international standards are exempt from their
rules, so we have had to play this one very, very carefully and
we have had to make sure that no performance requirements are
in the standard that may actually have an adverse benefit to trade
from third world countries. I recognise what you are saying, that
there does need to be a balance between achieving and demonstrating
improvements in environmental performance and this trade issue.
In terms of certification, I guess the key thing for us is that
we have to see that the improvements in environmental performance
are meaningful and that they can be demonstrated by the site,
or by the organisation, they must be meaningful targets, and that
is the guidance that we work to from the UK Accreditation Service,
our, if you like, the certification's policing body.
Mr Savidge
566. Very quickly, you just said that, basically,
an EMS should be cost-effective and should actually benefit the
company financially, in the end. Can I contrast that with the
MAFF consultants' report, that said it would cost half a million
pounds to set up, then another half a million pounds in the first
year. Given that efficient companies should find that an EMS works
well, either do we assume that MAFF at present is very inefficient,
do we assume the consultants were wrong, do we assume that possibly
the benefits would be seen in the longer term, or what would be
your comments on that MAFF consultants' report?
(Mr Barthel) I think my initial comment would
be, I would like to see how the costs were broken down. Without
meaning to alienate the entire consultancy profession, I wonder
how much of that cost is actually consultancy costing for the
actual implementation of the management system.
Dr Iddon
567. Chairman, does not this depend upon
them producing something, selling something, and therefore capable
of making vast savings by operating proper EMS procedures, or,
like a Government department, not; are there different accreditation
methods applied to a producer and a non-producer?
(Mr Barthel) I think the key is in the professional
judgement of the certification body and the experience of the
implementing organisation. The certification body really will
only be interested in the significant and relevant environmental
impacts; now, obviously, in manufacturing industry there are more
of those and more opportunities for cost savings and sort of process
optimisation. However, even a service industry, or a Government
department, has environmental impacts in its energy usage, in
its waste management, dare I say, in its policy-making.
568. But the accreditation procedures would
be the same for either organisation?
(Mr Barthel) They would be the same, they are
broad enough to cope with a range of different situations and
organisations, they were written that way.
569. Thank you. Could I just follow that
up by asking, I do not understand what the difference is between
ISO 14001 and EMAS, could you just explain that, please?
(Mr Barthel) I guess the key to the difference
is that they both encompass environmental management systems models,
but they were written in different fora and for different reasons
at different times. EMAS is a European regulation, but, unlike
some European regulations, whilst it is mandatory for the Member
States to implement it in their own legislative framework, it
is still voluntary to industry to implement EMAS, so it is not
a compulsory thing for industry to do, it is voluntary. In exactly
the same way ISO 14000 is voluntary, all standards are voluntary
unless they are actually raised in legislation. In terms of the
differences, the broad differences are that EMAS has a mandatory
requirement for public reporting, it is called the public environmental
statement, and that statement should include elements of the environmental
performance of a site, in other words, when you sign up, when
you register to EMAS, you produce a public environmental statement
which includes the details of your environmental performance.
The key reason behind that seems to have been that they believe
that once someone published details of their environmental performance
they would not want that performance denuded in any way, so there
would be a public perception driver there that companies would
not wish to see their performance go down, they would always want
to see it go up, and that is one of the key reasons why it is
there; 14001 does not include a mandatory communication requirement.
However, I would say that an awful lot of companies actually do
report on what they do, once they have a management system, and
it is the management system itself that provides them with the
data that enables that. To give an anecdote, if you have spent
£200 million, or more, on a major piece of plant at a large
manufacturing site, surely you would want to communicate the environmental
improvement to your stakeholders, you would not sit on it, it
is a good PR and marketing issue that they would want to promote.
570. Is there not a move to a single system
which would be less confusing, perhaps?
(Mr Barthel) I think, in the short term, things
may become more confusing, I have to say. If I finish on the differences
between EMAS and 14001, EMAS is site-orientated, you can only
register a specific physical site, whereas ISO 14001 allows you
to register a site or an entire organisation. I would say probably
that EMAS is slightly more prescriptive, in that the Annexes in
the back of the regulation actually stipulate what you should
look at, whereas 14000 is, I feel, a little bit more flexible.
Where are we going in the future: at the moment, you may be aware
that EMAS is being revised in DG IX, and the revision, from what
I have seen so far, is very radical, they are looking at a number
of things, like doing away with the confusion of the environmental
management system elements between 14000 and EMAS by actually
making 14000 part of EMAS. EMAS is broader than 14000, it includes
the management system element programmes, audit programmes and
the statement, so it is often termed 14001 plus. However, having
said that, the revision of EMAS is going to change the way the
statement is framed, and actually this could be extremely useful
for Government departments, because in the past it has been one
statement for all stakeholders, so you tend to find that on one
extreme you have a very technical document which members of the
public cannot read, and on the other extreme you have a very non-technical
document which cannot be verified or validated properly. Within
the revision process, what they are talking about now is a series
of statements to address different audiences, so you have a technical
statement which can be verified and a non-technical statement
which members of the public can actually understand, the other
stakeholders can actually understand, all of which are validated
as part of the EMAS registration process. There is also a very
controversial proposal that there will actually be established
international registers for EMAS, so rather than it being restricted
to the Member States of the European Union they are saying, "Well,
the Japanese or the North Americans might actually want to register
some EMAS sites; why don't we have registers available to them
in North America, or in Japan, or in Korea, so that people outside
of the European Community can actually use it?" In other
words, you are extending the geographical scope of EMAS to the
same coverage as 14000.
Mr Shaw
571. You mentioned earlier businesses or
organisations wanting one system of auditing, whether that is
in health and safety, whether that is environmental, and you also
talked about the need to involve people in that process, consultation,
not just within the immediate workforce but perhaps within the
wider community, whether that is the local authority or business,
and looking at their customers. So, with that in mind, do you
see that there are any similarities between seeking an accreditation
for EMS and other areas of management, such as the Investors In
People and Citizen's Charter, things like that, and how those
can be brought together so you have all your environmental thing,
involving the workforce and your Investors In People; it seems
entirely sensible? On the point that you were saying, about having——
(Mr Barthel) Integrated.
572. Yes?
(Mr Barthel) Yes, it is possible; in fact, we
actually have clients who have integrated IIP into their management
system and used it to satisfy the training, awareness and competence
clause within 14001, because IIP is all about training your workforce,
motivating them and developing them, and that is exactly the reasoning
behind the clause on training, awareness and competence in ISO
14001.
573. So you do see them merging?
(Mr Barthel) Yes, we do.
Dr Iddon
574. Could I just, Chairman, ask about the
audit itself. What kinds of things would fail an organisation,
if it were looking for accreditation?
(Mr Barthel) There are three forms of what we
term nonconformity, because basically what we are auditing against
is the requirements of the standard, or the requirements of the
regulation, in terms of EMAS. We have an observation which is,
"This is not terribly serious at the moment but you really
should look at this part of your system or your management practices
and put them right." There is what we call a minor nonconformity,
which is, "This is something that goes beyond an observation
and we feel we have to document as a nonconformity but is not
serious enough for us to remove your certificate." And then
there is a major nonconformity, and the major nonconformities
would tend to be things like a breach of a consent, which has
not been reported to the regulator. There are all sorts of grey
areas around things like, if a non-compliance has taken place
and the——
Mr Shaw
575. Can you give us an example?
(Mr Barthel) An example; right. Say, a piece of
effluent treatment plant has failed and into a water course is
streaming all the waste chemical products from a chemical manufacturing
plant, within a matter of hours the plant breaches its monthly
consent limit with the Environment Agency, under Integrated Pollution
Control; now it very much depends on how well the company copes
with that as to what level of nonconformity we are talking about.
If they have fully addressed the requirement for emergency preparedness
and response, get a spill clean-up team in place, switch on a
redundant environmental piece of kit to stop that happening, report
it immediately to the Agency, work with the Agency and all the
local authorities to clean up the spill, then that is less likely
to be a major nonconformity than if they just switched on the
kit, did not notify the Agency, there was a major fish kill, or
a major eco-system failure, because of it, then that would be
a major nonconformity.
576. Sort of hit and run and not leaving
your name and address for the police officers?
(Mr Barthel) Yes.
Mr Grieve
577. I am interested in this, because it
is clearly axiomatic that you are prepared to give accreditation
to the dirtiest of industries, because even a dirty industry,
if it has to exist, inevitably, is entitled to do its best, and
it is by doing its best that it gets accreditation, that is how
I understand the position. So that the fact of accreditation does
not mean that this is now a clean industry or a clean process,
it means it is as clean as can be reasonably achieved. Am I right
about that?
(Mr Barthel) Yes. Let me give you a parallel to
that. Environmental legislation and consents are licences to pollute.
578. Absolutely; and that is why I find
your comments about consents, because I have had some dealings
with this, breaches of consents and prosecuting breaches of consents,
particularly interesting. But I was quite struck by your answer
about what you would describe as nonconformity, because I slightly
deduced from that answer that there was quite a lot of flexibility,
some might say that the moment the breach occurred that was a
nonconformity which will, arguably, lead to a loss of accreditation,
but what you seemed to be saying was, well, as long as, that breach
having occurred, or the accident having happened, they then have
in place the necessary management systems to cope with the fact
that the mistake has been made and they use them properly, that
would still lead to accreditation being maintained. And so, I
appreciate that from an industry's point of view it is all terribly
nice to get accreditation, they stand up and they say, "We're
very green", even if, in reality, an environmental audit
carried out on what they are actually doing, the public might
actually think that they are a very dirty industry, but I appreciate
why accreditation is granted in those cases, the system exists,
they have got their consents to pollute. But it is pushing it
even a little bit further where one is saying, "Well, actually,
even if you pollute, even if you pollute beyond the consents,
you can still keep your accreditation, as long as you are doing
your best to manage the mistake that has been made." That
starts to suggest to me that this is all a little bit of front-of-house
decoration for industry rather than, in fact, laying down standards.
What would your comments be about that?
(Mr Barthel) My comments on that would be that
we have had clients where we have withdrawn certificates; obviously,
I cannot go into detail, but we have. Each case, obviously, is
judged on its merits, individual merits, often with consultation
between the site and the regulator as well.
Chairman
579. Have you ever withdrawn accreditation
from a public sector operator, a public sector department or agency?
(Mr Barthel) Not to my knowledge. It is a very
young market we are talking about here. With ISO 9000, it has
been around for 25 years now, for quality management systems;
environmental management systems, ISO 14001 was only published
in September 1996; EMAS was only adopted as a verifiable standard
in April 1995; so it is a very young market. The people that we
tend to see enter into the market are the ones that will perceive
themselves as the market leaders, the excellent strivers.
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