Select Committee on Environmental Audit Third Report


The Committee's impact and follow-up work

27. Assessing the influence of a Parliamentary Select Committee and the impact of its recommendations is a subjective exercise, prone to frustrations. The link between a recommendation and Government action is often indirect. Our Reports are firmly based on evidence gathered from a range of independent witnesses and the Government itself. Our recommendations are influenced by that evidence to such an extent that few can be accurately described as original. These difficulties have been compounded this year by the delays in the Government responding to our reports which means that in some instances we do not yet know even the Government's initial opinions, let alone whether it is giving serious consideration to change. For us, in particular, where moving towards sustainable development requires a cultural change as much as individual policy initiatives, positive developments are often incremental and can take many months to come to fruition. A thorough analysis of the impact of recommendations made in the last Parliament was published last year and the comments we make here are intended to build upon that work.[12] Moreover, the thematic pattern of the Committee's work and its insistence on follow-up means that it is appropriate for us to comment on recent developments connected to the Committee's earlier work as well as to highlight some achievements over the last 12 months.

28. On environmental taxation, we have consistently welcomed the progress the Government has achieved. But in our review of the Government's 2001 Pre-Budget Report, we argued forcefully that the Treasury still lacked a coherent strategy for implementing the Statement of Intent on Environmental Taxation which it originally issued in July 1997. We were therefore pleased and surprised that the Treasury should announce in Budget 2002 a review of its environmental tax strategy. The relative secrecy and limited scope of the review were, however, somewhat disappointing. We plan to comment more on these issues when we report early in the new year on the Government's latest Pre-Budget Report.

29. The Committee in the last Parliament criticised both the Comprehensive Spending Review and, to a lesser extent, the Spending Review 2000 for not taking adequate account of sustainable development. We welcome the requirement that, as part of Spending Review 2002, each Department was required to prepare a Sustainable Development Report as part of its bid — despite our frustration over the confidential status accorded to these reports. Overall we agree with the Green Alliance that the 2002 Spending Review was the "greenest yet", both in terms of process and outcome.[13]

30. One example of our longer term influence is the Committee's 1999 Report on water pricing. For example, in November 2002 DEFRA published "Directing the Flow" which sets out the Government's long term priorities for water policy. We recommended that such a document should be available at the outset of a Periodic Review to inform those engaged in the process.[14] We are also pleased to note that the Water Bill, currently before the House of Lords, gives the water regulator a duty to contribute to the achievement of sustainable development thereby in effect implementing our recommendation that the Director General of Ofwat should be directly accountable for ensuring that Ofwat makes a positive contribution to the Government's sustainability agenda. Our recommendations have also been highlighted for discussion in some of the preliminary Review consultation documents. We are particularly encouraged to see that Ofwat is seeking to respond to the criticisms made about the approach it has previously employed to assess water companies' investment needs for maintaining assets such as pipe networks and treatment plants. [15]

31. At the time of the 2001 General Election, the Green Ministers' Committee became a formal Cabinet sub-committee. We have persistently demanded that sustainable development should indeed be placed at the heart of Government, and to this extent we welcome the transition. The new status of the Committee has practical consequences which assuage previous concerns of ours. It will, for example, have the power to set formal targets; and attendance by Ministers will be obligatory. However, the fact that its proceedings - even the number of times it meets each year - will now be shrouded in the cloak of secrecy, under Cabinet Committee rules, is a significant negative factor, and one which will make it harder for us to assess its effectiveness.

32. Our oral evidence session in May 2002 with the Minister for the Environment on the Sustainable Development Headline Indicators resulted in improvements in the presentation and interpretation of the Indicators even before we had made our Report to the House. In June 2002 DEFRA published an updated Quality of Life Barometer leaflet. This summarised the current position for the headline indicators. We were pleased to note that this version of the barometer incorporated a number of presentational changes which the Committee proposed in its oral evidence session with Mr Meacher.

33. As well as helping to influence the Government's approach to the World Summit on Sustainable Development, DEFRA has acknowledged that our first inquiry, which looked the preparations being made, "helped to raise the profile" of the Summit.[16]

34. In our First Report of 2001-02 we commented on the difficulty of measuring performance against targets when the baseline and methodology for measuring were unclear and when the nature of the targets may subsequently be changed. We recommended that the Government should submit an explanatory memorandum to us for each sustainable development target that Ministers set. We subsequently discussed with DEFRA's Sustainable Development Unit how this could be taken forward and proposed some practical criteria which should be included. We were therefore pleased to note that the Framework for the Government Estate, parts of which were first published in July 2002, now incorporate a commitment that all departments should, within 4 months of announcement of each suite of targets in the Framework, make public a strategy showing how they plan to deliver targets. While this commitment does not entirely fulfil our recommendation - either in remit (as it is limited to operational aspects of performance) or in the requirement to inform us - it is at least provides a foundation on which we can build.


12   First Report from the Environmental Audit Committee, Session 2000-01, Environmental Audit, the First Parliament, HC67. Back

13   Minutes of Evidence taken on 11th December 2002, Q. 2. Back

14   Seventh Report, Environmental Audit Committee, Session 1999-2000, Water Prices and the Environment, HC 587, para 94 Back

15   Ibid, para 208. See also "Maintaining water and sewerage systems in England and Wales: Our proposed approach for the 2004 periodic review", Ofwat, May 2002, para 5 [check this hasn't been updated after consultation] Back

16   Minutes of evidence taken before the Committee on 20 November 2002, Q. 1. Back


 
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