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10.12 am
Mr. Paul Truswell (Pudsey): I am aware of the time pressures, so I shall try to truncate my remarks accordingly. The report of the Environmental Audit Select Committee is obviously a snapshot of past events. I hope that the greening government inquiry will reveal that considerably more progress has been made. However, the signs are not particularly good.
That is not a criticism of my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Environment. I hope that all my colleagues on the Environmental Audit Committee share
my view that his appearances before us are never less than impressive. As almost a resident turn, he takes some beating. However, I sometimes fear that he is cast in a role similar to that of the sheriff played by Gary Cooper in "High Noon". He is courageous, dedicated and committed, yet, like the good sheriff, the Minister is not getting the backing of his posse--which is primarily the Green Ministers Committee.
During our deliberations, it was easy to conclude that the Green Ministers Committee did not necessarily know precisely what its role was--and no one appeared to be monitoring what it was doing. We were told that the Committee would submit its first report to the Ministerial Committee on the Environment, ENV, at the end of last year. Did it do so? If the Committee has reported, has the ENV met to discuss it? Did the report include departmental aims and objectives? If the report has slipped, what are the new time scales?
We were also told that the Green Ministers Committee is to report to Parliament this summer. It will be helpful if it reports in time for the House to consider the document before the summer recess. As the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Horam) pointed out, we are also awaiting the publication of the sustainable development strategy, which was trailed for autumn last year. However, there is still no sign of it. Can my right hon. Friend give some indication of its publication date? Will the strategy contain clear statements about direction, process, responsibility and how progress will be measured?
I also echo the comments of other Committee members who have spoken this morning about holding an annual debate on sustainable development. Will the Government reconsider their decision not to allow such a debate?
On the question of environmental policy appraisal, the posse seems not to have even put on its boots. The Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions guidance states that Departments should consider making their policy appraisals public. The guidance should be tightened so that there is a presumption that appraisals will be published and should place an onus on Departments to justify not doing so.
At present, any tightening of the guidance would be academic as there is little evidence that such appraisals are carried out, let alone published. One of the best examples of that came from the Department for Education and Employment. We asked the Department whether it had conducted an environmental appraisal of school and college building plans. It had not. Yet the guidance produced by DETR gives the building of schools and colleges as an example of a policy that should be appraised. Such policies have clear transport, green-field and housekeeping implications. We were also told that the Green Ministers Committee was appraising the appraisals. What progress has been made in that direction and is it at a trot, a canter or a gallop?
We often talk--it has been mentioned in the debate today--about the need to integrate environmental considerations in policy making to avoid bolting on policies. It is clear to the Committee that some policies do not even enjoy the luxury of a bolt; they are falling off departmental agendas.
Mr. Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield):
It is a pleasure to participate briefly in this debate. I shall keep my comments short, as I am aware that other hon. Members wish to contribute.
It has been said that the Environmental Audit Committee was appointed as a terrier to bite at the heels of Government. I hope that we have succeeded in doing that. I am mindful of the fact that some of my remarks about the report may have been superseded by events. For example, the establishment of the Green Ministers Committee excited considerable concern on our part. We discovered that the initial meeting of the Committee, which had been set up with a fanfare of publicity, was attended by 15 out of a possible 17 Ministers so that they could all be part of the photo opportunity. However, when the Committee next met--it was only its second meeting in the first 12 months of this Government--the number of Ministers had reduced considerably. They had been replaced by officials.
After we noted that trend, it appeared that numbers increased again for the last meeting. However, that example is symptomatic of the difficulties that the Green Ministers Committee and the Ministerial Committee on the Environment face when grappling with policy issues. There is always a tendency for Governments to have pious aspirations. Although they say that they are trying to do their best, inertia sets in. I think inertia started to set in fairly badly in the first 12 months of this Government. As has been said during the debate, we will achieve the goals of sustainable development and green government through structures. Committee members often kick themselves in an effort to remember that and to keep themselves from discussing tangential issues. Without the structure, we will not get the results.
It is all very well to establish a Green Ministers Committee, but I am not clear whether it is a formulating or an executive and reporting Committee. It is the nature of Government that most decisions are taken at Cabinet Committee level. If that is so, the role of the Green Ministers Committee is probably more limited than was trumpeted at the time of its establishment. All the evidence suggests that that is what has happened.
I confess that, when I read the Government's response to our report, I was anxious about the structures, because, although it was acknowledged that ENV had to be upgraded and that its remit had to change to put sustainable development at the top of the agenda, the relationship between ENV and the Green Ministers Committee remains far from clear. I accept that one reason is that the Green Ministers meet only three times a year, so it may be difficult, until the next meeting, to start to take a snapshot of how matters are progressing. I should be particularly interested to hear from the Minister how that aspect is developing.
Unless there is input from Cabinet Committee level--and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Mr. Horam) said, with the Prime Minister ultimately
providing a lead--the inertia that inevitably exists in Government will get the better of progress, and progress is what we want. Tentative steps have been taken. The Budget was undoubtedly a massive improvement in that respect on last year's Budget, but its proposals are tentative. There is, above all, a lack of willingness to engage in open discussion about the issues.
That brings me to my second and last point, which I made in my intervention, about an annual debate. Sustainable development is not about buzz words or easy options and may sometimes require an acceptance that measures that people find superficially attractive and necessary cannot, for good reasons, be taken. That requires open debate.
The Minister knows that there is complete cross-party consensus on that matter, certainly on the Select Committee. We have never fallen out among ourselves in examining the Government's problems and role. We are also fairly sympathetic to those problems. We accept, as do Labour Members, that the first initiatives and tentative steps were taken by the previous Government--and all credit to them--and are being built on by this Government, but we need discussion.
Mr. Malcolm Savidge (Aberdeen, North):
The Environmental Audit Committee was unanimous in its support for the Government's basic sustainable development and environmental strategies. We felt, therefore, that our duty was to consider whether their future planning, administrative structures and policies would deliver those strategies.
Four basic principles need to be observed when we consider environmental matters. First, long-term vision is necessary. Secondly, environmental strategies have tobe integral, pervasive and co-ordinated throughout government. Thirdly, they must be applied at every level from global down to local. Finally, they need the maximum cross-party consensus.
It has presumably been true throughout the millennia that mankind has been able to affect future environments, but it is undoubtedly true that scientific and technical progress accelerates and that we have a greater ability to affect, more extensively and enduringly, our environment, for good or ill. We must be wary of the possibility that we can now have a greater effect on our tiny, fragile planet, and even more so on the tiny, fragile species, including our own, that inhabit it.
It is therefore vital that we have long-term vision; if we are honest, we must acknowledge that that is difficult for all politicians. If a week is a long time in politics, and looking beyond annual Budgets to three-year comprehensive spending reviews seems long term, how much more true is
that for environmental strategies? Most of us find it difficult to focus beyond the next election. How much more difficult is it for us to focus on the next generation or the next centuries?
With environmental matters, we are often discussing intangibles. There is a difficulty in persuading people to appreciate the importance of long-term intangible effects as against short-term tangible ones--for example, the benefits of climate change compared to the convenience of a car--or immediate effects. We want newspapers to recognise that more people may die in their area from the effects of the invisible traffic accidents of air pollution than die in car accidents. It is important that we get the support of journalists so that they stop concentrating on ill-founded fears and realistically consider, rather than deride, the serious scientific bases for our concern about our environment.
We need to think like statesmen, not merely politicians. To do so, and to overcome the inevitable temptations, it is important that we built robust administrative structures that provide added incentives to give the environment its correct place in our concerns.
My second point, therefore, is that the environment must be absolutely integral and co-ordinated throughout government. There is a correct comparison to be drawn with the position that finance has traditionally had. It is encouraging that our Committee has been viewed almost as an equivalent to the Public Accounts Committee. It is important to mirror that in the ministerial structure, which is why we applaud the idea that the environment should be a prime ministerial or deputy prime ministerial responsibility. Traditionally, the Prime Minister has been the First Lord of the Treasury, and it is encouraging that we have a Deputy Prime Minister as first lord of the environment. Those issues must have clout within government if they are to have sufficient influence.
In global and local affairs, it is now almost commonplace to say that the environment must be an international matter because pollution and climate change do not recognise national boundaries. It is therefore important that someone with clout--the Deputy Prime Minister--conducted the international negotiations in Kyoto. We all praise him and my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Environment for their statesmanlike position at Kyoto.
At Rio, local government matters were recognised by Agenda 21, and environmental matters are therefore appropriate for devolution. It is good that they are being devolved to the Scottish Parliament, the Northern Ireland Assembly and the Welsh Assembly. It is important that this country has the structures to co-ordinate strategies between those Parliaments after devolution. Our Select Committee would hope to co-ordinate with their Select Committees.
Environmental concern must transcend party divides. In times of war, we have been able to find common cause against human enemies who were threatening us. In the future, we must increasingly be able to make common cause against the abstract forces that can threaten humanity. It is encouraging that our Select Committee has had no divisions, as our Chairman, the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Horam), has said. I pay tribute to him for his part in that consensus. We should try to avoid short-term political advantage and look to the long term.
I said that, to overcome the difficulties inherent in environmental matters, it is important to have strong administrative structures. We are pleased that the Government have responded so positively to some of our suggestions. We are pleased that ENV will play a strong co-ordinating role on sustainable development; that, in future, departmental reports to Cabinet Committees will contain an environmental cost-benefit analysis; that the number of meetings of the Green Ministers Committee and ENV is rising from two to three a year; and that the GMC will report annually to ENV.
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