Examination of Witnesses (Questions 193-199)
RICHARD WAKEFORD
AND CHARLES
SECRETT
15 SEPTEMBER 2003
Q193 Chairman: Welcome to the Committee.
I think you two gentlemen fall into the category of what we would
call usual suspects, I suppose. Mr Wakeford, I have not seen you
wearing this particular hat until today. Mr Secrett is fairly
familiar around these corridors in one shape or another. Ms Read,
you are part of the Secretariat, I believe. You say, if I may
paraphrase it, that there is an awful lot of woolly thinking around
this, good, virtuous, green, woolly thinking, but we need to make
sure that somebody actually does the sums. Would it be fair to
say that that is what you mean?
Mr Wakeford: Our brief from the
Sustainable Development Commission has been to set out certain
principles that follow sustainable development. We have derived
principles for products in the food chain for sustainable agriculture
which highlight a number of dimensions. We need to find ways of
measuring the benefits under each dimension and the costs of each
dimension to come to a conclusion about the Committee's views
on any of the important issues that this Committee considers.
Q194 Chairman: So how long do you
think it will it be before this methodology is in place? This
sounds to me like a wonderful gift to the Treasury to say that
the time is not right for a decision.
Mr Wakeford: If the Treasury were
to adopt this approach we would see a dramatic change in the governance
of this country. We would actually start to see accounts which
were much more focused on the longer term. That is not necessarily
what I am briefed in detail on but I think there is a long way
to go. There is quite a history to this. I have been involved
in sustainable development-type issues since Chris Patten's Environment
White Paper of 1990 when I was on the team that helped him produce
that, where we started to come into the rather complex issues
about how you weigh different things where there is no common
currency. Over time officials and ministers have worked out ways
to try and do strategic appraisals of other things from the perspective
of sustainable development in connection with different reviews.
There is still a way to go before it gets adopted, as you are
hinting.
Q195 Chairman: Can I ask the same
question again in a different way? Given the pressures to come
to an outcome on this, given that all the arguments of the measures
offered by the Treasury up to now are not enough to take the trick,
do you think we know enough and we have worked out enough to be
able to resolve this issue and to make a recommendation which
makes economic sense and gets rid of the chaff you have been talking
about and gives us a hard-headed decision?
Mr Wakeford: I would like to turn
that question round. You know what you know in terms of the evidence
that you have collected. What we have is a kind of decision framework.
In the report which we prepared, which I think you have a copy
of, called Sustainability of Sugar Supply Chains, there
is a simple approach in which we looked at the aspects of sustainable
development in trying to compare two ways of sourcing a single
product- sugar- as sugar cane or sugar beet. We tried to keep
the questions to the strategic so that all the benefits were identified
and all the disbenefits were identified, and at that point the
Committee would need to reach a conclusion based on a weighing
of the issues. What I cannot offer is a kind of common currency
into which you can then put any of those things. So at the end
of the day it is still a judgment, but the judgment will have
taken account of the relevant factors in reaching a conclusion
on the question that was put.
Mr Secrett: Could I add to that
because I think from the Commission's point of view one of the
things that we found a little frustrating was that the assessment
tools, the way one weighs up a complicated series of possible
benefits or possible costs of any policy decision, are coming
together in a very piecemeal fashion. They are coming from different
places; some are coming from Europe in terms of, say, strategic
environmental impact; some are coming from within Whitehall itself;
some are coming from outside the government machinery. One of
the things that we wish government would do to fulfil this commitment
to sustainable development as an overarching umbrella to make
these types of decisions, is to be a bit more robust in putting
together a methodology of cascading assessments that allow you
to view the environmental dimension, the economic dimension and
the social dimension together. We think that, in terms of the
written evidence we have put before you as a Commission, the Commission
is developing just such a robust approach, which is not to say
that it is the only approach. Another mistake that is often made
is that we are looking for some magical formula which will provide
us with the right answer in every single circumstance. We do not
believe such a formula exists but that there are more robust ways
and less robust ways of integrating the policy tools to be able
to make judgments in the round. It is making judgments in the
round that we think is one of the most useful aspects of sustainable
development decision-making.
Q196 Mrs Shephard: We are, as you
know, studying biofuels in this inquiry, and to take them as a
specific example, and to refer to your point, Mr Secrett, about
assessing the tools, would you like to describe to the Committee
what you believe to be the government machinery for developing
a policy on biofuels, whether you think there is a lead ministry
and a lead minister, what evidence you think they are drawing
together to come to a common conclusion, and whether you think
the Treasury plays an important, indeed an overweening, role in
that machinery?
Mr Wakeford: Can I start by asking
for almost a clearer question?
Q197 Mrs Shephard: You mean like,
who is in charge of the government's biofuels policy?
Mr Wakeford: No, no: the question
of the objective, in a sense, for inquiring into biofuels. Is
it because we want, for example, to use biofuels to reduce our
dependence on oil imports in the long term? Is it because we want
to use biofuels in order to reduce carbon dioxide emissions? Is
it because this is a new business opportunity for the UK that
will actually have some rural development benefits? Those are
all legitimate questions and they would fall in different government
departments. What you have to do, I think, is to try and find
a way of bringing those things together across the government,
and when you can you come to another question, which I did not
include in my list, which is: how much further does the Treasury
want to forgo revenue or put grants into the development of this
business industry as distinct from, for example, putting an investment
into securing the conversion of some of the rather large amount
of waste paper and cardboard that we are producing as a nation
at the moment, which could also be converted into biofuels? It
is rather important to start with a clear question of what it
is that the policy is designed to address.
Q198 Mrs Shephard: Are you suggesting
we put that to the minister since clearly you are not claiming
to answer it yourselves?
Mr Wakeford: What we are here
to do is to try and help the Committee, as indeed we would try
and help ministers as we talk to ministers from the perspective
of advisers, which is what the Sustainable Development Commission
is.
Q199 Mrs Shephard: Can I repeat my
question to you? You can put questions to the Committee of which
it is aware, obviously; otherwise it would not be involved in
this inquiry. One of the questions we shall be putting to the
minister is, who is in charge of making the overall assessment
of the desirability or otherwise of substitution for some carbon
fuels by biofuels? Is there a lead ministry? I am asking you,
since your colleague, Mr Secrett, mentioned the importance of
assessment tools, whether your impression is that the government
is in possession of such assessment tools and, if it is, which
lead department is responsible for them. Mr Secrett is nodding.
Perhaps he knows the answer.
Mr Secrett: I understand the question.
Mr Wakeford: The answer in terms
of sustainable development as the broadest goal of all is Defra,
the Secretary of State, Margaret Beckett, because that is the
lead department for sustainable development, and it is for that
department to give whatever guidance other government departments
need in order to help them to understand such broad issues as
sustainable development and to ask the right questions. In the
designing of any sustainable development appraisal regime we from
the Commission would certainly look to Defra to lead, much in
the same way that Defra is also the department responsible for
rural issues and we look to Defra to guide other departments on
how they appraise policies for their impact on rurals. There is
very clear leadership within Defra in that respect.
|
