Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-99)
Wednesday 18 June 2003
SIR
BRIAN BENDER,
KCB, MR PAUL
ELLIOTT, MR
ANDREW BURCHELL
AND MR
DAVID BILLS
Q80 Mr Jack: Given that it could
have a very significant effect on agricultural activity and indeed
rural life, is there not something a little more specific with
the Defra label on it dealing with this, because you must obviously
have some idea of the factors which are inhibiting the current
development in this area?
Sir Brian Bender: Yes.
Q81 Mr Jack: For example, if British
Sugar were to invest in a bio-ethanol plant, given the locations
of their existing plants that would have a pretty big effect.
It would have a big effect on rural employment issues, for example?
Sir Brian Bender: Yes.
Q82 Mr Jack: I am just intrigued
that you have sort of passed the ball to the Department for Transport.
Sir Brian Bender: No, we did do
some economic analysis in the run-up to the Budget and I am happy
to look at that and see what we can provide the Committee with.
I cannot remember at the moment what it showed but clearly it
is important for greenhouse gas emissions, it is important for
air quality, it is important for land use and activity in rural
areas so it is something of importance to the Department. What
I cannot recall is exactly what the analysis showed.
Q83 Mr Jack: It would be very helpful
if that could be made available because clearly at the heart of
the matter is the question of the duty level.
Sir Brian Bender: Absolutely.
Q84 Mr Jack: It would be very interesting
to see what your assessment is of what the discount should be.
Sir Brian Bender: I will see what
I can provide, Chairman.
Q85 Alan Simpson: One of the areas
that you do have direct responsibility for is in terms of carbon
savings and domestic energy efficiency. Can I just get you to
address two points. On page 62, in terms of the carbon targets
you talk about having a target of "reducing greenhouse gas
emissions by 12.5% from 1990 levels and moving towards a 20% reduction
in CO2 emissions by 2010," and then going on to say how you
are on course for delivering this in respect specifically, I suppose,
of cutting carbon dioxide emissions by 2010 by 19%. Given that
you are able to be so specific about that, I wonder if you would
be kind enough not necessarily to come back with an answer for
me now but to come back at some stage with an explanation of why
only in the last couple of days your officials have responded
to the clause which had been agreed with the DTI in the Sustainable
Energy Bill, which talked about taking reasonable steps to achieve
the carbon saving aims in energy efficiency in residential accommodation,
with the comment that these were unattainable and that the clause
could not be delivered? I suspect this ties in with my earlier
question about leadership, Sir Brian, and I would be grateful
if you could just note that.
Sir Brian Bender: You will get
a note. The Committee will get a note from us.
Q86 Alan Simpson: Thank you very
much. In the specific ones about the Fuel Poverty Strategy you
have got down as your aim, on page 67, to reduce fuel poverty
amongst vulnerable households and you set out that by 2002 470,000
households received assistance. That is slightly different from
the objective, which is to end fuel poverty by vulnerable households
by 2010. Do you feel that you are on target to deliver that?
Sir Brian Bender: As you say,
we are on target to deliver a different thing, which is the precise
target of assisting 600,000 households between 2001 and 2004.
We are doing some reviews. There are two major reviews underway
to look at exactly your question and I think in some informal
conversation a few weeks ago we indicated in terms of fuel poverty
this is not a very meaningful target. I think the National Audit
Office is likely to say something rather similar in their report
to be published, I think next week. So we are reviewing the schemes
and I would expect in the context of the next Spending Review
we will be looking at what the right target is to address fuel
poverty against the background, as indicated in some of the earlier
questioning, of actually what the prospects are of achieving it.
The Government remains committed to eradicating fuel poverty as
far as reasonably practicable, as set out in the UK Fuel Poverty
Strategy. We are spending significant sums of money on this issue
but whether it is targeted in absolutely the right way and measured
in the right way for fuel poverty as opposed to assisting households
is clearly something which needs more thinking about and more
work and this Committee may well have views. I know the National
Audit Office has views.
Q87 Alan Simpson: I am glad you recall
the conversation that we had at Defra a few weeks ago. You will
also be aware that the Fuel Poverty Advisory Group's comment on
this was that the programme appeared to have a "disturbingly
low" impact in terms of lifting the fuel poor out of fuel
poverty. That is why I was keen to get you to address the adequacy
of what you are doing now. It does not help you any more than
it helps us to have one set of targets and then produce answers
which shift things to a more convenient set of targets and I think
we will all end up with some degree of discredit if we go down
that path. Have you made any progress yet on looking at this apparent
contradiction where the current scheme appears to be more effective
at delivering assistance to those who are not in fuel poverty
than those who are?
Sir Brian Bender: The answer is,
we are making progress (using the present continuous) so we are
doing cross-checking against benefits to encourage greater take-up
of the right households (if I can put it that way), the households
on which the scheme should be targeted through Warm Front with
the intention of ending up with a clearer measurement of the impact
of the scheme on those most in need. The way my briefing on this
is phrased, I would say it is being investigated rather than being
implemented at this stage.
Q88 Alan Simpson: Can I just press
you a bit on that. As far as I am aware, the issue is not that
of take-up but that the rules of the scheme currently disproportionately
favour assisting those who are not in fuel poverty as opposed
to those who are.
Sir Brian Bender: Yes. Understood.
Q89 Alan Simpson: I know that when
we raised this with the Department last time what we were asking
was what you were doing in leadership terms to shift the focus
of the scheme so that it did what the Government wanted it to
do.
Sir Brian Bender: Yes. Forgive
me, the first review that I described is including the eligibility
criteria and the measures so that it is targeted on the genuinely
fuel poor. So that is being reviewed as part of the process to
deal with exactly that point.
Q90 Alan Simpson: Has there been
any progress on it?
Sir Brian Bender: Perhaps I can
come back to the Committee on timing in any follow up note on
when we expect this to be actually doing something as opposed
to being reviewed.
Chairman: We will have the Secretary
of State of course in front of us in a little while so some of
these questions which are somewhat political may well be asked
of her.
Q91 Mr Mitchell: Can I just come
back to fishing, which seems to be a very minor preoccupation
of the Department. I expressed my disappointment last year at
the attention given to it in the report. There is not much more
this year. Forestry does a lot better. Can I just ask as a general
question, does that represent a kind of passive role on the part
of the Department? It struck me when we went to Spain and talked
to the Spanish Fishing Ministry, which is both national and regional,
the regional ministries took some of the enforcement role but
the national ministry seemed to view itself as a kind of lobbying
organisation for fishing to milk every cent it could out of the
European Union. It always strikes me that Defra does not have
that role; it is a passive enforcer for decisions taken elsewhere?
Sir Brian Bender: On the first
part of your question, Mr Mitchell, the Department does attach
priority to fisheries. There is a directorate of significant size
which deals with it and a Minister (who is now no longer responsible)
who spent a lot of time last year and earlier this year dealing
with the issue, including important negotiations in Brussels which
culminated in December on both the Common Fisheries Policy and
on recovery arrangements in the North Sea. So it is an important
area. It is a very difficult area, you do not need me to tell
you that. I do not have any data to hand on what grants we do
secure access to. Some are clearly regional grants to assist on
land and the Department, as you will well know, also doing a decommissioning
scheme to help remove some of the excess capacity in the industry.
So it is an area where there is a lot of action and a lot of activity
and a lot of energy.
Q92 Mr Mitchell: So the lack of mention
or the paucity of the coverage does not indicate any lessening
of the importance of fishing?
Sir Brian Bender: Correct.
Q93 Mr Mitchell: Let me move on because
you mention decommissioning and I see the Public Service Agreement
targets makes one of your Public Service Objectives, it seems
to me as I read it, to get rid of the fishing fleet, certainly
to reduce the fishing effort. You say that most of the targets
in that respect were achieved by the end of 2001 (this is the
resource budget details on page 113), which is presumably why
spending on fishing peaked at 119 (presumably millions) in 1999-2000.
But now you have got another round of decommissioning, which is
probably going to be bigger and yet expenditure projected ahead
does not rise to meet that obligation.
Sir Brian Bender: The large figure
you quoted I think was dominated by Factortame, the costs
of the settlement of the Factortame claims, which did not
of itself help the fisheries industry. Again, you do not need
me to say that to you. The target from the 2000 Spending Review
was achieved. However, we still have too many fishermen chasing
too few fish in the sea that is the problem. Therefore, we have
undertaken a further scheme. As I understand it, the decommissioning
effort up to 2002, between 1996 and 2002 reduced in percentage
terms vessels over 10 metres by about 28%, but we have a further
scheme in place now following the agreement in the Council in
December.
Q94 Mr Mitchell: Which is not as
generous, is it?
Sir Brian Bender: I think it is
comparable to what we did a couple of years ago, again when we
only found about £5 million in 2001, I think.
Mr Burchell: The Spending Review
2002 settlement provides an additional £10 million a year
over the planned period and in 2003-04 we have currently allocated
£5 million towards our contribution to the UK Decommissioning
Initiative.
Q95 Mr Mitchell: You mention, I am
not sure where, that there was additional effort required because
of the kind of re-negotiation of the CAP, which ran out and had
to be renewed on an annual basis. I read in the European Constitution
as it emerged from the Convention that there is going to be an
exclusive EU responsibility of the marine resources of the sea
and a shared responsibility on conservation. Is that going to
require re-organisation on your part and what does it mean?
Sir Brian Bender: Despite some
of my past experience I am not an expert on what is going on in
the European Convention, so I have to plead some ignorance. I
would be surprised if it involved re-organisation. Plainly within
Defra the people working on marine need to work very closely with
the people working on fisheries, but actually the people working
on marine also need to be part of the team on water because the
way it is being approached at European level is to in effect extend
what was done on the water framework directive out into marine
waters. So that working has to happen but I do not think that
of itself requires a reorganisation. As far as whether something
would be the exclusive competence of the European Union or not,
it would still require the United Kingdom to negotiate and to
implement in some way. The Common Fisheries Policy currently is
a matter of exclusive competence in the sense that where there
is EU law on it there is no place for United Kingdom law. But
the exact implications of the Convention and indeed what will
follow it through an Inter-Governmental Conference I am not an
expert on—well, no one is an expert on the second bit because
it has not happened yet.
Q96 Mr Mitchell: Just one final question.
I remember earlier this year when the fishing industry came down
steaming and angry, feeling slightly paranoid if only because
it is being persecuted, they had a meeting at Number Ten and came
out happy because the Prime Minister had said he was going to
take over the responsibility for driving fishing forward. How
does that impinge on the Department?
Sir Brian Bender: Well, I did
not quite interpret it that way, him taking it over, but given
the inherent difficulties of conserving the stocks while having
an industry where there is too much fishing effort chasing too
limited a supply what is actually happening is that the Number
Ten Strategy Unit is doing a report on fisheries and what alternative
options there may be in the way forward. We have a member of the
Department seconded to the scheme.
Q97 Mr Mitchell: That is alternative
employment?
Sir Brian Bender: I do not know.
I have not recently seen the precise framework for it but I think
it is not simply alternative employment, it is actually what strategy
should one have towards fishing given the problems, given where
we are following the negotiations at the end of December, given
the projections for the future of the industry and indeed where
we are on fish stocks. Normally the Strategy Units carry out their
exercises with quite a wide degree of public consultation and
I can certainly make sure the Committee is aware of where they
have got to and at what stage there would be some possibility
of engagement and feeding in views. The Strategy Unit usually,
as I say, carries out these studies deliberately in a very open
way to get views.
Q98 Chairman: Sir Brian, we have
almost finished. Just on the general report, because in the past
we have criticised the report itself, just a couple of comments
on that. I must say, I have some doubts about the picture on the
front, which if you are anxious to convey some dynamic, thrusting
department, a slightly battered sign which at least has the merit
of not having a third direction attached to it I suppose is something
for which we should all be grateful.
Sir Brian Bender: I am waiting
for the comment about whether the Department knows which direction
it is going in.
Chairman: As the thought has occurred
to you, you have saved me from making the comment itself. Just
in general on the report, I think it is a great improvement. It
is much more accessible. Just a couple of comments I would make
about it. I have sometimes wondered whether there really was a
consistent format there. There is quite a variation in the level
of reporting between different agencies and divisions. Secondly,
the achievements chapter is a bit vague and inconsistent. A lot
of it is process and perhaps rather less on outcomes. So really
the question is, are we getting value for money from Defra? If
it was not there would we have to invent it, or not, is actually
quite a useful disciplinary question. But with those caveats I
would say that there has been a consistent in the report. We do
not want Mr Bills to sit there the whole of the afternoon and
feel entirely redundant merely because he has shrunk from however
many pages it was to ten pages, so we have got a special sort
of valedictory question from Mr Tipping just to make him feel
that his journey has been worthwhile.
Q99 Paddy Tipping: I just want to
ask you two different questions. First of all, you split policy
from delivery quite some time ago so where do you figure in the
Haskins recommendations? Are you going to be part of this big
landscape agency? Are you safe? Are you going to continue? What
are you arguing for?
Mr Bills: Just on the first bit,
policy and delivery, I am not sure that any of the comments that
Haskins has mean there has to be split within different departments
or different areas within Government. I think he is really saying
the accountability or the responsibility for a policy should be
seperated quite clearly from delivery. We have aimed to do that
within the Governance structure of the Forestry Commission and
it works quite well. I also was interested to read in the Government's
general review of agencies that there was some general concern
that some agencies were drifting too far away from the sponsored
departments therefore there was a kind of inertia in implementing
policy. We make sure that does not happen within the Forestry
Commission in the way we run it. I have to say, being a small
organisation that is relatively easy. As far as Haskins is concerned,
I think he is interested in where Forestry fits into his deliberations.
There is a review of the way Forestry works within England, which
is currently underway. Part of that is a strong economic analysis
and that has been published, the so-called Crabtree report, which
basically substantiates that a lot of what we are doing is worth
doing, but I think he will be wanting to think more of the mode
of delivery of Forestry within the context of what it is he is
recommending when the review of forestry is finished. But if you
ask what we are arguing for, the Forestry Commission still sees
benefit in maintaining an overarching GB or even UK approach and
clearly one of the downsides for us if there were major changes
in England is that it may well undermine that.
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