GREENING GOVERNMENT REPORT
Reporting
81. The annual This Common Inheritance reports have
been the main vehicle for cross government reporting against
commitments made in the first and subsequent This Common Inheritance
reports. Government departments also produce annual reports which
set out their objectives, spending and performance over the year
and future spending plans. These are expected to mention progress
made against significant commitments in This Common Inheritance.[102]
Further valuable material is reported in the form of state of
the environment reports. There was such a report for the UK in
1992 produced by the Department of the Environment.[103]
Annual reports on the Environment in Wales have been produced
by the Welsh Office. And the environment agencies for England
and Wales and for Scotland published state of the environment
reports in 1996.
82. DETR told the Committee that the Sustainable
Development Strategy which is planned to be published by the end
of 1998 will act as the Government's annual report on sustainable
development for 1998 and the starting point for new reporting
arrangements across government as a whole.[104]
To date the Government has made no commitment regarding the precise
nature of this future reporting arrangement. Given the Government's
commitment to the social dimension of sustainable development
we believe that consideration should be given to the production
of state of sustainable development reports on which data is provided
on economic performance; the state of the environment and trends
in the pressures on it and the underlying driving forces; and
an assessment of social welfare across socio-economic groups and
geographical regions, over the same period of time. This would
set a good example for the international community and might be
very timely if completed by the occasion of the tenth anniversary
of the United Nations Rio Earth Summit in 2002.
83. The Committee lays great store by the Government's
annual reporting of progress as a means of reinforcing their commitment
to the Strategy and of allowing Parliament and the public to hold
the Government to account. We note that in evidence to this Committee
the London Borough of Sutton commented that the requirement to
produce an annual report was one of the most important elements
in their initial commitment to environmental policies.[105]
Representatives from the Local Agenda 21 Steering Group supported
this saying that most local authorities issuing annual reports
will have an environmental sustainability section within them
and some will do State of the Environment reports once a year.[106]
Whilst being critical of the content of the last Government's
strategy as set out in the This Common Inheritance series, we
consider it provided a good model for reporting, as the reports
were annual, addressed performance across government and set out
clearly whether and what actions had been taken against all the
commitments made.
84. We regard the requirement on individual departments
to report on their contributions to sustainable development in
their annual reports as a good discipline. But we consider that
they have not done enough in the past to state their commitment
to the Government's Sustainable Development Strategy and report
their progress in taking it forward. There has however been some
improvement. The Committee reviewed the 1997 and the 1998 departmental
annual reports and found that in 1997, under the last Government,
only eight out of 20 departments identified a commitment to sustainable
development in their overall aims and objectives as set out in
Figure 2 below. This had increased to ten out of 18 departments
in 1998 when some of the departments had agreed revised "interim"
objectives pending the outcome of the Comprehensive Spending Review.
The Green Alliance drew to the Committee's attention that some
of the 1998 departmental reports had also placed greater emphasis
on sustainable development considerations in their text than they
had in previous years. The Green Alliance particularly welcomed
the integration of sustainable development considerations in DETR's
reports of its planning responsibilities and transport policy
whilst expressing concern that the Treasury still failed to address
sustainable development in its aims and objectives, using instead
the term "sustainable growth" glossed as "environmentally
sustainable growth" in the Pre-Budget Report. However, The
Green Alliance also noted that some departmental reports failed
to identify relevant sustainable development considerations in
the aims and reports of policy directorates and programmes, highlighting
housing and education as examples.[107]
102 Second
Report, Treasury Committee, Resource Accounting and Budgeting,
HC 186, Session 1996- 97, Appendix 8, Ev p. 64, paragraph A40. Back
103 The
UK Environment, Department of the Environment 1992 ISBN 011 752
4204 Back
104 Ev
p245 paragraph 28 Back
105 Q431 Back
106 Q487 Back
107 Ev
p304 Back
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