GREENING GOVERNMENT REPORT
Reporting (continued)
85. The Committee considers that there is scope
for improvement in the Government's reporting on sustainable development.
There should be a range of separate but explicitly complementary
reports as follows:
- a comprehensive and detailed assessment of
the state of sustainable development within the UK. This should
be produced periodically and the Committee would envisage it being
produced once in a Parliament;
- an annual report on the Government's performance
against its Sustainable Development Strategy and targets. This
should be agreed by the Cabinet Committee on the Environment and
presented to Parliament as a collective report from government;
and
- an annual volume of sustainable development
indicator statistics with quarterly updates where available.
86. In addition the Committee considers that the
annual departmental reports should report on the progress individual
departments have made towards sustainable development objectives
in an integrated way. The departmental reports should be better
dovetailed with the annual government report, with the latter
addressing key government priorities and the former presenting
more detail on those areas and progress on lower order priorities.
The Committee considers the range of the questions they asked
of the Green Ministers is a reflection of the breadth of the public
and parliamentary interest in their departments' work and therefore
an indication of what might be covered in their annual reports.
The Committee therefore welcomes Mr Meacher's intention to use
part of the Green Ministers Committee meeting in June 1998 to
look at departments' reporting on the Sustainable Development
Strategy and the issue of indicators. [108]
87. The production of reports, however, only meets
part of the requirement for the proper monitoring of policy development
and fulfilment. An equal necessity is a substantial opportunity
for full discussion and debate in Parliament. Taxation and public
expenditure decisions are discussed in the Budget and the debate
that follows. The Government's legislative programme is debated
after the annual Queen's Speech. If sustainable development is
to be truly at the heart of policy-making then there should be
a similar Parliamentary occasion when it too can be debated. This
would give shape to annual reporting on sustainable development
and be an opportunity for significant announcements. We therefore
propose that each year there should be a major Sustainable Development
Debate on a Government Motion relating to the annual report.
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