Examination of Witnesses (Questions 180
- 194)
WEDNESDAY 12 FEBRUARY 2003
MR JONATHON
PORRITT, PROFESSOR
TIMOTHY O'RIORDAN
AND MR
SCOTT GHAGAN
180. Because of course you are right: it is
really rather difficult for what I can call a conventional government
department headed by a conventional group of politicians and civil
servants to get this kind of message across.
(Mr Porritt) Yes, it is extremely difficult.
Mr Ainsworth
181. So what evidence have you got that the
department is taking seriously your point about third party endorsements
in the presentation? Do they really want to pursue the old policy
of turning up in a bowler hat and saying, "I am from the
Government. I am here to help"?
(Mr Porritt) I have no evidence. We have
mooted it. It came up in a meeting and it was not instantly dismissed
as completely insane, but I have no evidence that it is being
taken seriously and we have not done a serious contribution to
that effect yet, which we would like to do.
Ian Lucas
182. Would you welcome a role in the promotion
of DEFRA's policy, if they came to you and said, "We would
like you to be involved in promoting this concept of sustainability
that we are also promoting"? It sounds like you have a common
agenda.
(Mr Porritt) It is very interesting,
your wording of that question, though. Would we welcome a role
in promoting DEFRA policy?
183. Yes, I understand.
(Mr Porritt) Probably not. Would we welcome a role
in promoting sustainable development? Probably yes, but we have
never discussed it in all honesty. As you may recall, it was not
in our remit to begin with. I think we welcome it but, boy, would
we be determined to secure some proper for funding for it, because
the idea that we could do it off the back of our budget at the
moment is clearly something that is not possible.
Chairman
184. Mrs Beckett announced the UK strategy for
sustainable consumption and production last week at a conference,
and this follows up, as you know, the Johannesburg commitment
to have a ten-year action plan. What do you think of that?
(Mr Porritt) We were encouraged by the
speed with which the department moved to bring forward a strategy
on sustainable production and consumption. There have been ongoing
discussions since the publication by the PIU of a report on resource
productivity about the sustainable production end of things, but
what we are really nervous about, because the time frame seems
very short to bring forward this strategy,—
185. Sorry—can I press you on that? Do
you mean the time frame since Johannesburg?
(Mr Porritt) No, for the production of the new DEFRA
strategy. Did they not give it a time frame by summer, if I remember
rightly?
186. So it does not seem very long.
(Mr Porritt) It does not seem very long, which obviously
slightly rings alarm bells in our heads that we are going to get
a re-hash job rather than what is required.
187. Of course this is pretty fundamental, is
it not?
(Mr Porritt) Absolutely fundamental. There are two
aspects to this challenge. One is on the sustainable production
end of it which is in itself challenging but government has already
made some preparatory steps in getting their heads around this.
DTI, for instance, is very actively contemplating what indicators
would be required for the economy nationally more effectively
to drive a sustainable production sufficiency strategy.
188. Is this DTI or Treasury?
(Mr Porritt) This is DTI. That can be done. I am told
that there are still ongoing difficulties about interpreting what
resource productivity really means between Treasury and DTI and
that this has led to some delay in following up with a proper
response to the PIU report because there still has not been a
proper response to that PIU report, as I am sure you are aware,
Chairman. However, our assessment would be that that is a manageable
challenge but a much more complicated area is sustainable consumption.
To do something thoughtful and really productive at this stage
on sustainable consumption—I am not sure how that can be
done in what are in effect a few weeks, because it is a very difficult
area of policy. It does go to the heart of lifestyles, coming
back to that whole issue about behaviour, about ways of recommending
a change in society. If that bit does not get at least as much
attention as the rather easier techy bit of resource efficiency,
then we will not end up with an integrated sustainable production
and consumption report. We will end up with a sustainable production
report with a sustainable consumption add-on.
189. Maybe it will just be a gallop round the
course.
(Mr Porritt) Yes, it may be one of those.
Gregory Barker
190. We have got Margaret Beckett here this
afternoon. Across the whole scope of her remit what do you think
we ought to be particularly pressing her on?
(Mr Porritt) A question that I would
love to prise away at a bit is this whole question of whether
she feels that the institutional mechanisms available to her are
sufficient to drive across government sustainable development
strategy. I think it would be interesting to find out a bit about
her latest thoughts on the green ministers because obviously there
is a mechanism where, under that bit of the Cabinet Committee
structure, green ministers meet regularly to explore different
aspects of departmental behaviour but it is essentially a housekeeping
role, as you know, and there is limited scope for more strategic
inputs at that level. Our reading of that is that the work of
that committee will be enhanced by the new paper on sustainable
procurement which is imminent. We have been involved in that Sustainable
Procurement Working Group and have been able to advise on that,
and we see that as an extremely significant aspect of improving
the Government's own performance in this area. The green ministers
can do so much but is that really sufficient? What new mechanisms
are going to be required to move this stuff forward? That is where
I am still—
Chairman
191. As you said, who can stop Alistair Darling
saying what he said yesterday? Only the Prime Minister. Mrs Beckett
or another Secretary of State cannot really stop another Secretary
of State saying something they want to. That is the difficulty,
is it not?
(Professor O'Riordan) This is where we
come back to this notion of an obligation, some kind of much more
coherent framework through which ministers' policies and actions
have to go. This notion of an obligation is already in place to
some extent in Wales under the Government of Wales Act. It is
also beginning to be seen more clearly in Scotland where, again,
with the devolved administrations, there is a greater sense of
buy-in to cohesion and to the integration of the social, environmental
and economic aspects. In the English context it is much more difficult
to achieve. One of the most important points to stress is how
this can be delivered better in England when we now have some
really rather exciting leadership, certainly in Wales, and I think
increasingly in Scotland. Secondly, there is the broad audit function
of how you run the whole national economy, the idea of a spending
review where that should be looking at sustainability in some
clearly defined way, the way in which the Audit Commission carries
out its business (and officially the Audit Committee here) and,
when local authorities in particular are auditing, whether they
are audited in such a way as to reinforce sustainability with
clear signals of good performance if they meet these things rather
than the kind of muddled way things work in current times. A broader
question which I notice the French are taking on board is the
whole idea of governing for sustainability, a whole new notion
of how do we design government for sustainable development? The
French in my understanding are going to take this to the G8 meeting
at the end of this year. This takes me on to your enquiry about
the EU and where the EU might be going in terms of obligation,
a set of indicators and a more enriched appraisal mechanism. What
we are saying is that forms of government need to be clear that
when anyone is thinking about something or delivering something.
There are three basic requirements: they have met this co-ordinated
understanding of the natural system; they are creating a better
society, people are well off, they are more secure, they have
a greater sense of their own identity within communities; and,
thirdly, they have livelihoods which are likely to be retained
as a result of this and not something which drops away after ten
years. These processes have to be not only consistent but also
they have to be constantly adapted to changing circumstances.
That is what I would like to see coming out of the proposed European
Union Convention as a framework. We need to play our part in this,
and eventually the G8 too, because it is part of the whole process
of running the global economy. What we are saying in the Sustainable
Development Commission is that we need to think about governance
in a much richer context of providing these levers and allowing
people in a whole host of different ways to get on with creating
effective partnerships. You do not want something which is nanny-state
nit-picking down to the level of Motherwell or Brighton. It should
be designed to be much more flexible at that point. Getting the
framework right so that there is a lot of opportunity and variety
and great choice in this country to explode into sustainability
is what the Commission thinks we should gasp beyond this phase
of the post-Johannesburg agenda.
Joan Walley
192. That is exactly the point I was coming
to because it has brought us full circle. We started with the
failures of the United Nations machinery to produce through Johannesburg
anything other than an end-of-pipe solution, so it comes back
to the effectiveness of the United Nations and the structure of
the governments and the individual roles and responsibilities
that individual governments have (and I am sure the European Union
as well) in terms of establishing a UN framework that could work
for sustainable development. It is the full circle, is it not?
It is how we get our own government departments with the leadership
and ownership to feed into that as well. Would you agree with
me on that?
(Professor O'Riordan) If they do not
do that it comes back to what the Chairman is saying. Mr Darling
can say what he says and he is not accountable to any sustainability
obligation. If there was a framework of the kind we are talking
about he could not say what he said because he would not have
met the sustainability obligation. We care about what happens
to aviation fuel when it is 7% of the CO2 emissions of this nation.
It is something on which we would then say, "Unless you have
actually gone through this exercise you cannot pronounce",
and if they then pronounce, having gone through the exercise,
and they are clearly not taking it into account, this Committee
would be after them like a pack of hounds. I think it is important
that there is a mechanism which gives you that forensic scrutiny
so that people do not even think of doing that.
(Mr Porritt) I think the EU dimension will be helpful
in this regard. Quite clearly the Commission is now intent on
bringing forward the Commission's trading scheme. Early indications
are that this is going to get significant support from the UK
and other member governments. To me this will provide a context
in which a lot of the climate change related international agenda
can begin to be thought through. We see this as a wholly positive
sign. I know some people have reservations about emissions trading
but for us it is a mechanism that enables business to engage often
on their own terms in ways that they do not find easy when you
are talking about a climate change levy, and to a certain extent
that will make it harder for people to pretend that this is not
something in which we are all going to be very involved in the
short term. Aviation will have to get involved in that international
EU emissions trading scheme. The absurd thing is that the airlines
know that. They are already working out exactly what this is going
to mean for them and how they are going to handle this stuff.
The idea that a Secretary of State waves his hands and says that
all this cost internalisation for aviation is ridiculous will
sound to them so unworldly because they know they have got to
start thinking about cost internalisation processes. Let us not
get into the technicality of emissions trading versus levies and
taxes etc, but they know that aviation is going to be swept up
in a cost internalisation process in the next three or four years.
I think the EU in that regard gives a very genuine support to
the kind of leadership positions adopted by the UK Government
here.
David Wright
193. That touches really on corporate responsibility,
does it not, looking at large organisations, such as the airline
industry, and then acknowledging that they have a corporate responsibility?
One of the things that seemed to spill out of the summit was perhaps
a weakness in terms of setting a corporate responsibility and
accountability agenda. Do you think that the Government pushed
that agenda hard enough at Johannesburg? Do you think that what
came out of Johannesburg was positive or have we a lot further
to go?
(Mr Porritt) I will start, but Tim was
present at a lot of those debates in Johannesburg. There was no
meeting of minds on that issue between the UK delegation and the
NGOs that were pressing for some kind of statutory or mandated
minima for social responsibility around the world. It is an axiom
in the UK Government that that which can be done voluntarily is
always going to be preferable to that which has to be done mandatorily.
There is an assumption that most of these corporate social responsibility
issues can be driven by voluntary processes of one kind or another,
and there is an absolute clear definitive preference for a voluntary
approach to company law in our own country, to social responsibility
internationally, and so on. They have made that very clear. The
NGOs are deeply sceptical about that for all sorts of reasons.
It allows for free rider problems. It does not really create a
benchmark which drives performance across the whole world, and
they are persuaded that there has to be a well-regulated set of
minimum standards for social and ethical behaviour around the
world. That is not a view shared by government. The difficulty
for us in the UK is that we are home to a lot of companies that
are in the forefront of this corporate social responsibility agenda.
We sometimes forget that and it is very easy to be critical of
any of these large multinational companies, but some of the companies
here in the UK are miles ahead in terms of their thinking and
practice of many other companies in the rest of the world, whether
it is other European companies or America, let alone south east
Asia where much of the debate about social responsibility is seen
as an academic irrelevance. We get a bit deluded because if we
look at some of our really good performers in the UK and we say,
"Oh, that is good. We could do that across the world",
whereas this is a quite small cohort of really progressive leading
companies who have got hold of this stuff, can make it work, it
does not damage any of their commercial or competitive issues,
it is perfectly compatible with all that stuff, but that is not
reflective of the business community globally; very far from it.
What the NGOs are saying is, "Look, that is fine, that upper
tier of the cohort of leadership companies. That is okay, but
what about the vast mass of business impacts around the world
on people's lives and the environment which is still going largely
unmanaged and certainly not managed voluntarily?"
194. The debate sounded good and lively out
in Johannesburg on that score.
(Professor O'Riordan) It did, but there was a distinction
between responsibility which was a voluntary arrangement and accountability,
which is a much more formal governmental NGO arrangement. There
was a terrific debate about that over ten days and the debate
shifted towards the accountability model with a lot of difficulty,
but nevertheless with progression and with a common degree of
achievement, and the business community, which was very widely
present in a number of meetings, particularly towards the end,
did show themselves to be seriously committed to the idea of improving
governance overall. They wanted democratically accountable governments
to work with them; otherwise they were not sure that they could
get all of this achieved. At the same time there are a lot of
stories about businesses that do not do terribly well when they
work with government at all levels and certainly not in many parts
of the world, so there is an uneasy set of relationships between
businesses which really want to do well with government and with
people and show that they are doing so. This is what Jonathon
touched on, this vanguard, this relatively small group. But far
too many businesses are not quite there on that and do not want
too much scrutiny. If you are pressing the Secretary of State
on this area, corporate responsibility needs to be underpinned
by a strong governmental framework which is seen to be transparent,
which is seen to be delivering in relation to targets which are
agreed to and set. That is not the case right now and it did not
come across in Johannesburg to the degree that was expected.
Chairman: Thank you, all three of you, very
much indeed for the session this morning. It has given us a lot
of food for thought which we will be displaying in front of Mrs
Beckett, I hope, this afternoon.
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