Select Committee on Environmental Audit Second Report


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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Prepared 2 July 1998