Examination of Witnesses (Questions 640
- 659)
TUESDAY 18 JANUARY 2000
SIR JOHN
HARMAN, MR
ED GALLAGHER
AND MR
ARCHIE ROBERTSON
640. What about a rebate for the ones that were
not. It would not cost you much if it is only 6 per cent.
(Mr Robertson) What we do is, when we have a problem
determining an application in the time and there is generally
a good purpose for it, if it is due to our negligence or lack
of attention then we, quite rightly, should own up and deal with
that. What happens in most cases is we find there are complexities
associated with application, that we need to sit down with the
applicant and agree with them how we are going to resolve these
complexities.
(Sir John Harman) I would be rather concerned about
creating an incentive for the applicant to prolong the application,
and sometimes it comes from that side. Could I pick up a point
Mr Benn made a moment ago, and I think Mr Gallagher wants to comment
as well, and it is on this question which we might otherwise leave
and that is the question of pay. I am not connecting this directly
to the question you raised about a specific body of people who
do IPPC inspections, but I am concerned and the Board is concerned
that the Agency is not a very equal payer. We have been in discussion
with both our Department and the Treasury over this issue. I have
been informed in the last couple of days Treasury have agreed
our proposals to address equal pay within the Agency. That is
not the reason; Mr Robertson gave you the reason for our judgment
on inspectors and it is something the Board will keep a very close
eye on in terms of quality; but I think it has to be seen in the
context that we do have some internal pay problems which we are
resolving. It is important to us that we do, within the Agency,
have consistent measures of job content so we can give equal pay
for equal value.
(Mr Gallagher) I would be very worried if an environment
agency decided to have as its prime measure the speed with which
it processed every single application—because some of the
applications may well be delayed because of our administrative
inefficiency but a lot of them are delayed because there are some
serious issues that need to be argued through. If we necessarily
do not always have agreement with industry at the first point—we
could get all our water abstraction licences through in 100 per
cent. of the statutory time if we simply said, "Yes",
to all of them or, "No", to all of them, but that is
not the way we should run the Agency. We are there to defend the
environment and if that takes a bit of time we will explain why
it is taking time—sometimes we have to have public inquiries;
often we have consultation. I would be extremely unhappy if you
were to judge our efficiency on the speed with which we process
applications. I would be slightly more worried that we get 94
per cent. done because I think it could be argued we are not really
spending quite as much time on them as we should in this rather
crowded island of ours.
641. Self-regulation—how far is it possible
for individuals to actually find out clearly the Environment Agency's
policy and practice?
(Sir John Harman) I should hope very easy. As far
as I am concerned, the transparency of our policy and practices
should be absolute—but perhaps there is a further question
underneath that.
642. There might be, yes! Are you absolutely
certain you do not have two sets of policies in effect? You have
the actual regulations that people can look at, and then there
is a draft policy guidance to staff which is not transparent.
(Sir John Harman) I am confident in that regard.
(Mr Gallagher) I do not think we have time to do that
sort of thing.
643. There are not any draft guidance to staff
which are not public?
(Mr Robertson) The policies are public. There is draft
guidance on a number of things, like internal payments—what
you are allowed to claim on your expenses—and internal processes.
644. There is no draft guidance which refers
to enforcement or policy?
(Sir John Harman) I am not aware of any.
(Mr Robertson) I am aware of one, and that is draft
policy on how we would in detail effect our enforcement and prosecution
policy; which is a matter of how we would make sure we secured
a proper conviction once we had decided there was an infringement
of our policy.
645. That is the only one?
(Mr Robertson) That, for me, is a tactical matter.
646. As far as the policy the company has to
follow out is concerned, they can see exactly the same guidance
that you give to your employees?
(Mr Robertson) To the best of my knowledge, yes.
(Sir John Harman) There is no hidden agenda.
647. Castle Cement in Ribblesdale—a disaster:
can you guarantee it is not going to happen again?
(Sir John Harman) No. I cannot foresee all possible
combinations of circumstances. I think your previous inquiry was
a learning experience for the Agency, and I am certain we have
learnt a great deal from that. There are particular circumstances
at Castle Cement which have led to the Agency expending enormous
human and financial resource on what is admittedly a very difficult
problem. I am confident we have learnt from the previous inquiry
and in particular (although we have not mentioned it before in
this session) it has greatly informed our approach to public consultation
on contentious sites—something rather unfortunately referred
to in the Agency as the "SLAP process", and I think
we will have to find a better acronym for it. If you wish us to
pursue that line of response, I am quite happy to do so but I
do think we have learnt from that. Mr Gallagher, who was very
much involved with it, might like to add to my answer.
(Mr Gallagher) The difficult applications probably
amount to somewhere between 50-100 each year, where we have got
really serious differences between persistent groups who are not
prepared to change their minds. In order to get a solution with
any degree of consensus, we cannot simply retreat to our rooms
and come up with a technical solution. We do have to pay a lot
of attention to public perceptions and give them time to express
their views. That is the basis of this particular procedure which
involves a lot more public consultation. At the end of the day,
we still have to make a decision. If a protest group is saying
we should not incinerate material, and another protest group is
saying the same material should not be thrown in the river, or
another group is saying it should not be put in a landfill site,
and yet another group is saying you cannot build a recycling plant
near where I live, it is fine for them to say but we as an Agency
we have got to come up with a solution—we cannot simply
say, "Don't do it". It is likely, having gone through
this procedure, we will not always come up with a solution everybody
agrees with. We feel it is essential, on these difficult issues,
that we are seen to respond fully to the views of everybody in
an open and a public way.
648. The Regional Environmental Protection Advisory
Committees—a waste of time?
(Sir John Harman) Absolutely not. We have, I suppose
you could call it, a panoply of consultative committees and statutory
committees, so I look at the REPACs in the context of the other
regional committees set down by statute, and indeed of the Agency's
own area environment groups, which we were not mandated to have
but which we thought were a good idea. They do draw in the views
and opinions of a large number of stakeholders. You were talking
earlier about local government. There are 400 local authority
members involved in these groups up and down the country and (except
in the case of the flood defence committees) they are not the
largest group of stakeholders. It is very important the Agency,
both regionally and nationally, learns from that experience. I
am aware that this area was raised with you by Mr Bonas when he
appeared to give oral evidence earlier and then followed it up
with a later letter. He made a number of suggestions which I look
forward to discussing with him and other REPAC chairmen at their
conference in a few weeks time. At this early stage of my chairmanship
I can say no more than I am open minded about whether there are
better ways of organising our regional statutory committees, but
I do believe that they fulfil a very useful function and we would
be talking about ideas to make them work better. I believe we
would not wish to say they have no purpose. I am sure you did
not mean that in your question. I think they do have a very important
purpose. The relationship of them to the Agency and to other local
structures, the fit with other structures, is an interesting question
which I am sure we will talk about quite a lot in the coming years.
649. Can you give us just one example to encourage
them that their work was worthwhile?
(Sir John Harman) There are so many instances and
you are asking me to make a choice. If I take my own region, and
I have to be careful in my own region not to get too close to
the Agency structure because it will be seen as colonisation,
the comments we have had which have emanated from the regional
structures about, for instance, the SARP application, which I
think you will be familiar with, about the processes around the
DRAX application (why I picked two industrial examples, I do not
quite know) they are examples where the information, the views
or the local knowledge we gain through our committee structure
is extremely helpful to the way the Agency approaches these issues.
Christine Butler
650. Matrix management is not working, is it,
Mr Gallagher?
(Sir John Harman) I think I shall ask Mr Robertson
mainly to answer this question but I would say (as it avoids the
necessity of me commenting after he has spoken) I believe it is
working. The Board are very keen to keep their eye on this one.
It is one of those things that one holds under constant review.
I am absolutely certain that some form of matrix management is
necessary when you have a body which is trying to integrate its
approach at local level, integrate at customer level, and is yet
still driven quite hard necessarily by functional considerations
partly springing from the way that legislation is framed.
651. What has it achieved so far?
(Mr Robertson) It has achieved a number of things.
What it achieves is the ability to have experts support—
652. I am sorry, I want to know what it has
achieved so far—I am not questioning the concept—since
its institution, and thereby judge its success or otherwise, and
then we might ask whether you plan any changes?
(Mr Robertson) In simple terms what it has achieved
is the ability to organise and run a business with 10,000 people
in it.
653. It is all hunkey-dory, is it? Could you
tell me, how have the improvements come about? You could say that
before it was awful but now we have matrix management and we are
doing better in all these regards and it is very cost-effective.
Is that the case?
(Mr Robertson) I am trying to get a sense from your
question that matrix management is something unique to the Agency.
654. No, I am asking about the matrix management
you have put in place and what you say are the successes and if
you think it is so good it does not need changing?
(Mr Robertson) I do think it needs changing, but I
do think it has brought us consistency. I think it has enabled
us to manage in the front line of the organisation with the 120
over pieces of regulation that people have to deal with. I do
think it has helped us manage to so with some of the ring fences
on funding which we have. I do think it has helped us to ensure
that when we are formulating our policy in head office we get
the input of front line regulators in the sense of, what can practically
be done on the ground. From that point of view, I believe we have
had very significant benefits. Benefits to me will include the
fact I do not need to know everything about everything, but can
consult my specialist direct with colleagues to get their advice
before I make decisions.
655. Could it be more efficient?
(Mr Robertson) Yes, certainly. The one specific area
that is getting a lot of our attention right now is that when
we set up the Agency with its eight regions, which were largely
inherited from the NRA, we were de facto organised so there
were eight sets of specialists and supporters for every activity;
and I do not think it is necessary or even advisable for us to
try and support every activity eight times. That is something
we will be looking at as we develop our environmental protection
around the integrated pollution, prevention and control legislation.
Mr Benn
656. We have had a lot of evidence criticising
your "Hall of Shame"—you published a list of people
who had been fined. Do you think that is a fair criticism, or
would your response be, "Well, they would say that, wouldn't
they"?
(Sir John Harman) I said earlier on that I was interested,
not wholly but primarily, in the environmental impacts that our
activities have. Certainly the Hall of Shame is an example of
us acting beyond the statutory remit—interpreting the statutory
remit to get a particular result. I think there were very good
points made at the time, and have been made since, about the rather
crude nature of assembling the court fines for prosecution for
companies. I can absolutely confidently state that that has had
the effect of creating a great deal more attention in those particular
board rooms, and in board rooms in general, to the importance
of environmental protection, and the importance of companies'
performance in that regard. Therefore, I think we have gained
a number of ends which have been not just legitimate but desirable.
Therefore, I think it has worked. However, we have been listening
quite hard. I personally met the Chemical Industries Association
and this matter, as you might expect, has come up. We do listen
very carefully to what industries say. We also published a Hall
of Fame. Human nature being what it is it did not attract quite
the press attention that the Hall of Shame did. We do need to
listen to them and talk to them about what measures are appropriate
to use; but we believe very strongly in putting all information
about environmental performance, including where companies have
been convicted of breaking the law, into the public domain and
letting people make their own decisions. We think it has been
a powerful, if somewhat startling, innovation, but perhaps the
one implied the other.
657. When we visited your headquarters last
week you had a lot of information which you demonstrated to us
extremely impressively. Can we take from that, and given the answer
you have just given, that you do intend to continue to undertake
this role of developing performance indicators and publishing
them in order to influence behaviour? You said right at the beginning
of your evidence, this is one of the things you are seeking to
do.
(Sir John Harman) Yes, thank you for taking me back
to that earlier point, because I think it is important. The Agency
must be a reliable, authoritative source of knowledge. You have
just pointed out that we have a tremendous amount of data—that
is not quite the same as information, but we are also quite good
at turning that data into information. It is my view that by being
able to present that publicly, the public being able to feel this
is authoritative and reliable, it is almost the single most powerful
thing we can do in terms of future environmental improvement,
and in terms of driving public perception and public awareness
of the state of the UK environment. If I am to behave in this
post, and the Agency to behave as I have described it earlier
on, it is an absolute necessity that we continue to develop that
availability of good information, but it has to be sound; the
minute we stop providing reliable information then people will
stop listening to us. We have to make sure we are reliable and
the data is accurate. I think it was largely a political rather
a technical question.
(Mr Robertson) The one question of accuracy I would
add is using fines as a measure was of limited effectiveness,
not just because it is crude but because the fines themselves
are very low and do not reflect, in our view, the environmental
impact of the pollutions that take place.
Chairman
658. You want much higher fines?
(Mr Robertson) Yes, we want much higher fines. Thank
you.
Mrs Ellman
659. Does the Agency have a view on GM foods?
(Sir John Harman) We have a very limited view because
our statutory remit is very limited in this area. That is not
an excuse for not having a view, but there are other agencies
who do have a statutory remit and it is important we work together
with them. Our view is that we wish to apply a precautionary principle
to the question of whether genetic spread can take place in the
case of GM crops, for instance, which I think is the main point
of this question; and the effect on biodiversity, the effect on
local ecology around those sites, and particularly on water ecology
of course (which is where our main responsibility lies) is something
we would wish to know rather more about and we think the country
should know rather more about. The food safety aspects and other
ecological aspects, obviously we have taken advice from, listened
to or left it to, other agencies concerned.
(Mr Gallagher) We support the view that English Nature
takes.
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