Examination of Witnesses (Questions 180-190)
MR JEFF
WEST AND
MR STEPHEN
TROW
WEDNESDAY 3 JULY 2002
Paddy Tipping
180. You made some comments in your evidence
about the historic environment and how well DEFRA are equipped
to deal with that, and I think you say that the number of landscape
architects has reduced, there are very few archeologists in the
Department; that does kind of highlight difficulties in work,
for example, around historic parkland, or the creation of heathland,
or the Fens. Is there a debate taking place with the Department
about this?
(Mr Trow) Yes, it is a mixed picture. We have been
pleased to see, in fact, the number of archeologists within the
Department enhanced, and that was as a result of direct lobbying
and persuasion on our part. We would have liked to see that process
go further, and there is every indication it may have done were
it not for some of the financial problems relating to foot and
mouth disease. We are disappointed perhaps that landscape architects,
as a discipline, are declining within the Department. The Department
has a major role to play in the preservation of a whole series
of aspects of the historic environment, including historic parkland,
through the agri-environment schemes, and other rural development
schemes. So it is an issue on which we continue to press the Department.
They are well aware of our views, and we feel it is a gradually
opening door, I think.
181. It has got a low priority, but it is increasing?
(Mr Trow) I think it has got a low priority; perhaps
what is missing within the Department, in terms of the historic
environment, is a strategic appreciation of how it fits into their
work, rather than an operational appreciation. At officer level,
they are well seized of the fact it is something they do, it is
an important part of their work and, indeed, a statutory requirement
on them, in terms of the Agriculture Act.[4]
I think, at a higher level, there is no strategic view on what
they should be doing about the historic environment and what their
objectives and their targets might be. And I think one thing we
would welcome from DEFRA is some sort of statement of their role
in that respect.
182. So it is much more across the board thinking,
linking this together?
(Mr Trow) Yes. It is also fair to say that this influence
has largely been restricted to the Land Use and Rural Affairs
Directorate, and we feel perhaps has not been recognised in the
Environmental Protection Directorate.
Mr Mitchell
183. You urged the Department to wider consultation
and more effective relationships across the range of Government,
particularly on planning and tourism matters. Is the relationship
presently unsatisfactory?
(Mr West) It could certainly be better. We have always
been in a very interesting position in our role supporting the
historic environment, because the things we are interested in,
and interested to see promoted within Government, spread right
across the responsibilities of a large number of Government Departments.
That has always been the case (and, in practice, however the Whitehall
cake is cut, it is bound to continue to be the case), there can
be no one Department that has overall, complete responsibility
for all the various policies that can impact very directly on
the historic environment. So the need to join up thinking and
to improve interdepartmental co-ordination and to get obviously
the things we are concerned with up the overall Whitehall agenda
is, for us, always critical. So I would not say that DEFRA have
been particularly poor on that front, and I certainly have seen
a general improvement across Whitehall, as I said, over the last
three or four years; but there is still a lot further to go. We
were disappointed, for example, after our evidence went into the
Committee, with the publication of DEFRA's Sustainable Development
Strategy, that although there was a clear opportunity to say something
really quite interesting about the historic environment, DEFRA,
as I said, had signed up to "A Force for our Future",
the Government statement on the historic environment, there is
very little reference to it in here at all. It is not a huge setback
but it is a missed opportunity, and I think that is characteristic
of where we are with the Department at the present.
184. I wonder, would you be better yourselves
as an agency of DEFRA than an agency of Culture, Media and Sport?
(Mr West) I think, probably not, for exactly the same
reason. I think all the agencies which have to take this across
the Whitehall view, in a sense, have to work, and it is true of
DEFRA's agencies, it is true of English Nature and the Countryside
Agency and the Environment Agency, as well as us, we all have
to work with a whole lot of Departments, not just a single sponsoring
Department. We are in the process of our Quinquennial Review,
at the moment, the Stage One Report was published earlier this
year, and it did actually address this issue, and said clearly
that, at the moment, although clearly we needed to continue to
work and improve our relationships with a whole range of Government
Departments, including DEFRA, client sponsorship was not and should
not be an issue at the moment, that we were rightly sponsored
by DCMS, but this is something that would need to be kept under
review in the future, and I am sure that is something we are very
happy with and are very comfortable with.
Paddy Tipping
185. You described "Foundations for our
Future" as a lost opportunity, a missed opportunity; what
input did you have into the creation of that document?
(Mr West) Very little.
(Mr Trow) I think, like our colleagues in the National
Trust, we did not feel involved in the production of that; whether
that is because we missed the relevant opportunity, we certainly
were not aware of it, it may well be a reflection of where it
originated in DEFRA, perhaps.
186. And what have you done since the publication
of the report, because you have picked it up and you have opened
it and you have seen glaring holes in it, what have you done now?
(Mr West) The first thing we are doing, in a sense,
is appear before this Committee, it is very recent. But we are
certainly following that up with the Department, and indeed with
our sponsor Department, because, again, it has been recognised
in the Quinquennial Review, as I am sure, rightly, that DCMS have
actually got to, as it were, fight the corner for the historic
environment within Whitehall, and not just leave it to us to fight
from slightly outside. So I hope very much that DCMS will be following
up the same issues. DCMS, I should say, is very active at the
moment in considering its own Sustainable Development Strategy
and with the whole issue of sustainable development, and we have
been very closely involved with that, I have been involved personally
with that, and we are very confident that we shall get something
really quite positive out of DCMS on sustainable development,
and I know they are talking to colleagues across Whitehall about
that.
187. So are you telling us that progress about
the historic environment is being made across Whitehall, but it
is slow and it is attritional; how would you put sustainability
as a kind of agency that is a little bit removed from Whitehall,
what would your prescription be to put sustainability more at
the heart of Government?
(Mr West) I think it has to be at the heart of Government,
for all the obvious reasons; the long-term view is essential,
the need to address social and environmental concerns which are
so critical to quality of life, as well as purely economic ones,
and to reconcile the obvious conflicts that may emerge, has to
be central to the whole of decision-making. I think a witness
earlier today, I think I heard them say that it was important
that the lead on this, the priority within Government on these
issues, really had to come from Downing Street, both from No.10
and from No.11. It is beginning to happen, but, I think, until
and unless the whole idea of sustainability and sustainable development
is seen as important as, for example, addressing the competitiveness
agenda, it will always be down the agendas and the priorities
of individual Departments, and it really does have to be at least
as important as competitiveness, not to the exclusion of that,
but they have to run side by side.
Diana Organ
188. An interesting comment you made there about
the fact that DCMS itself is making great steps forward on its
part to play in sustainability, and yet DEFRA is saying that they
are the ones that are leading across Government. How much do you
think there is interaction between this unit in DCMS that says,
"We're leading the way on sustainability," and DEFRA;
is it coming from DEFRA, or are they all acting, going back to
the silos, into the silo mentality?
(Mr West) I am sorry; if I gave the impression that
they were acting in silos then I should retract that, I certainly
did not mean to give that impression. All Government Departments
are being asked and expected to look at their own policies from
the point of view of sustainability and sustainable development,
and all of them are being asked to produce their own strategies,
that is common across Whitehall. DCMS are playing their part in
that, they are looking at us, they are looking at all the other
things that they are concerned with. Most relevantly to DEFRA,
of course, they are looking at the whole question of sustainable
tourism, in which we have an interest, but it is an aspect of
sustainability which very much affects DEFRA's rural agenda as
well. So all that is being looked at, as it should be, within
DCMS, but, as I understand it, I know for a fact, they are talking
to colleagues across Whitehall about that.
189. And just to go back, because I was interested
in your comment that you made about "Foundations for our
Future", were you asked to take part in that?
(Mr West) As Steve said, if we were, we missed it.
We were not aware that we were being asked.
Chairman
190. You are to be congratulated as the only
witnesses up to now, in this inquiry, who have not come in waving
the Curry Report as a Book of Revelations. The Curry Report does,
of course, lay out a sort of project for the achievement of "public
goods" in agriculture policy, and since then the Fischler
recommendations for the mid-term review of the CAP are following
down a similar line, of linking the payments to the achievement
of certain environmental protection, and other things. Surely,
this is rather a good opportunity for you to start to introduce
into this debate your concept of your particular public good;
what sort of public good? If I wanted to go back to my farmers
in the Yorkshire Dales and I wanted to explain to them the sort
of public goods which we wanted preserved, and I invited you to
come along, how would you describe to them, in the way they farm,
the sorts of things that you would want them to do and you would
want them to preserve, and for which they would receive some sort
of acknowledgement?
(Mr Trow) I think the overarching concept has to be
the beauty of landscape quality, and under that the whole issue
of diversity. I think there is a great danger of the homogenisation
of the landscape generally. We see the historic environment as
playing a vital role in underpinning that diversity. In terms
of particulars, in terms of archeological sites, for example,
farming is probably now the single greatest cause of loss of archeological
sites of any agent; and the agri-environment schemes that we are
engaged with, with DEFRA, are an ideal way of assisting farmers
to take sites out of cultivation, for example, and manage them
appropriately. We are equally interested in issues pertaining
to the traditional rural building stock. As you can imagine, with
Lord Haskins' suggestions about the numbers of farm units that
may disappear over the next 20 years, there is a major question
about what the future of this important vernacular building stock
is and how it can be most usefully used both by farmers and by
the wider rural community in the future; and some quite important
unanswered questions about how landscape and quality of landscape
actually act as a motor for tourism, and for other forms of economic
development in the rural environment. So I think the argument
is a circular one. I think we want to see farmers rewarded for
land management, of course, both for archeology and the built
environment, and we feel that this will actually bring rewards
in turn through improved rural development and improved tourism,
back to those communities.
Chairman: I hope that you will make quite strong
representations in that regard, because otherwise we are going
to end up with a whole series of badly-defined environmental schemes
which are extremely intensive in resources to manage and deliver
and rather difficult to calculate the public good, so the more
we can actually start having public goods we can see and feel
and know they are there then the better it will all be for all
of us, in my view. But I hope it has not been too painful, escaping
from the protective wing of the Department for Culture, Media
and Sport, and whatever else it does; but thank you very much
for coming to this Committee today, it has been brief but very
helpful.
4 Note by Witness: The Secretary of State has
a duty under Section 17 of the 1986 Agriculture Act to achieve
"a reasonable balance" between "a) the promotion
and maintenance of a stable and efficient agricultural industry;
b) the economic and social interests of rural areas; the conservation
and enhancement of the natural beauty and amenity of the countryside
(including its flora and fauna and geological and physiographical
features) and of any features of archaeological interest there;
and d) the promotion of the enjoyment of the countryside by the
public." Back
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