Examination of Witness(Questions 1-7)
TUESDAY 11 MARCH 2003
DR ANDY
CLEMENTS
Chairman
1. Can I welcome you, Dr Clements, to our session
today. We obviously have to make progress because of the timetable
that we work under, and rather than have correspondence going
backwards and forwards between ourselves and different people,
we felt it would be useful to have this session. It also enables
us to get several things on the record of these proceedings. Could
you first of all indicate what your position is, then I have a
couple of questions to ask you, and if there are any points you
feel have not been made in response to the questions, by all means
make them then.
(Dr Clements) My name is Dr Andy Clements,
and I am English Nature's Director for Designated Sites. I am
responsible for all of English Nature's programmes to do with
protected sites such as Sites of Special Scientific Interest and
international sites. Our protected sites network does include
canals and land owned and under the responsibility of British
Waterways. As well as having responsibility for designated sites,
English Nature is the broader government adviser on matters to
do with nature conservation and biodiversity.
2. Thank you. Could you outline the nature of
your concerns about the planning stages of the Water Grid PPP
project, in particular the apparent lack of opportunity for you
and others to comment on the environmental implications of the
project.
(Dr Clements) I would first of all like to preface
my comments with being clear to the Committee today that currently,
as of today, owing to meetings we have had with British Waterways
up until now, we have no further objection to the Government's
proposal to amend British Waterways's statutory powers to enable
the implementation of the Water Grid PPP. To refer to the earlier
consultation responses from English Nature, where we highlighted
some environmental concerns, we have had concerns in three areas.
The first one relates to the strategic assessment of water resources.
As I said in my introduction, English Nature is not just concerned
with designated sites; we are concerned with the health of biodiversity
and the wider environment. We feel that large-scale and long-distance
water transfers, which could occur between catchments, have the
potential to be damaging to the environment. In the early stages
of this proposal, it was our understanding that the proposal might
entail such large-scale and long-distance transfers, so we raised
the general concern that we felt that aspect of these proposals
needed some wider consultation. If I deal with each of the three
things and how English Nature's view has moved on to date, that
might be helpful to the Committee. In this first case, our view
now is that first of all, we understand that the Water Grid PPP,
in its own development, for reasons to do with commercial and
engineering as well as environmental aspects, no longer contemplates
large-scale long-distance water transfers. As the proposal has
developed, Water Grid itself has become more locally focussed
and more sustainably focussed, so it is now our view, having been
able to talk to the parties involved, that those initial concerns
are not concerns that we maintain for this proposal, and those
concerns have effectively been addressed for English Nature.
3. Can I just interrupt you? I understand that
you are making that point in the short term, and that your worries
have been removed. Are you satisfied that, if this goes through,
in the long term they cannot do what you feared they might have
been able to do?
(Dr Clements) Yes, we are satisfied. In the long term
more generally, one of the other threads of what I wanted to say
this morning in response to your invitation is that there are
lessons to be learned from this process. We believe that, because
of those wide-ranging ecological concerns, it is important in
future consultations for English Nature to be able to make its
view known at an early stage in the consultation process, about
strategic level water resource management. The second concern
we had surrounds the environmental appraisal that was undertaken
in the process. I would hasten to add that, once again, this has
been resolved in our recent meetings with British Waterways, so
there is no continuing concern about this point. But the point
is that British Waterways, in its process to develop the proposals
for finding a joint venture company partner for the PPP, did undertake
an environmental appraisal, which for a variety of reasons was
not available to English Nature for us to comment on. I suspect
that, had that information been available to us, we would not
have been troubling the Committee with the broader range of environmental
concerns that perhaps we are today. Once again, whatever that
misunderstanding was between English Nature and British Waterways,
that has been resolved. We have now seen the environmental appraisals
that were undertaken, and we are satisfied on that concern. Once
again, as a lesson to be learned for the future, English Nature
would say that the environmental appraisals that were undertaken
were perhaps not quite as broad as we would have liked them to
be. Had we been in that process earlier, we would have been able
to advise British Waterways of that. That is why I introduced
English Nature in the way I did at the beginning. There is some
misconception about English Nature being concerned only with designated
sites and not with the wider environment. We do appreciate that
British Waterways took the Environment Agency fully on board during
the consultation process. We know that the Environment Agency
saw the environmental appraisals that were done, and we now know
also that British Waterways accept that it would be useful to
have English Nature in that process if it comes around again.
That is a lesson learned that we wanted to get across.
Brian White
4. Is what you are saying really that there
is a danger with consultation exercises that it is the "usual
suspects" who reply to them and not necessarily everybody
who needs to be involved?
(Dr Clements) I am not making that general point.
The point is specific to this consultation. On the whole, of course,
English Nature is very happy with the opportunity to comment on
appropriate consultations to government. If I put my hand up for
English Nature and mention the things that we did not do quite
right on this, we may well have misunderstood the very restricted
nature of the consultation regarding this reform of British Waterways'
regulatory powers. That brings me on to my last point, the third
point. The Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000, which amended
the Wildlife and Countryside Act, places additional responsibilities
and duties on public bodies, and those are quite wide-ranging
and also specific to designated sites. The way those are implemented
is through s.28 of the Act, and there is a range of responsibilities
laid out. Our initial concerns, once again, were that a change
in British Waterways' powers and responsibilities and duties,
and therefore its status, and the involvement of a private company
in a public/private partnership, a joint venture company, might
make the implementation of those duties and responsibilities more
difficult, less clear than now. This is a developing area; it
is new; the Act was only passed in 2000. English Nature are still
working with what we call s.28 public bodies to identify responsibilities
and duties, and to make sure that we have relationships which
enable those to be delivered easily and clearly, and in this case,
where the responsibilities and duties of British Waterways were
changing, we had a concern whether that would still enable adequate
control and implementation of s.28 duties and responsibilities.
Once again, we are fully convinced from our meetings with British
Waterways and the work we have done ourselves in English Nature—as
I say, this is new and developing—that those particular
parts of the Countryside and Rights of Way Act will still apply;
it will be clear and transparent that British Waterways retain
control over the waterway itself, and have the duties and responsibilities
in most cases. Even where a particular circumstance suggests that
the private company is the responsible body, s.28 of the Countryside
and Rights of Way Act will still apply to them. So the third point
was the point about continuing to be able to control and implement
responsibilities and duties under other environmental legislation,
and we are convinced that that is safe.
Chairman
5. Your answers obviously anticipated a lot
of my second question, which is no problem, but it related to
the meeting that you had last week with British Waterways Board.
Would I be correct in saying that you found that meeting useful,
and are there any concerns you still have in mind about what has
happened or what might happen in future?
(Dr Clements) The meeting was very useful. It was
a very positive meeting. We met Andrew Jessup, who is the Chief
Executive of the new private partner, and a number of the people
sitting behind me here today. As I say, it enabled us to make
a lot of progress on the issues that were concerning us, so I
can convey that progress to you today. So it was a very positive
meeting. I have no further concerns following that meeting. Those
three issues have been dealt with with respect to this consultation.
I have been able to mention to the Committee that there may be
some lessons to learn for the future, which I think is a positive,
forward-looking approach. Perhaps the other positive thing is
that actually, there may be benefits to the environment through
this proposal. We were able to understand much more clearly what
the private partnership will deliver in terms of projects and
the way water is used, and we see benefits in terms of the more
sustainable use of water, and we see benefits in terms of local
projects delivering solutions at the local level. Because the
intention is to use water more sustainably, in the local situation,
you can have water taken out and put back in, you can have the
use of grey water, fit-for-purpose water quality as opposed to
everything being demanded at potable quality. Those considerations,
we feel, are benefits to the environment. I certainly wanted to
mention those as positives alongside our initial concerns, which
have now been resolved.
Mr Havard
6. You say you no longer have concerns about
the current commercial arrangements, but the order, as I understand
it, gives the flexibility and the opportunity for entering into
different arrangements in the future. Are you still content that
the protections that you think should be there will be there?
(Dr Clements) I think so. The points I made about
the Countryside and Rights of Way Act and s.28. We do have some
analogous relationships to deal with in other sectors, for instance,
Defence Estates, and each of those is different, and we just have
to get into a position where we are talking to the players involved
at an early stage to be able to set up clear relationships between
all the different bodies in the process. My initial concerns are
very much resolved now because of the dialogue we have with British
Waterways about this issue, alongside the more traditional dialogue
we have with British Waterways, where they would expect to engage
with us just on designated sites. The broader dialogue now means
I am sure we will be able to understand those relationships at
an early enough stage in the process to enable them to take account
of our concerns.
7. Is there any other point you would wish to
make at all?
(Dr Clements) No, thank you.
Chairman: I know it has been a brief session,
but the one thing you will appreciate under the regulatory reform
procedure is that this Committee does not view it as a fast track;
it is a second track, which gives the Government the opportunity
of pushing things through that they might not under other regulatory
processes, but we do want to ensure that there is proper consultation
and scrutiny and protection, and we have to judge things quite
clearly by the Act that is laid down. Thank you very much for
coming along and presenting things to us so clearly this morning.
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