| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
12.30 pm
Mr. Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham): This is my first opportunity to offer you my congratulations, Madam Deputy Speaker, although they may be rather passe by now. However, I offer them all the same.
The Opposition welcome this comprehensive report, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Mr. Bennett) on his chairmanship of the Select Committee on the Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs. The report was, as he said, published more than six months ago, in May. It is a shame that the House has not had the opportunity to debate its contents before now, especially as the subject has taken on a new importance in the light of the recent floods. Many lessons might have been learned before those floods took place. I presume that that is why the Minister with responsibility for flooding and coastal defences, who represents the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, is handling the debate, rather than the Minister more directly responsible for the Environment Agency.
The debate has been interesting and wide ranging, and it has afforded hon. Members the opportunity to take us round the world on a variety of subjects including tyre shredding, outdoor pigs, the hazards of Italian drinking water and an end-use directive on chewing gum, promulgated by the Chairman of the Select Committee. We also witnessed a learned delivery on agricultural land use by the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Dr. Turner), who betrayed himself by the rather lofty intellectual nimbyism of supporting the idea of any authority dealing with his constituents' waste--so long as it was not his own authority.
The debate also afforded the hon. Member for Wimbledon (Mr. Casale) the opportunity to trip deftly through his electoral roll. My hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe) raised interesting points about the importance of design when building on flood plains, and the possibility of incorporating different kinds of rubbish disposal facilities into the design of new houses. He gave the example of what happens in Bromley and Chislehurst, which was apposite because I am sure that the only reason why my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) is not present today--as he usually is on a Friday morning--is that he is a regular devotee of the Bromley and Chislehurst bottle bank and composting depot. Indeed, I am sure that he is there now.
My hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid-Kent also touched on the subject of abandoned cars. I hope that the rural White Paper that we may discuss on Tuesday will address that issue, and respond to some of the proposals put forward by the Conservative environmental team during the summer, about distinguishing between the roles of the police and the local authorities in dealing with abandoned cars and allowing the retention of fines locally to address the problem. We wait with great keenness to hear what the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions will have to say about that.
On the report, let me start by saying that the Environment Agency is a good thing. We all agree that it was right to set up an integrated environmental body, formed out of the former National Rivers Authority, Her Majesty's inspectorate of pollution and 83 other waste regulation bodies. At the time, the creation of the Environment Agency was described as one of the most complex tasks in recent public and private sector history. However, it was skilfully guided through the House, although hon. Members did not give him much credit for it this morning, by my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer)--who has now left to attend an event in his constituency. When he was Secretary of State for the Environment, he was widely acclaimed as a champion of environmental issues, and he retains that reputation.
My right hon. Friend mentioned the ugly phrase "matrix management", for which we await a real definition. A different sort of matrix has come to haunt us today. It was slightly opportunistic of the hon. Member for Normanton (Mr. O'Brien) to apportion so much blame to my right hon. Friend for any shortcomings that the report attributes to the Environment Agency, and to fly kites, when my right hon. Friend was no longer here to respond, about possible privatisation fears, on which he was unable to elaborate. My right hon. Friend was in charge of the agency for one year and one month, whereas the Government and the DETR have been in charge of the Environment Agency for more than three and a half years, and have had opportunities before now to bring in changes if they thought them necessary.
Mr. Bill O'Brien: I draw the hon. Gentleman's attention to the fact that the details behind my comments are on the Hansard record of when we debated the legislation. We supported the principle of the legislation, but our questions about the details were not answered by the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal. I consider my
criticism justified, although it is unfortunate that the right hon. Gentleman is not still here. However, the matters to which I referred can be read about in Hansard.
Mr. Loughton: The Environment Agency is a large creature and it is not inconceivable that certain of its activities may not be exclusively handled by full-time employees of the agency, which carries out some form of contracting out or privatisation. The Government may wish to look at that matter in future if they are to institute reform or improvement of the way in which the agency is run.
Mr. Bennett: The right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal said that he would like the Environment Agency staff to be reduced from 11,000 to about 5,000. In that downsizing exercise, one of the issues would be how far the rivers work could be contracted out. During the recent floods, the full-time employees have put in a phenomenal amount of work, and it is not particularly good for their morale to talk about downsizing. Also, there is a difference between getting one's own staff to put in phenomenal hours to deal with a problem, and getting contractors to do the same.
Mr. Loughton: The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point, but I do not take a view on it, one way or the other. I do not necessarily agree that people who would work beyond their normal hours in an emergency are exclusively those who work for a public agency; that happens in many other contracted-out activities. People are contracted to do a job of work; it is then up to them to make sure that the job is done. If it is not, they will be penalised or sacked. We may continue that debate in the future.
I shall refer later to the Select Committee's comments about morale and other matters. If those involved are to justify some of their charging structures, for example, they need to offer a speedier and more efficient service in many areas. I am sure that that can be achieved through a multitude of different solutions.
It is widely accepted that a joined-up, coherent and effective environment regulator is a necessary and desirable goal. That is not at issue. I am a member of the Select Committee on Environmental Audit and our work has focused similarly on the genuineness of the greening of Government across all Departments, and on encouraging an integrated environmental appraisal in practice, not just in pledges and ministerial soundbites.
Three and a half years on, it is right that the House should have the opportunity, through the Select Committee report, to assess whether sufficient progress has been achieved towards the aspirations and goals set for this not inconsiderable agency, which employs about 10,000 people and has a budget of £623 million, and whether it is discharging its functions as defined in the Environment Act 1995.
The Act described the main purpose of the agency as
- so to protect or enhance the environment, taken as a whole, as to make the contribution--
- towards attaining the objective of achieving sustainable development.
The report confirms the perception that the Environment Agency has not lived up to those expectations--certainly not to those that say that it should come together as a coherent and integrated one-stop shop. That criticism is fair, although we appreciate that much has been achieved in some areas; of course, too little has been achieved in others.
The agency has failed to assert its credentials--its raison d'etre--in the public consciousness. The public does not know why it exists--with the overriding exception, perhaps, of its appearance in a crisis management role during recent and previous floods, responding to events rather than pre-empting them. As one witness to the Committee states:
- practical implementation of the theory is confused and confusing for those whom the Agency is supposed to assist.
- the Agency is currently "punching below its weight".
- lack of functional integration . . . They have to pay more attention to making sure that the individual bits of the Agency work together, work cohesively.
- there is a lack of cross-functional working in the Agency and this is hindering delivery of its core objectives.
- is responsible for implementing a large number of different pieces of legislation, many of which are themselves not conducive to integrated implementation.
The Committee's report accused the agency of
- following the debate, not leading it.
- At the moment I think we see the Agency very much looking towards the Government, trying constantly to please the Government and failing often, but not quite having the confidence in itself to stand up and say, "We think this is the right thing to do for sustainable development."
However, there is a potentially worrying hint of cronyism--hardly allayed by the evidence of the Minister for the Environment to the Select Committee. He gave the thinly veiled caution:
- I would not expect the Chairman of the Agency to make an outright attack on the Government.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |