Examination of witnesses (Questions 20
- 39)
TUESDAY 23 JUNE 1998
SIR ANDREW
TURNBULL, MR
JOHN BALLARD,
MR BRIAN
LEONARD and MR
RICHARD HILLIER
20. Right; so that is the one and only reference
to the DETR's Green Minister in the Annual Report; there is nothing
outlining what the Green Minister has performed?
(Sir Andrew Turnbull) And there is a passage in
there about the role of Green Ministers.
21. Right; okay. On the question of the
Sustainable Development Unit, can you tell me how many people
work in that Unit?
(Sir Andrew Turnbull) Maybe I can ask Brian Leonard
to comment.
(Mr Leonard) There are 14.
22. Right; and there are 18 Government Departments,
I believe. Do you think that the 14 people in the Sustainable
Development Unit are in a position to ensure that green thinking
is at the heart of Government policy?
(Mr Leonard) I think they are doing what is required,
and they, of course, have established a network of green contacts
around every Department, so every Department has officials in
it who link with the Sustainable Development Unit.
23. On the subject of Green Ministers, which
Sir Andrew referred to, I understand there was the second or the
third meeting of Green Ministers on 8 June, this year. Can you
tell us what the outcome of that meeting was?
(Mr Leonard) Green Ministers, at that meeting,
considered progress on green operations and the model improvement
plan that each Department is considering introducing, and will
introduce, on greening operations. They also considered progress
with environmental appraisal, and they considered how, in future,
it was best to establish systems in Departments which enabled
environmental issues, environmental integration issues in particular,
to be established and how they should be reported on; and after
the Environmental Audit Committee has reported on green matters,
which we are expecting soon, Green Ministers matters, decisions
will be taken about that.
24. And at this meeting did they come up
with any conclusions about how best to implement green policies,
or are they simply waiting for the Environmental Audit Committee
to report?
(Mr Leonard) On greening operations, the Department
has, in consultation with others, produced a draft of a model
improvement plan, and Ministers considered that as a sort of first
reading and will now take it away and look at how to do it. On
reporting, they will wait, I think, to hear the views of the Environmental
Audit Committee, and indeed any views that this Committee may
have, about how best to do it. It is quite complex, to understand
how best to get the messages across about the reporting; you can
incorporate them in existing reports, for example, or another
option will be to produce a separate report in each Department,
and the balance between those requires the views of the people
who want to hear the information as well as the people giving
it, so that is why we are waiting.
25. Can you explain to us, or can someone
on the panel explain to us, how the views of Green Ministers are
currently fed into the Government policy-making process?
(Mr Leonard) Policy-making itself is the responsibility
of the formally-established Cabinet Committees, and the ENV Committee
is set up to consider environmental issues. So Green Ministers
are specifically responsible not for taking decisions about policy,
green policy, which is a matter for a Cabinet Committee, but about
the operations of the Department and the ways green operations
of the Department, if you like, facilitate management and use
of waste and energy, and so on, and establishment of systems inside
Departments which will inform policy and enable policy to reflect
environmental matters better. And what they are likely to do is
to report to those Ministers, in particular Secretaries of State
in each Department, who are responsible for policy. So Green Ministers
are more concerned with how you deliver the environmentally-aware
policy than the decision on policies themselves.
Mr Olner
26. So what is the success rate?
(Mr Leonard) I think, progress is being made in
a number of areas.
27. That is not answering the question,
is it: what is the success rate?
(Mr Leonard) We do not have a rate.
28. Do you think you ought to have?
(Mr Leonard) I think it could be considered, yes.
Mr Brake
29. So, if I understand correctly, the Green
Ministers are simply there to ensure that their Departments are
doing the best they can from a green point of view, they are not
there to try to influence the Home Office, or whichever Department
they are in so that they adopt policies within their Department,
home affairs that are green?
(Mr Leonard) I think the integration of environmental
issues into other policy issues, and, indeed, the way in which
different Departments contribute to sustainable development, is
quite a sophisticated thing to grasp, for Government or for anybody
else, and it is relatively new, it is a relatively young approach
to policy and what Green Ministers can do is help their Departments
understand those issues better. There is an awareness that the
Green Ministers can gain themselves by attending Green Ministers
meetings and receiving support and advice, in particular from
the DETR, which itself links through to green bodies, and so on.
And there is an awareness they can gain in terms of the machinery
and the mechanisms, the way in which you can establish environmental
appraisals, the way in which you can establish environmental strategies,
sustainable development strategies, that they can acquire as a
group and then take back into their Departments. So a willingness
to achieve environmental sustainable development progress is more
deliverable as a result of Green Ministers. And that would apply
in any of the Departments, and all the main Departments sit on
Green Ministers.
Mrs Ellman
30. I would just like to pursue further
this very important question, the integration of environment policies
into other issues. Have you changed your financial accounting
policies in any way to accommodate that, and do you consider how
you could credit the benefits of an environmental policy, perhaps
in national terms, and relate that to what might be an immediate
extra cost, it might be in one Department, or, indeed, it might
be outside of the Department, say, in local government; have you
started to look at that?
(Sir Andrew Turnbull) The way we account for the
money we are given does not bring environmental considerations
into account, but the way in which, first of all, projects are
appraised increasingly does bring environmental considerations
into account, and, more importantly, we are now moving on into
programmes, so that the full environmental benefits or disbenefits
come in to the point of decision-making, but we do not write it
up, we do not keep kind of green values which we add to or subtract
from the figures that we report in the accounts that we present.
31. Do you have any plans to do that?
(Sir Andrew Turnbull) No, I do not think we do.
I think we think that this is actually an extremely ambitious
and very difficult thing to do, to put monetary values on environmental
benefits and disbenefits. And, indeed, some of the green movement
would not actually welcome that, because I think they fear that
if you take this process of cost/benefit analysis and then add
a kind of green element to it you fall into the trap of ascribing
values to the things which are easy to value and underplaying
the things that are less easy to value, for example, what value
do we put on landscape or preservation of species. And I have
come across many people in the green movement who actually believe
that overuse of cost/benefit analysis is not actually beneficial
to the argument of their case.
32. But, nevertheless, finance is a major
factor in allocation of resources, is it not, so how do you assess
value for money for the Department in terms of delivering environmental
benefit?
(Sir Andrew Turnbull) We have to bring environmental
considerations into account. If you take something like procurement,
we have over the last few years rewritten the procurement guides
so that people are not simply encouraged to take the lowest price,
that they have to look at the entire life-cycle of a product that
they are buying, including issues about its sourcing, and including
issues about its ultimate recycling or waste disposal. You cannot
always put monetary values on those, but it is very clear that
you do not simply buy something blind and then when you have finished
with it dispose of it and wash your hands of it.
Christine Butler
33. Mr Leonard, what particular steps is
the DETR taking to ensure success in implementing management and
appraisal systems across Whitehall on this issue which we have
been discussing for some time now?
(Mr Leonard) It is leading the advice on that.
34. Can you tell me what advice?
(Mr Leonard) It is producing itself an approach
to environmental appraisal of policies, and using its links with
the expert bodies and advising other Departments who themselves
are doing that, too.
35. What is the response from other Departments
to the initiative then of the DETR?
(Mr Leonard) It is really connected to the model
improvement plan that is being generated to introduce steps that
cover a full range of environmental performance in Departments,
and the DETR has produced the outline model improvement plan.
36. When did it produce that?
(Mr Leonard) It produced a draft earlier this
year, within the last few weeks, and that was discussed at the
Green Ministers meeting that was mentioned earlier.
37. Is it being implemented across Whitehall?
(Mr Leonard) Yes, it will be, in each Department
there is an Officer and a Minister whose responsibility it is
to introduce it.
38. Sorry, is it being implemented? You
said "it will be".
(Mr Leonard) Such a plan has to be put into place
in each Department and formally put into place, and that is in
the process at the moment.
39. Have you any idea though when that will
be in place?
(Mr Leonard) I do not know for each Department,
no.
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