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Oral evidence Taken before the Environmental Audit Committee on Wednesday 2 July 2003 Members present: Mr John Horam, in the Chair __________ Memorandum submitted by the Home Office Examination of Witnesses Witnesses: FIONA MACTAGGART, a Member of the House, Green Minister, MRS MARGARET ALDRED, Resources and Performance Director General, MR RICHARD TIPPETT, Environmental Issues Manager, and MR TONY EDWARDS, Head of Buildings and Estate Management, Home Office, examined. Q1 Chairman: Welcome, Minister, and if I may say so congratulations on your appointment. We probably will have a division, I am afraid, in about ten minutes' time so I will ask colleagues and the Minister, if she is agreeable, just to go and vote and come straight back. Thank you and your officials too for producing a memorandum so quickly. We appreciated that. As you know, it is an issue which we have looked at before in relation to the Cabinet Office and the Brazilian timber which they used in that. It is part of our responsibilities, as you may be aware Minister, not only to question you on the Government's policies and the targets which you have set but also to follow it through. That is the audit part of our role. Is there anything you would like to say by way of a brief statement in addition to the memorandum you have submitted before we begin to cross-examine you? Fiona Mactaggart: I wanted to bring the apologies of the Home Secretary, who sent me as the Green Minister, as his deputy, to speak to you today and just to introduce the team of people here, if I may. Margaret Aldred is the director general of resources and performance within the Home Office. At the end Tony Edwards is our head of buildings and estate management and Richard Tippett is the department's environmental issues manager. I also wanted to say briefly to the Committee that I am glad to give evidence on the issue of our new building in Marsham Street. The incident which provoked you might be one which is not necessarily the best example of it but I do feel really excited as Green Minister that this new development is going to be a real opportunity for an environmental improvement both in our use of resources in the department and also in a neighbourly sense in that the new building we are going to construct will be a huge advantage in that part of the world compared with what was there before. Chairman: I am sure that is true! Thank you very much indeed. Q2 Mr Ainsworth: Welcome, Minister. There is no doubt that almost anything that replaces what was there before will be a great aesthetic and environmental improvement. However, as you know, terrific controversy has centred on the perimeter fence and whilst many people were delighted that this country became the first to embed sustainable procurement policies for timber across Government in 2000 the whole policy appears to be in tatters as a result of presumably carelessness over the procurement of wood for this particular fence. It would be interesting to know and I would be grateful if either you or your officials could tell the Committee when it first became apparent that timber from illegal and unsustainable sources had actually been used in this contract? Fiona Mactaggart: I think the first thing to make clear is that the issue was not one of oversight, to start with. Q3 Mr Ainsworth: So it was deliberate? Fiona Mactaggart: If I could continue and then do ask further questions. Most of the plywood panelling which was used to surround the site and in the walkways and so on in the site was re-used; it was panels which had originally existed. There was additional panelling which was purchased and in the contract requirement that we had with the developers AGP. There was a clear obligation upon them to ensure that timber which was purchased for use in the new building conformed to the Home Office's environmental policy and that meant that it had to be sustainably logged timber and that in addition its provenance had to be able to be certificated. The problem was that the contract did not specify that for timber which was used by the company to remain in the ownership of the company, as opposed to timber which was going to be used within the building itself. This was a flaw in the contract but the contract had been written at a point when that had not been thought of honestly as a requirement within Government policy. We signed off the contract in March 2002 and that was before amendments to the Government sustainable purchasing policy in relation to timber, which made it clear that not only should we ensure that timber which is purchased for use within the building and in the construction of the building which is going to stay part of the building which will come into the ownership of Government but also that timber which is used by the company which is constructing it and which will remain in their ownership - and that was not covered by a contractual requirement. Q4 Mr Ainsworth: The contract was signed in March 2002 but in March 2001 we have the Prime Minister saying that we promised that as a Government we will only purchase timber from legal and sustainable sources and it was a clear breach of that promise, was it not? Fiona Mactaggart: No, it was not, because this was the division, all the timber which is purchased which will end up in the ownership of the Government in this development. So anything which was to be used in the building itself has been subject to this very clear clause, which said that not only should we make best efforts but that it should happen. It was a very clear clause. There was timber to be used by AGP, who are the developers, which will remain in the ownership of AGP. For example, the hoardings, which belongs to them, some of the stuff which had been used for shuttering, for concrete and so on would continue to be in their ownership and that has not been covered by that obligation. Q5 Mr Ainsworth: It should have been, should it not? Fiona Mactaggart: It has become clear since then through updates of Government policy that it will be from now on, and indeed we have been talking very carefully to the developers to ensure that that does happen but I do not think it conflicts with what the Prime Minister said. Q6 Mr Ainsworth: I think that is something the Committee will take a view on, but could you actually answer the first question I asked, when did the department first become aware that there was a problem with this timber? Mrs Aldred: After the Green Peace invasion of the site. Q7 Mr Ainsworth: So it was after a member of the public had walked past the site and seen a sign up saying "Timber from Indonesia"? It just strikes me that you are not particularly thorough. Given the importance of this issue, the commitments which the Prime Minister has made, the policy which has been instructed across Government to allow this sort of thing to happen seems sloppy. Fiona Mactaggart: We have a very robust monitoring arrangement on those parts of the contract where we had a contractual obligation and if the timber which had been purchased for the building itself had had that it would not have been possible for it to have that provision; that is very strongly monitored. You are quite right that this part of the contract was not monitored and that is a flaw and it is a flaw which has been recognised and we have been working with DEFRA to ensure since this episode that purchases which are made by AGP or sub-contractors which will remain in their ownership will in future be monitored, but until this point we did not believe and we did not contractually have a responsibility to monitor it. Q8 Mr Ainsworth: You did not have a contractual responsibility? Fiona Mactaggart: No, we did not. Q9 Mr Ainsworth: Were the model contract on sustainable procurement and the timber procurement guidelines, which is set out in the Green Buyer's Guide, applied when you awarded the original contract? Fiona Mactaggart: Yes, they were. Q10 Mr Ainsworth: It is simply that those provisions were not applied to parts of the contract where you were not going to end up owning the timber? Mrs Aldred: They did not explicitly make it clear that timber that was going to remain in the ownership of the contractor should be covered. Q11 Mr Ainsworth: Was that a problem with the Green Buyer's Guide or was it a problem specific to this particular contract? Fiona Mactaggart: It is a problem across Government and I have been in correspondence since this episode with the Minister in DEFRA to highlight how our experience has revealed the need for more explicit guidance to Government departments that where timber is not to be purchased for the departments or for Government but might be purchased by a developer to use in the process of delivering their obligations that there needs to be more explicit guidance about how to do that, and there will be. They have recognised that and I have had a response from them precisely about that point. Chairman: We will break for the vote and if you could all come back as soon as possible, please. Committee suspended from 4.00 pm until 4.10 pm for a division in the House Q12 Gregory Barker: Minister, I listened very carefully to the very precise replies that you gave to Mr Ainsworth's questions and it would appear from your answers that technically the contract was upheld but would you not agree that while the contractor may not have breached any specific clause within the contract there has been a massive breach in the spirit of the contract? Fiona Mactaggart: You have paid me the compliment of saying my replies were very precise and this is my first experience in this role and I am not sure that they always have been. For example, I might have allowed the impression that I accepted that the timber that was used was illegally imported to rest and actually it was legally imported; the question is what its source was. We do have a certification of legal importation. The question is - and it is a serious question and I think the Committee is right to focus on this question - about the provenance of the timber. I do not think that this is a question of breaking the spirit of the contract. I have gained a very clear impression that AGP as the developers in this PFI are determined to demonstrate best practice as far as is possible. Indeed, for example, before this episode that we talked about AGP on their own initiative had made a trial purchase of plywood from Finland which is coming in from forests which are certificated under a European sustainability certificate in reflection of the fact that they want to do work which is to the best standards and to find new supply chains which can enable them to do that. So I do not think that this is an example of an attempt to hide behind the letter of the law. There really was genuinely a belief that this matter was not covered by it and that it might help the company to find new sources of supply, to improve its purchasing because they recognise that Government, who is their client in this particular contract (and I believe they would hope might be the client in other contracts), would expect that kind of thing and were looking at ways of getting good value timber which met the high specifications which would be in that part of the contract which we had not included but which in future we will; that timber which was for their own purposes in order to fulfil the contract, not timber which would end up in our ownership or in the building itself. Q13 Gregory Barker: So they fully understood what the objective of the contract is? Fiona Mactaggart: Absolutely. Q14 Gregory Barker: And then knowingly and willingly imported timber that they knew to come from unsustainable sources? Fiona Mactaggart: I do not think that is fair at all. They have not been able fully to trace the timber which came from Indonesia. Q15 Gregory Barker: Is that not the point? Fiona Mactaggart: Exactly, it is the point and it is an important point and it was about a third of the timber purchasing for their own purposes. But I think we all have to recognise that we have been going through a process of massively improving the awareness within the construction industry of the issue of sustainable logging. If we go back to the time, for example, that this contract was let we were not at the point where we are now. If we go back to the point at which it was signed we are not at the point where we are now. It is a process of change and I do not think it is fair to imply that there is a cynical disregard of the ambitions of the Government in doing this. What happened reflects the state of play within the industry at present. This building is going to be an important landmark. It is going to be in many respects at the cutting edge of good practice in terms of its purchasing policies, in terms of its impact on the environment and so on and I think that what the company was doing was to try to go beyond what it thought were the requirements of the contract, beyond the requirements that we had put into the contract. We are also now looking at going beyond that and have an agreement with them now that any future purchases which they will make for their own use, although this is not required in the contract that we signed with them, will be from sustainable sources which we can monitor in exactly the way that is written into the contract for timber which is going to be used in our building. Q16 Gregory Barker: I must say I find it very difficult to make the leap of intellect that says that they were trying to go the extra mile and went the extra mile by sourcing illegally logged timber. I simply cannot join that up despite your very long explanation. Fiona Mactaggart: I am sorry, they continued their normal purchasing practices. Q17 Gregory Barker: You said they were going the extra mile. Fiona Mactaggart: No, what I am saying is they continued their normal purchasing practices for about half of the timber which they used, in fact for all of the timber that they used, but some of that purchasing we did not have any mechanism to monitor because it was not in the contract and we did not seek to monitor it. Q18 Gregory Barker: But you can ask them when you are tendering, "Where does your timber come from?" You do not have to have a contract to do that, do you, just when you are talking to the developers? That is what your job must be, Mr Edwards? Mr Edwards: Indeed. What the Minister is trying to get across, I think, is that we were not asking that question in respect of the timber used in the construction process. Q19 Gregory Barker: So you did not have an overall sustainable approach, you just focussed on certain narrow areas and did not actually have a macro view on the whole thing? Mr Edwards: We were discussing it in general terms but we were not asking them precisely where the wood came from and what was going on precisely. Mrs Aldred: Could I just clarify one point? I think that we are very concerned about this issue but I think the suggestion that we know that this is illegally sourced timber is one that we do not have an answer to at the moment and I think that is quite important. The timber was legally imported. It was purchased by the contractor. They have not been able to provide, as they have undertaken to do, the certificates of provenance in the time that we have had but I think that certainly it has not been demonstrated conclusively that this is illegally logged timber and that is something I think we do need to take account of. It is not illegal to buy timber from Indonesia. Q20 Gregory Barker: It is rather like somebody saying, "I didn't know these goods were stolen, I just bought them off a dodgy fence." Mrs Aldred: I think that is not quite the case. Q21 Gregory Barker: But you should know where the timber is coming from, should you not, if you are being a responsible purchaser? It is not good enough to say, "I didn't know," if you do not ask the questions. Fiona Mactaggart: We do know where the timber has come from. The Indonesian timber is about a third of the timber which has been purchased by the company for its own use. Of the rest of the timber which has been purchased in this way nearly half comes from France. The one per cent that I have been talking about comes from Finland and there is some which comes from Brazil as well, which has potentially the same problems that you have asked about. The company was moving towards, in its purchasing - having, like most companies in this field, simply bought on the open market - because of its experience, because they recognised our eagerness in the contract to ensure sustainability and traceability of sources they were trying to improve that. That was one of the reasons why the Finnish experiment was developed. They were recognising this. The timber that we are anxious about is not the majority of the purchasing that they had already done, although it is serous and we have now put in place a mechanism for us to monitor that as well, which we had not previously done. Q22 Chairman: Is this now standard throughout all your purchasing across all your contracts in all your new developments throughout the country that you include the contracts for part of the construction which is not within your eventual ownership? Fiona Mactaggart: That is the issue which has come out of our investigation. If you recall, as soon as this matter was brought to our attention at the beginning of June my predecessor as Green Minister asked for an investigation into how this happened and this lack of clarity about at what stage the Government's timber purchasing requirements should bite in a contract was the thing which became very clear. It is a matter that I have corresponded with DEFRA on and following that correspondence it will from now on be included within contracts in the way which has been highlighted by this discussion. It will not have been in contracts which existed before. If we had known about this problem we would not have had a contract which put us into the problem which we are now discussing with the Committee. Q23 Joan Walley: Welcome to our Committee, Minister. Could I just check, at the very outset you gave the apologies of the Home Secretary. Were they apologies for him not being here in person or apologies and regret for the incident that has happened? Fiona Mactaggart: They were his apologies for not being here in person. Q24 Joan Walley: Do I take it that the department does regret what has happened? Fiona Mactaggart: I think you can see it from our actions. In a way I do not regret it, let me be honest, because it seems to me quite clear that as a result of what has happened and as a result of our concern about this we will be in a position where in future Home Office contracts conform not just to what we thought was best practice but what we now recognise that unless one ensures that the contract covers materials which are used in fulfilling a contract which do not end up in the ownership of the department then one can not be using our purchasing powers as effectively as we could to ensure sustainable use of the world's forests. I regret that we got it wrong but actually, let us be quite honest, I think sometimes making a mistake can help to make Government see the gaps between the intentions of policy and its delivery more clearly than otherwise they would. Our intentions were good. Our delivery was not as effective as it should be and as a result of the correspondence I have just had with DEFRA I am sure that throughout Government we will have a better delivery on this policy. Q25 Joan Walley: I accept that but I just wonder how many times this same mistake has to be made because it was a mistake which was made within the Cabinet Office. Surely that should have been the wake up call? Surely that should have led, through the Green Ministers' mechanism, the Home Office to make sure that that mistake was not going to be repeated? Fiona Mactaggart: I think you are right to say that you should not necessarily get repeat opportunities to make mistakes and I do not think that we should require them but I am not certain that it was clear to most departments, following what happened in the Cabinet Office, that the purchasing issue was a purchasing issue about materials which were not in the ownership of the department and that was where we fell down. Q26 Joan Walley: I accept what you said earlier on to Mr Ainsworth's questions, that the contracts had being drawn up at an earlier stage and that time has moved on and you have tighter procedures in place now, but in a response to a parliamentary question from me in December last year on Marsham Street your predecessor stated that contract management arrangements will provide information to ensure that timber is sourced from suppliers in a legal and sustainable way. I just wonder if you could clarify for me what that actually means? Fiona Mactaggart: That refers to the timber that we are confident will meet our ambitions rather than this section which I have been discussing with your colleagues where we have not had procedures in. It means that all the timber which is being used inside the building will have to be purchased in conformity with our environmental policy, which states quite clearly that we should be able to trace the provenance. In addition, that is being monitored by a monitoring process in the building. In addition, we are requiring that in this building we seek to get an excellent rating under the BREEAM, the Building Research Establishment criteria, which requires that inside the building inappropriately logged timber is not used. So that I know there has already been discussion about the wood which is going to be used in veneers and so on, which is mostly American oak, that where chipboard is being used it will be wholly recycled and so on, in order to ensure that all the wood which is used in the building is absolutely in conformity with our Green Purchasing Policy. Q27 Joan Walley: Given what you have just said, could I just ask how you reconcile what subsequently has happened with a further reply that I got on 3 April, when I was informed that Home Office policy does not require reporting on timber used during construction? Mrs Aldred: I think that is exactly the point, if I may. The answer that you were given on 16 December referred to contract management arrangements in good faith. They were our arrangements for managing the contract which had the model clause in it, which was extant at the time the contract was signed and which referred to the timber which would be used in the building which we will occupy. The answer that you were given on 3 April I think demonstrated that we did not believe that the policy covered timber used by the developer in construction and which they would retain their own ownership of; and indeed we still do not know how long they have been in ownership of some of the timber which has been used in the construction. So I do not think there is any inconsistency between the replies. What they demonstrate is that we had an understanding of the policy which we have clarified as a result of this and we are now very clear and DEFRA is very clear and has advised us and other Government departments that it should have been applied to construction and in future it will be applied to construction. Q28 Joan Walley: If I could just move on. You mentioned the monitoring which takes place earlier on. What evidence did you rely on to ensure yourselves that the timber in use on the Marsham Street project was from legally sustainable sources? I am not sure what monitoring processes you actually had. Obviously I appreciate that we are talking about some considerable time ago. Are you confident that those monitoring processes are in place? Mr Edwards: Distinguishing again between timber in construction and timber that is going in the building, so far the developers have actually purchased no timber that will end up in the new building. They are beginning to acquire sources of that now and we are talking to them through our various contract management arrangements about that. They will be explaining to us exactly where the wood is coming from and we will be making sure that we are happy that that is legally and sustainably sourced. Q29 Joan Walley: Would you agree that it would be much more preferable to use locally sustained domestically sourced timber for the kind of temporary construction work we are talking about rather than to use scare, expensive and unsustainable tropical timber? Fiona Mactaggart: That is in effect what we have put into place. The reason, I suspect, why it is being used is because in practice in the market the timber is not expensive and that is part of the problem. We actually need to try to ensure that we have robust mechanisms to ensure that where the market provides timber which ought to be expensive very cheaply the option of getting sustainable timber is enforced because one of the reasons why unsustainably logged timber is used for these temporary purposes is that because it is produced in the way that some of it is it can be very competitive in the market. So it is not actually expensive in terms of price. It is expensive, as you point out, in terms of the environment however, which is why we need mechanisms in place to ensure that we can prevent it being used in Government buildings. Now we have put them in place in a way which will be monitored so that not only is it not used in Government buildings but it is not used by people who are working on Government buildings. Mrs Aldred: If I could just add, the Government procurement policy and EU procurement policy does mean that we cannot stipulate domestic sources. Joan Walley: Thank you. Q30 Chairman: Could I just clarify what you said a moment ago, Mrs Aldred. Are you saying that it is Government policy and has been Government policy that wood procured, even though it remains in the ownership of the construction company, should be purchased from sustainable sources but the Home Office is not aware of this? Mrs Aldred: That is exactly the point I was making. Chairman: Thank you very much indeed. Q31 Sue Doughty: Just to clarify my understanding of the events, when I asked a question in the House and also in conversation subsequently with the Home Secretary it was implied to me that it was not actually AGP but the sub-contractors who had obtained this wood. Who obtained it and where do we stand now with sub-contractors on that project? Mr Edwards: The principal sub-contractor which procures the wood for this project is a company called Bouygues. It is a large international construction company. We talk to them on a daily basis because there is a very close relationship between the company and AGP, the firm we are actually in contract with. In effect Bouygues is a shareholder of AGP, so in a way they are the same organisation from a global point of view. So we have very close contact with them as sub-contractors. Mrs Aldred: If I could clarify, Bouygues were the firm that created the special purpose company which is developing the site for Annes Gate Property and they are a part-owner of Annes Gate Property. So in a sense what is happening is that the special purpose company is sub-contracting with one of its parent companies for this. Q32 Sue Doughty: I am not going to labour this point too much but I am worried about it because I was very concerned about the response I got in the House at Prime Minister questions. Why was the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary, who was advising him, so dismissive about the fact that it was a sub-contractor and it was only being used for hoarding? In other words, almost as if this is an arm's length arrangement and why should we know what is happening in a sub-contract when in fact Bouygues and AGP - and I understand the point you are making - are very closely interrelated and that in fact it was within the core contract essentially given the relationship between these two organisations. How did we end up with an answer being given in the House which was rather dismissive of the whole situation? Fiona Mactaggart: I did not see it as dismissive and he did, as I understand it, write to you afterwards. I think the answer the Prime Minister gave reflected the view which we have been describing, which was that in the written contract we did not have in place the sustainable purchasing and monitoring mechanisms that we had had for the rest of the contract. Therefore, what you term the dismissive approach of it just being hoardings was a reflection of the fact that we had recognised the need for robust systems in terms of sourcing the purchase of timber which was actually going into the building but at that point, before the investigation which my predecessor required, we had not recognised that we needed to have equally robust processes for timber which was for the use of the company which was fulfilling it. Q33 Chairman: Although that was Government policy? Fiona Mactaggart: Yes, exactly. Q34 Sue Doughty: I understand that point thoroughly. The point I am making is that they were dismissive about the fact that it was a sub-contractor who had obtained this timber. What that is leading me to say is have we anything else lurking around within this contract where there may be other sub-contractors who are not fully familiar with the policy and may be supplying timber which is not acceptable? I appreciate that in this case Bouygues are in fact not as much of a sub-contractor as other sub-contractors but nevertheless there is this whole situation where if it is not the first contract what is happening behind the contract all the way down? How much do we know about it? Fiona Mactaggart: Looking at what the Prime Minister said in the House I do not think that he was dismissive. I have not seen the Prime Minister's letter to you which followed that up but I think we can be confident that in this contract there is no such risk. It might be useful for me to raise, when I go to my first meeting as a Green Minister, the risk that there might be in other departments' contracts and ensure that they have within their contractual agreements sufficiently robust processes to ensure that any sub-contractors were properly monitored in this respect. I would be perfectly happy to do that and I think it might be a very useful thing to do. Q35 Sue Doughty: Thank you. I think this arose actually from some comments made by the Home Secretary from the bench but certainly it sufficiently worried my constituents that I had one on the telephone complaining about the whole event because it had been trivialised on the Government front bench and so they wondered why I was asking the question. That was the impression which was given to people watching on television and they were wondering why I was asking this question when the front bench was trivialising it. So I will leave that point on the table that this was the impression. It does not follow through on the Hansard but it was sufficient for people to phone me up and say, "What are you up to? Why is the Government not taking this seriously? Are you asking a serious question?" So all I am saying is that that is the impression the Government gave which was fed back to me. Fiona Mactaggart: I am sorry your constituent got that impression. The words that the Prime Minister used did not convey that. Often, as you know and as we all know, the television presentation of Prime Minister's question time is actually misleading in some ways because of how it comes across and I am sure that the Prime Minister did not mean that. I have now looked at his letter and I do not think his letter reflects that either, but I hope that my response to what you have just said will help to demonstrate to your constituents and to everyone that this is a matter the Government takes very seriously and will ensure as effectively as it can across the piece that our commitment to sustainable purchasing, to making a real improvement in the impact of what Government does on the environment is inherent in everything we do. For us it is a real pity that this new building, which will deliver real environmental improvements, has so far got a name just in respect of one issue. That is a pity because if we look at our energy consumption --- Q36 Sue Doughty: I think we are coming to one or two other aspects on that, Minister. So are we now in a position where we have any verification about the legality and sustainability of the remaining timber which was used on that site for hoardings and shutterings? You said that the Indonesian timber was a third of the total timber. What about the other two-thirds? Fiona Mactaggart: On the proportions of timber, there are two purchases of timber that we do not have proper certification for to sources. I do not know if they are done in two purchases but two places. This is the 30 per cent which came from Indonesia and the 23 per cent which came from Brazil. In both cases we have certification about legal importation but we do not have satisfactory certification about sustainable logging. The rest of the timber, 46 per cent of it, is softwood from France, from the Vosges mountains, which is an area which is subject to a sustainable forestry management agreement. There is the 1 per cent I have referred to from Finland and in addition there is some softwood which I think is providing the standing that these plywoods stand on and is holding them up. There are 2,917 pieces of sawn softwood, which is from Austria and that again is from a forest which is certificated under the Pan-European Forestry Certificate. Q37 Sue Doughty: Thank you. When we are talking about the certification schemes that you are using the Environment Minister a year ago told us that various schemes were being evaluated. Are you in a position - perhaps your officials would like to answer this - to say that you know which certification schemes you should be using, you know the evaluation and you are applying the correct certifications schemes to wood which is being used? Mrs Aldred: If I can start that and perhaps Tony Edwards can continue. I think this is a very difficult issue and I think that is one that Mr Meacher recognised and which this Committee itself in its sixth report recognised. I understand that DEFRA has sent you a reply to that report very recently. That is precisely one of the reasons why that reply accepts that DEFRA should have a central point which can help and provide advice for this because it is a notoriously difficult area to ascertain which certificates are covering which aspects. That is something where we welcome that reply and intend to make full use of it but I think that we, like many other purchasers of timber, do find it quite difficult to say which certification regimes - we know that some are robust but there is not an approved list and that is something where we are looking to DEFRA to develop the policy which we can all use. Do you want to add anything, Tony? Mr Edwards: Just that I think there is already in the public domain a proposal to set up a central point of expertise on timber for the use of people like ourselves in procuring buildings and that will be a DEFRA initiative. Mr Tippett: One of the things that they are planning to do is to actually issue departments with guidance on certification schemes and those which will be approved. Q38 Sue Doughty: Right. Moving forward, I appreciate that we are still doing some development work, which I think is welcome. I would rather that it was done properly and well and put in place. Minister, you made some comments about this building actually being in other ways a good building, a sustainable building, an asset and yet it has already had criticism. It has been criticised on its environmentally damaging air conditioning system, it has got this wood which was used for throw-away purposes and, in November 2002, that the air conditioning has HFCs. Five other departments in their buildings were looking at sustainable air conditioning while the Home Office was using air conditioning systems which are not sustainable. What worries about this is that on the one hand the Home Office is saying, "Here we have this building, which is going to be a credit to us, it is going to be sustainable, it is going to be a landmark in its own way," and on the other hand there seems to be a string of bad news about this. Is there any more bad news that we should know and get out of the way and then can we draw a line? Fiona Mactaggart: At the point when the building design was done the HFC air conditioning system was the most sustainable which people were aware of. Q39 Sue Doughty: Could you give me a date for that? Fiona Mactaggart: But later on ammonia-based systems were seen to be less environmentally damaging. The difficulty of changing from the HFC-based design to the ammonia-based design was enormous because of the way in which in this building we have made a much denser use of the floor space and the cooling system depends on a set of infrastructure which could not fit without very substantial expense in changing the design or without probably breaching some of the requirements of Westminster Council in terms of height of the plant changes to an ammonia-based system. So it was looked at after the design had been completed. I was not involved in that process because I was not a Minister at that time but I have looked at the papers about it. It clearly was a very serious look but it was not possible to do. There are other things which might be not good news, I do not know. For example, one of the things about the building is that we have chosen not to use in this building water-less urinals, which is one of the ways in which we have helped to reduce water consumption in the present Home Office building because we took a decision to have toilets which were more useable by either sex in order to increase the flexibility of the building and there was a choice between those two things. So that might become an issue. I do not expect it to. It was something which was reflected upon and it was decided to be used in this way so that we can have a building which can have a good equal opportunity policy, which is less rigid in terms of how it deploys itself. So the problem about predicting future issues is that if you could have predicted them obviously they would not become issues. Mrs Aldred: Could I just answer the question about when this was decided. The design was prepared in late 1999/early 2000 and I think it is fair to say that there was a conscious decision that this would be a building which had air conditioning for both noise reasons and for security reasons and because it was a public-private partnership we specified that we required air conditioning. Both of the bidders who produced designs offered us designs with HFCs and that is what we selected. I can say, because I was involved in the process, that we did look seriously last year at whether we could change that and change the nature of the system and, as the Minister has explained, the implications were simply too large for us to do that in terms of the impact on the number of people who could occupy the building. That is an issue for us because, as I am sure you are all aware, the Home Office does have rather a heavy agenda and it has grown and it needs every one of those spaces and probably more for our current size. It would have been very expensive to change that and Westminster had given us an envelope for the building which they were not prepared to change and therefore it was a straight choice between the number of people we could accommodate and the cost and possibly delaying the project and sticking with the design which we had selected earlier when we had invited best and final offers for the PFI. Q40 Sue Doughty: It is my understanding that for a number of years in fact the Government's own procurement guidelines have specified that HFCs should not be used on the Government estate. I think this goes some way before the 1999 original design and bear in mind that other departments were signing contracts within the same time-frame which were saying, "We don't want HFCs in our air conditioning." It is worrying to me that we are in a situation where these guidelines are not being understood. Mrs Aldred: I think the Government guidelines were not quite as prescriptive as you suggest. Mr Tippett: The guidelines say that HFCs should only be used where they are safe, technically feasible and cost-effective and more environmentally friendly alternatives do not exist. So those are the guidelines. Q41 Sue Doughty: And other alternatives do exist? Mr Edwards: The decision was taken on a value for money basis by in fact both bidders, but in this case it was AGP's engineers, that this was the appropriate solution for this building on the grounds that have just been read out. It came down, from their point of view, to a very complicated technical judgment which I have discussed with them on a number of occasions. One of the alternatives to HFCs, the one which is most prevalently considered is the ammonia chiller plant. That does have a sustainable safety case but it is a dangerous gas and this particular system has a dispersed chiller system, which means there are chillers all through the building on each floor and that is an especially significant risk. It would be safe to put it on the roof but not to disperse it across the building. So that is why, having adopted that very energy-efficient solution, they found it extremely difficult to go for the ammonia alternative. I am getting into engineering terms here and I am not an engineer but that is the best I can do. Q42 Joan Walley: Could I just go on from there though because my understanding is that in the same time-frame there were other Government departments which were in the process of building other new-builds where they did have regard to the advice that was available in respect of the use of HFCs and did opt for alternative solutions. So why in a building where you say you want to have state-of-the-art beacon status, if you like, with the sustainability of the building processes did you not do what other departments have done? Why was this not something that was really looked at and disseminated through the Green Ministers Committee? Were these issues not brought to the Green Ministers Committee? What is the point of having a procurement policy which is not used because opportunities to build new buildings do not come along very often? Fiona Mactaggart: I think these issues were looked at. There is a number of very complicated things about this building. It was designed to produce an output in terms of warming and energy use of 10 per cent below the Government's best practice guidelines as a minimum and to seek a goal of 20 per cent below it. So in terms of our impact in global warming we are confident that this building will produce, despite the use of HFCs and so on, a very significant improvement on not just our present buildings but actually on what the Government establishes as its best practice guide. In order to achieve that on this site where the envelope was very tight in terms of the agreement with Westminster Council, where it was being done through a PFI and where companies were bidding to produce that the HFC-based system was the one that was signed up on at the beginning which could produce those outputs; and outputs is the thing which actually this Committee has been in the forefront of reminding the Government we should be concerned about. We did revisit it and it simply was not deliverable to produce one of the alternatives in this particular building. Q43 Joan Walley: Could I just ask on that, was that because of the PFI input? Were there special circumstances which were related to the PFI or is that irrespective of the PFI? Fiona Mactaggart: I think the special circumstances were the dispersed chillers, which have already been referred to and not being able to have plant which went up substantially. There are height issues with this building and other systems require - I do not know what they are called but things which go up higher and it is a problem. Q44 Mr Thomas: Was no air conditioning ever an option? Fiona Mactaggart: The reason why air conditioning was specified in the original contract was to do with noise --- Mr Edwards: Actually we did not specify air conditioning as such. What we specified was a particular temperature range and there were security considerations to do with the opening of the windows and the impact of things that I suppose I should not talk about in public. While this particular developer did actually look very closely at something called a mixed mode system, which would have been air conditioning at certain times and normally ventilated and centrally heated at other times, and concluded it was not feasible. So in answer to your question, that was the only occasion when it was specifically looked at. Q45 Mr Thomas: Just to be clear, was that looked at in advance of the contract being signed? Did the contract specify air conditioning? Mr Edwards: The contract specified a security requirement and a temperature and ventilation requirement, which the engineers concluded had to be delivered through air conditioning. You could argue semantics but we in effect specified air conditioning. We were offered, as I say, a mixed mode system, which we were very pleased about at the time but when it came down to it they felt it did not work and it was dropped. Q46 Mr Thomas: What is the Green Ministers' policy on air conditioning in buildings in general? Is there not a presumption against electricity-dependent air conditioning? We are sitting in a building which does not use that sort of air conditioning. Fiona Mactaggart: The presumption is about output and that is what we sought to deliver in what we are doing here. It is something which uses less energy, for example the heating system in the building will not cut in until the external temperature is very close to freezing because it is a very energy-efficient building and mechanism. So it is the output which is the focus for the Green Ministers, not a precise solution. Q47 Mr Thomas: Let us look at the outputs then because your predecessor in a Home Office letter to Greenpeace on 17 December 2002 about the air conditioning system said: "The air conditioning scheme selected by AGP will be highly efficient. It is expected to achieve a 10 - 20 per cent improvement on Kyoto Agreement best practice for energy consumption and CO2 production." Notwithstanding that HFCs are probably one and a half thousand times more climate change damaging than CO2 in the first place, could you say a little more to this Committee about the Kyoto Agreement best practice for energy consumption and CO2 production, which you stated you followed in your letter to Greenpeace on 17 December 2002? Mr Edwards: May I pick that up? We met Greenpeace after that letter --- Q48 Mr Thomas: It does not exist, does it? Just tell the Committee that does not exist. Mr Edwards: We agreed with them that the letter was misleading. What we were referring to was the best practice energy programme which came out of the Kyoto Agreement. Q49 Mr Thomas: Which is the Government's own best practice energy programme? Mr Edwards: Yes. Q50 Mr Thomas: So you would not now stand by that letter? You would accept that that letter, as you have just said, was misleading? Mr Edwards: In the sense I have described, yes. and we have told them we agree that. Q51 Chairman: Just finally on this particular issue, a Home Office official announced on 5 June that there will be an inquiry into the timber used in Marsham Street. Who will be undertaking this inquiry and when will you report? Fiona Mactaggart: We have had an internal inquiry and its conclusions have been reflected in many of the things I have said and particularly it focuses on ensuring that throughout Government and throughout the Home Office firstly we are aware of the need to ensure that our timber procurement policies do not merely apply to the timber which is used inside of a building but - and this is the matter which I have dealt within the first answer to this Committee - it also applies to timber which is used in the construction of a building. It is one of the reasons why I wrote to the DEFRA Minister about it and why we will be promulgating that within the agreement. Q52 Chairman: That is that you are adhering to Government policy? Fiona Mactaggart: Absolutely. Chairman: Fine. Let us move on to greening Government generally. I know Mr Wright wants to lead off on that. Q53 David Wright: Minister, I wanted to question you really on a series of questions about greening Government and this is based very much on the Home Office questionnaire responses published as volume 2 of the First Annual Report on Sustainable Development in Government, I think it was in November 2002. I understand you have got around 65,000 employees within the Home Office and indeed over 14,000 staff within central departments, excluding agencies and the Prison Service. You have got one and a third staff devoted to sustainable development issues. Why? Fiona Mactaggart: Well, it has improved since the point that you are quoting because centrally we currently have two and there is going to be an additional member of staff we are bringing in in order to do that. In addition to that, I think it is important to point out that the Prison Service, which is a large part of our estate, has a unit of three full-time staff who deal with the sustainable development issues. Q54 David Wright: What about setting up a separate Sustainable Development Unit in the main department to drive the agenda forward? Is that something you have considered in detail and is that an approach you would look at? I accept that in some senses you have got a mainstream thinking around green issues and if that is going to be your response how are you doing that? Fiona Mactaggart: I think there are two answers to this. First of all, in the Home Office units are normally bigger than three people and I think that we have what is in effect a unit but we just do not call it one. Looking at it as a kind of new person coming in, that is how I would describe what I see, but I do think that that is part of the answer because they were like a unit but Home Office units are normally seen as bigger than that. Secondly, I do think there is an attempt to make this more part of our policies throughout the Home Office and I think that that particularly connects with sustainability now going beyond conceptually merely things which are specifically environmental in terms of the impact on nature and so on to human development and so on, which is absolutely at the heart of what the Home Office does. If you look at sustainable development indicators there are some which the Home Office is the lead organisation on, specifically crime for example. There are others where we make a significant contribution in terms of social exclusion and so on, and these are part of the way that we go about our work. So as well as having a team of people not called a unit within the Home Office and a team of people called a unit within the Prison Service we also have other people who are working as part of their day to day job on ensuring that the sustainable development indicators are going in the right direction for Government, particularly for example on crime and so on. Mrs Aldred: If I could just elaborate on that. The unit sits with our Estates Management Unit in the central Home Office because of its origins and its original focus. Q55 David Wright: Is that not a dilemma in itself because there is a danger then that you are just looking at some of those estate management issues instead of screening all of your policy and development work in relation to environmental impacts, which is what I think the Minister was alluding to? Mrs Aldred: If I could go on. That unit reports to me. My responsibilities are resources and performance across the whole Home Office Group and I have other units which look at performance issues and indeed the unit reports to Charles Everett, who is named in this document as the director responsible, who is now responsible for our procurement policy, so I think there is a synergy there between what the unit does and some of his other responsibilities. I think that what we need to do is think about how in the round the Home Office addresses sustainability issues and I think, as the Minister said, we do have two of the framework requirements for which we are the lead in Government, which are crime reduction and fear of crime reduction and the voluntary sector. Those are two of the Home Office's seven aims. We have hundreds if not thousands of people who spend their time addressing those sorts of issues and where we have various considerable programmes. I think that the issue for me is where are the responsibilities of this unit best fulfilled and they have been best fulfilled as part of the Estates Management Unit. I am not saying that is the right answer for all time but that is where they sit at the moment. Q56 David Wright: I just want to follow up this issue about screening impacts and then analyse it later. I am a little concerned that in your Green Ministers Report and the Sustainable Development in Government questionnaire in fact you said: "To date a record has not been kept, largely because of the difficulty of identifying Home Office policies which have a significant environmental impact, and therefore justify the resources to carry out a full appraisal." My concern is you are mixing up appraisal with screening. It is okay to appraise projects. It is about fishing them out before they actually get to that point and understanding the impact. How are you improving that process? How are you trying to define and screen activity more effectively and can you specifically confirm whether the Prison Service is now screening all policies and programmes in relation to its work? Fiona Mactaggart: On the ministerial website we have exactly the point that you make, which is the requirement that policies should be screened and that we should not do an environmental appraisal on every policy because that is a big thing but that we should consider what the impact on the environment the policies will be. So I think we have got a framework within which that ought to happen. It does not always in every case and we are working on improving ensuring that it does where appropriate and I think that in fact the broadening of the sustainable impact measurements is very helpful to the Home Office because by putting us in a lead on some of them and by recognising that we as a department have a main responsibility in some of these areas in ensuring that our policies are delivered sustainably it becomes more the way we go about our business and in effect that is what you are getting at, why are we not confident that every time we go about our business we have looked at the sustainability impact. I think from our point of view the shift from Government reports on greening Government to Government reports on sustainability impacts has really helped us in the process of making that more explicit, more absolutely part of the normal way that we do this. I have been struck, in looking at the Prison Service, that they do have a good approach to these matters. They produce an explicit report on these matters every year. They do some ground-breaking things in terms of composting and some very innovative schemes. There is one in the wash where there is a partnership between Sea Camp, Young Offenders Institutions, RSPB, English Nature and English Heritage on creating a sea defence and bird reserve using the land to enormously enhance the environment around that camp and there are other examples in terms of using waste and so on where prisons are doing really some quite innovative things. They do report very explicitly on these matters and I think they have probably got rather a good story to tell on this question. One of the things about prisons is they are a very different estate. They are not like offices; people live in them and they need to do their business rather differently to much of the rest of the Home Office but I think they have done some quite innovative things. Four of our prisons have ISO 140001 certificated environmental management systems in place. They are using that experience, which has been quite expensive for those prisons to put in place, to see whether they can pilot some guidance to other prisons who might not yet be at a point where they can get that to nevertheless have best standards and so on. So I think the Prison Service is making quite significant progress on these matters. Mr Tippett: Could I just add that the Prison Service Management Board has agreed that policies and programmes should be subject to environmental screening and appraisal where appropriate and that applies to --- Q57 David Wright: When did they do that? Mr Tippett: January 2002. Fiona Mactaggart: The guidance was issued in January 2002 within the Prison Service. If the members of the Committee have not seen the Prison Service Reports could I perhaps pass them up? Chairman: I think we have got them actually but thank you for the offer nonetheless. Q58 Sue Doughty: Turning back to the department, we were talking about sustainability indicators and you mentioned some of the things you are looking at about the Experience Corps, the voluntary work. You have got a public service agreement in that area but what are you going to do to specifically build environmental objectives into that programme? Fiona Mactaggart: On our volunteering programme we have not required organisations who are sponsoring volunteering in different ways to do this in respect of the environment. We have required them to generate and to sustain more opportunities to volunteer. Some of them do that in environmental projects, some of them do it in projects to do with supporting public services, to do with child care and so on. I think it is appropriate that we try to sponsor voluntary action in all sorts of fields. I think if we were to request them just to be in terms of environmental schemes then we would limit it and I do not think that is what you are asking for either. Mrs Aldred: If you think it would be helpful we could let you have a memorandum on the activity and the expenditure which supports that programme over the last year and how much of it had actually been to support environmental projects. I do not have that information but we could certainly provide it. Q59 Sue Doughty: That would be very interesting, yes. As part of SR2002 you had to submit a Sustainable Development Report as part of your bid. Can you tell us something about the issues and objectives that you covered in that report? Did you have targets? Did you have specific objectives? Fiona Mactaggart: I am looking for my copy of it, which of course was an internal document. What the Sustainable Development Report did, which was produced for the Treasury during Spending Review 2002, was to look at the bids the department was making and address the sustainability issues. Most of those focused on the sustainability framework, crime reduction and volunteering. It was very useful in getting across the message to parts of the department that do not normally deal with these issues in a way in which they cared about because there was money possibly associated with it, which meant that they began (some of them perhaps for the first time) to start to think about sustainability and what the Home Office was doing in that respect. What the document did was look at each of the activities where we were seeking additional funding in Spending Review 2002 and look at where they would have either a positive or a negative impact on the sustainability framework and I think that the vast majority of them were identified as having a very positive effect on the sustainability framework in issues like crime reduction, volunteering and social exclusion, getting people back into the workforce, giving literacy and employment qualifications as part of the correctional services programmes and indeed help in equalities where part of the Spending Review 2002 debate was about how you address the almost uniquely disadvantaged position of many people in prisons in terms of help in equalities and the result of that was a decision over the period of the Spending Review to transfer responsibility for prison health care to the National Health Service and therefore mainstream prison health care. So there was a wide range of issues which were addressed in that particular element of the Spending Review 2002 process. Q60 Sue Doughty: Would it be possible for the Committee to have a copy of that? Fiona Mactaggart: I think it would be quite difficult for the Committee to have a copy of it because it was a document which was associated with our bid to the Treasury. As you will no doubt recall, there is always a vigorous debate between spending departments and the Treasury as to what the bid is and what the outcome is and I think there is not necessarily complete congruence between the two, so I think it would be difficult. We could give you advice on the issues that it covered. Sue Doughty: That would be very helpful because this Committee does find some difficulty in understanding the transferency of that whole process, not only with your department but with others. So you will understand that we are interested in seeing how that whole process is working so that when we are talking to individual departments it is a good opportunity for us to ask questions in that area to see how it works in relation to the Treasury. Q61 Chairman: The Treasury has said it is a matter for individual departments so you could make a decision on the spot, Minister, to let us see that. Fiona Mactaggart: As I have not seen them all and as I am absolutely new to the department I think you will, Chairman, forgive me if I do not take this opportunity to make a decision on the spot! One of the things that I was struck by in reviewing that policy, which I was looking at in preparation for this, was that there was clearly a mechanism whereby if a policy might have a potentially damaging effect on the environment there was a requirement (because of this new requirement in the process) to see how it could be mitigated. For example, we have had to build more places in our prisons and we have succeeded the doing the vast majority of that within the present prison estate, not using up more land and so on, and in a way that is a reflection of having a fairly robust mechanism to reflect on how our policies do impact on the environment. Q62 Chairman: Minister, the department as such has not got an environmental management system, has it? Fiona Mactaggart: The department has an environment policy and it reports that in its Annual Report. In addition, we are developing in our key sites environmental management systems based on the BT Entropy system, the web-based system. Q63 Chairman: What do you mean by your "key sites"? Does that mean the department with its 14,000 employees or not? Fiona Mactaggart: No, it does not. Q64 Chairman: Then why is the periphery developing an environmental system but not the heart? Fiona Mactaggart: I hope I have misheard you. What the key sites are are largely those sites with more than 50 employees - Queen Anne's Gate is one example - and where we can control these matters. For example, the Immigration Department at Heathrow and Gatwick could be counted as key sites in terms of the numbers of people who work there but are not key sites for this purpose because we rent the property from BAA and we do not have control over the environmental impacts of the airports in which those staff work. So the numbers of staff and the places which are counted as key sites is a slightly flexible number because some sites are key in that enough people work there and they are big enough but are not counted as key for this purpose because we could not have a system in say Gatwick and Heathrow because we do not have the management control over the plant which would enable us to do that. Q65 Chairman: So these key sites will never cover the whole of the department? Fiona Mactaggart: No, but it would cover a very substantial part of it, the majority of the employees. Mrs Aldred: If I could just say that in my own area I have pay and pension staff who are based up in Bootle, which is a very different place to Liverpool, and I have got over 300 staff there but these would not be counted because they are actually tenants of a building where the primary occupant is the Inland Revenue. Chairman: I understand. Q66 Mr Thomas: I would just like to follow up one thing which flows on from the environmental management systems and the work that you are already doing and that is about the transport use. I wonder if you could give an example to the Committee about transport mileage, whether it is going up or down, what assessments you are making of CO2 and greenhouse gas emissions from your use as a department of transport and can you give any examples to the Committee of any innovations that you are bringing forward to reduce the environmental impact of transport use by all parts of the Home Office agencies as well if that is possible? Fiona Mactaggart: On innovations we have a policy that 70 per cent of new fleet vehicles will be either common role diesel or dual fuel vehicles. We already have six dual fuel vehicles and we are putting in place proper systems to monitor and ensure that people are using the LPG provision within the dual fuel vehicles. In addition, there is a lot of difference at different sites. For example, we have a lot of employees who, because of operational requirements, do depend on their cars either because of peculiar shift patterns when public transport is not available, that is obviously in prisons and so on, or because of security issues in immigration enforcement or because they are inspectors of some kind. So there is a number of roles which we fulfil where it is very hard, although we are determined to do this, to deliver a substantial reduction in car use. We have had, as I say, the purchase of new vehicles of the kind I have described. There are some sites - the Forensic Science site in Birmingham, for example, where there is a free bus which runs from the centre of Birmingham to the site and that has reduced car commuting substantially. So we do have policies like that. In the Prison Service we now have quite widespread video links which means that we do not need energy-consuming transport arrangements for prisoners particularly for remand hearings and so on. So there is some innovation but we are very aware that we are still not right at the forefront, which is where we would like to be, in terms of reducing our dependence on CO2 emitting transport. Q67 Mr Thomas: Do you promote car sharing? Fiona Mactaggart: We do. We will be reducing the amount of car parking available in central London by nearly 50 per cent when we move to the new building in Marsham Street. Every building which does have car parking available has a policy about allocation of those car parks. In that policy car sharing is one of the ways of getting points, living somewhere which is inaccessible for public transport is another and so on. So we have schemes in place. We have a single mileage payment arrangement in place but nevertheless I think that we need more robust rewards for low consumption vehicles and it is one of the things that we are currently looking at. Q68 Mr Thomas: Does the Home Office, and the agencies, have a transport plan? The Government is encouraging employers to take on board transport plans for employees. Are you doing that yourself? Fiona Mactaggart: Yes. They do not cover every single site. There are 136 prisons altogether; 133 of them are covered by a travel plan. There are 18 further plans covering 36 buildings because there are clumps of buildings together. Our largest buildings do but there are some examples which do not. Q69 Mr Thomas: Finally, is ministerially car use going to go down? Mrs Aldred: Not for the Home Secretary! Fiona Mactaggart: I used to bicycle and I am looking at bicycle use, although at the moment there is no safe way of taking your box on a bicycle and I frankly do not think that looking environmentally good and feeling physically healthy by cycling but sending my box on a car is a very sensible arrangement. So I am personally looking at this and indeed this afternoon I was talking to my driver about electrically operated cars in the Government car pool but so far we do not have any specific plans so I would not like to raise your hopes. Q70 Chairman: I can tell you, Minister, in the last Labour Government, of which I was a member, we did share cars and for six months I had no car. There was a problem with the box, I agree, but there must be a way around that problem. Fiona Mactaggart: Absolutely and car sharing happens. I shared a car with a colleague earlier today. It does happen. I think what we need to do is to get the most intelligent ways of doing it. I mean, talking informally to my driver, which I was doing, there seems to have been a reduction in car use in this Government compared with --- Chairman: In the last Labour Government Ministers in the Commons used to share with Ministers in the Lords and that was one of the ways round it; you actually shared a car. So think about it. Anyway, thank you very much indeed, Minister. Your first ordeal by Select Committee is over. Thank you also to your officials. |