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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 624-iii House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE ENVIRONMENTAL AUDIT COMMITTEE
The Sustainable Development Strategy
Thursday 24 June 2004 MS JOAN BENNETT, MR PHIL MATTHEWS and MR TREVOR HOUGHTON Evidence heard in Public Questions 135 - 219
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Environmental Audit Committee on Thursday 24 June 2004 Members present Mr Peter Ainsworth, in the Chair Mr Colin Challen Mrs Helen Clark Sue Doughty Mr Malcolm Savidge Mr Simon Thomas Joan Walley ________________ Memorandum submitted by CAG Consultants
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Ms Joan Bennett, CAG Consultants, Mr Phil Matthews, CAG Consultants and Mr Trevor Houghton, CAG Consultants, examined. Chairman: Good morning. Welcome, and thank you very much for coming. Also, thank you for your memorandum, which I thought was admirably concise, to the point and clear; also, for the papers which you sent us on Wales and the other regions. What we are going to do this morning is to begin by looking at the Welsh situation, move on to Scotland, take a look at the regional framework in England, and then look at the whole of the UK Strategy. Let us start with Mr Thomas and Wales. Q135 Mr Thomas: One of the interesting things about the report that you did on Wales is that you seem to have pointed out that the scheme and the action plan were secondary to the commitment of Ministers and senior civil servants. Many of us from the UK perspective see it as the other way round, that at the UK level it is the scheme that drive forwards any change that happens at all. Can you explain why you think that has come about and whether you see there is any purpose for a scheme at all if you have committed Ministers taking it forward anyway? Ms Bennett: Part of the reason was that we were looking over the previous four years' Assembly. If you remember, it was a very new Assembly, it had just been formed, the Welsh Assembly Government, and their scheme did not actually get into place for about 18 months. But clearly before that the Ministers were very well aware that they had this duty and were working with their senior staff and saying, "We have to look at our policies," et cetera. So that is one of the reasons why the political leadership at that time was more important, and we were looking at how policies have changed, for example the agricultural policy, which changed before the scheme, or had started to change before the scheme came into place. Is the scheme important, though? I think what you have seen in the most recent review - as you know as a result of the new Assembly being elected there has now been a review of the scheme under the action plan - the scheme has changed very little because it is just a statement of principles. The action plan, I would like to think partly because of what we recommended, is getting much stronger now, and I think we will see that the scheme is much more driving what is going on now. I think both are very important - political leadership and the scheme or, in the UK's case the Strategy - and both are absolutely crucial to really make sure that you are concentrating on what is important and that it is being driven. Q136 Mr Thomas: I was going to ask you in more detail as well, because in your recommendations in your report to the Assembly you listed some of the areas that you felt were missing from the scheme, first of all, and one of those very important areas, to my mind, is Sustainable Consumption. You also said that climate changes only related to the UK and it was not a specifically Welsh-based thing, which is important in terms of public perception, I would have thought. You have just mentioned it, but can you tell us in a little more detail about what the Assembly has taken on board from your report? The scheme has been revised but it is the action plan that has changed more significantly, has it not? Ms Bennett: I have to admit that because we wrote that obviously a year ago I am not fantastically up to date with what they built into the action plan. The action plan is at consultation at the moment, but they have, undoubtedly, for example with climate change, now built that into the action plan and said what they are going to do and what is different about the action plan now. I think it is clearly saying that certain departments will lead on certain things more clearly and also involving other stakeholders. That was there a bit in the original action plan, but one of the big weaknesses of the first action plan is that about 50 per cent of the actions were the responsibility of the Sustainable Development Unit within the Assembly. Q137 Mr Thomas: Remind us of how many people that is? Ms Bennett: It is about five now. The Sustainable Development Unit is now part of the Strategic Policy Unit; there is no such thing as the Sustainable Development Unit now in the Welsh Assembly Government, it is the Strategic Policy Unit Centre of which I think now up to about seven staff are responsible for the Unit for Sustainable Development. I think that is one of the key differences that have come out, partly because lessons have been learned - it was a very new operation when it was given this task - to spread out these actions right across the department and across what they call Assembly supported public bodies, and other bodies such as the NHS, et cetera, and more clearly feeding responsibility out across the public sector. Q138 Mr Thomas: Within that context the report highlights a couple of areas where, whether it is the scheme, the action plan or the ministerial leadership, there are failures and the failures are on what you call on several occasions the "crunch issues" - transport, infrastructure, and I think in the context of work, which we will come to later on, about regional development, is aviation, for example. There are these crunch issues, are there not? Ms Bennett: Yes, we all know they are there, do we not? Q139 Mr Thomas: Yes, we all know they are there, and the tendency is to bypass them, and I think you have put your finger on it that they were very much avoided in the initial scheme and action plan at least. Are those being addressed now, to your mind? Ms Bennett: Time will tell, will it not, because they are currently consulting on their action plan? I think they have certainly tried harder this time to say, "Okay, where are the big important issues that we have to address in Wales, and let us look at how we can do that?" So I do think they are trying harder, there is no doubt about it, and time will tell. In four years again they had to have an Effectiveness Report, which is an interesting issue in itself because the UK Strategy does not have to do this, but under the Act that introduced the Welsh Assembly they do have to have an Effectiveness Report. So only time will tell whether they really do tackle those issues, but certainly that is what they say they are intending to do, and that that will be led by a sub-committee of Ministers - the Sustainable Environment Committee Ministers will drive that. Q140 Chairman: The Effectiveness Report will be a Welsh Assembly document, it will not be done by objective consultants? Ms Bennett: This time they employed us to do it. Q141 Chairman: So they might do that again? Ms Bennett: It has to be done by an independent body, yes. Q142 Mr Thomas: And reported back to sub-committee Ministers? Ms Bennett: It is slightly complex in Wales in that the scheme is the National Assembly's responsibility, the whole Assembly, although obviously the Welsh Assembly Government Executive drives the scheme. So it was always confusing when we were doing it - was it a report for the National Assembly or for the Welsh Assembly Government? It was never 100 per cent clear. Q143 Mr Thomas: What did you decide upon in the end? Ms Bennett: The final title cover of the report said a report to Welsh Assembly Government, although the original brief to us said that it was a brief from the National Assembly for Wales. Q144 Mr Thomas: That brings me on to my next question because in reading the report and also the Learning to Live Differently, the actual scheme itself and so forth, one is struck by the fact the Assembly or the Assembly Government, whichever way you want to look at it, has done quite a lot of work in this area. Then reading your reports you point very much, as I said earlier, to ministerial lead, but of course it was put in statute that the Assembly should have an obligation to promote sustainable development. Looking back, how important do you think that was, that it was there from the beginning? And if I may jump just a little bit to ask what lesson does that have for regional development within England? Ms Bennett: It is difficult for me to answer that one because I was not terrifically familiar with political commitment in Wales before we went in. You might be able to answer this more easily than I can. Q145 Mr Thomas: I have never been that side, actually! Ms Bennett: For example, I know that the Minister of the Environment is in fact a planning academic from Cardiff University, who was very, very committed to sustainable development long before that duty appeared. So did the duty really change the political commitment? I am not sure, is the answer to that one; I just do not know. Perhaps you have an answer to that one? Q146 Mr Thomas: At some stage, perhaps! Ms Bennett: However, I would say it certainly did no harm, and it meant that they knew that they had to report in four years on how well they had done, et cetera. Q147 Mr Thomas: It is this split, is it not, as you said earlier, that the Assembly as a corporate body has this duty, but then the delivery is by a government, which is in the traditional Westminster sense, a government against an opposition and so forth, and there is the difficulty there. One of the things in your report that either one could say is quite refreshing or even strange in the Welsh context, is that it does not mention the need for powers to deal with this. In the context of the debate in Wales at the moment, particularly with the Richard Commission, everyone points to the need for different new powers and legislative powers or whatever, to deliver different objectives. Did you come to any conclusion at all about whether the Assembly, in trying to deal with some of these crunch issues, like infrastructure, transport, needed a different set of powers in some way to try with those? Or were they trying to avoid those crunch issues because they could not deal with them anyway? Ms Bennett: I suppose the answer depends on how much the UK legislator tackles these issues. If they were really tackling some of those issues probably Wales would not need those legislative powers. If the UK is not tackling those issues in the way we would feel was necessary, then clearly it would be preferable if Wales has legislative powers. On the other hand, one argument that I heard was that Wales, because it was less preoccupied with legislation because politicians were less preoccupied with those issues, were able to buckle down and get on with a review of issues on sustainable development, because sometimes one can be a bit distracted by legislation because that is certainly not the whole answer at all in respect of sustainable development, and the Welsh Assembly Government have done a lot, for example, on guidance to local government. In Scotland they have passed a Local Government Act, but the Welsh Assembly Government have done a lot also through their guidance using UK legislation to Welsh local authorities; they were able to adopt it quite a lot and build in sustainable development. So I am sure that there will be some areas where legislation is important, but it is certainly not the whole answer. Q148 Mr Thomas: As regards the guidance and the approaches that have been done in the National Assembly, one of the things you talk about in your report is the policy appraisal tool. Ms Bennett: Integration Appraisal Tool. Q149 Mr Thomas: That is the one, and you also refer to it - at least at the time you were writing the report - as being three out of 33 have tried it out in reality, as opposed to in a seminar or workshop. Have you got any impression of whether that tool is going to be useful for civil servants, or is it unproven so far? Ms Bennett: I do not think we can answer that because we looked at it when it was under development and I think another year has gone on since. I really do not know how much now is being put into practice, whether the departments are using it and how it has evolved as a tool. So quite honestly I could not answer that question. Q150 Mr Thomas: You did look at similar tools in the regional development bodies in England. How do they compare across the board? Are they ones that now seem to be working, for example, put it that way? Ms Bennett: I think in the regional assemblies we did a review of sustainability appraisal, which is a more general idea, and one of the clear messages that came through is that it is often very ineffective, because if it is not done well and it does not follow good practice then it is often ineffective, and we all know that can become a "tick box" exercise where you say, "This policy seems a bit unsustainable here and fairly sustainable there, so, okay, passed," and carry on. If you follow good practice on sustainability appraisal what you do is stand back and say, let us really think about the alternatives; could we come up with alternatives which would do better on sustainability? That is the good practice. So the issue is, I do not know whether the Welsh tool is following that approach. One of the things we said in our report, one of the things we were told, is that it was not going to be a tick box exercise, it was going to involve having workshops with staff actually sitting, throwing around ideas, thinking okay, how can we really improve on this, how can we make it more sustainable? Then I think it becomes effective. Whether Wales is employing that approach, I do not know. Q151 Mr Thomas: One of the examples of the tick box exercise that you mentioned, or you append to the report, is the Objective 1 Sustainable Development, where it is simply based on the applicants coming back from the Objective 1 saying whether they have met the environmental requirements or not. Considering that this is a massive injection of European money, the aim of which is to raise the GDP of Wales, which of itself might have environmental considerations, of course, that seems to me to be a considerable area within the Assembly's framework, which is not being properly appraised at the moment from the point of view of sustainable development. Ms Bennett: We should say a year ago. Q152 Mr Thomas: A year ago. I would say it still is not, but if you tell me differently. Ms Bennett: To give them credit, they did their own review and concluded that, and I think what our report clearly said was that it was turning policies into practice, and that is where the Assembly - and not the Assembly alone - was weak. So they have changed some of their policy. Their agricultural policy sounded really great, if not fantastic - "We are really going to concentrate on quality products, applying local communities," and all the rest of it - and then when you looked at what they were funding through farm grants it was the usual stuff. There was a lovely quote, which perhaps I should not really say about it, which was about "throwing up sheds", and that is what they were funding. It was how you have to make that link from the policy to the practice, and that is what we hope the Assembly will do in the next four years. That is what they have said they are going to be committed to do, to make sure that the policy is leading to changes in practice. That is where we also argue that you have to be closely monitoring; you have to be making sure that it is not just lots of words, and it is really turning policy into practice. Mr Houghton: There is some experience in the English regions relating to Objective 1 and 2 projects where appraisal is being done more effectively and it seems to have changed some of the projects. So I think that is starting to happen, but people are learning - this is a new area. Q153 Mr Thomas: One of the things that struck me as missing very much from your report, and also from the Assembly's Learning to Live Differently and the work it does, is Local Agenda 21, which used to be flavour of the month five or six years ago. It does not seem to be used very much any more either by the Assembly or by local authorities as a way of driving the local sustainable development. Were you able to get down to that local authority level to see what was happening at the local authority level? Ms Bennett: We looked at one local authority because obviously we could not go out and look at all local authorities, but there has been a survey - I am not sure I have seen it since - done of local authorities in Wales by someone attached to the University of Cardiff, looking at what had been going on in the Welsh authorities, and, understandably, I think LA21 was not driving things, but that is partly because UK policy, as I said - and this also applies to Wales and Welsh guidance - that Local Agenda 21 should be subsumed within community strategy. That is what is being said now. I would argue that if that is done properly, if community strategies are genuinely taken on board, that is the way it should go because we know that that is where the power resulted, in community strategy, not in Local Agenda 21. Q154 Mr Thomas: Does this not show that governments of any particular colour just change the name that they put to their pet projects and change the resources that they put to them, and is there not a danger of the environment in particular being rather overlooked in all of this, because it is dominated by poverty, deprivation and crime? Ms Bennett: There is, and that is where I would come back to the issue - and I am sure that somewhere in the UK Strategy or since, an annual report will say that we will now be driving through Sustainable Development in community strategies at a local level. The English guidance on community strategy clearly says that they should be pursuing sustainable development and it should be integrated - social, economic and environmental integration. It all sounds great, but is anyone actually checking that that is happening? No. So some local authorities are doing it but you can be sure that some are not, and that is the big issue, following it through into practice. Ideally that is what you would want, community strategies that work. Q155 Mr Thomas: In general there, because the Assembly, with the powers it has, has to work very, very closely with local authorities. It has a scheme, an interface between itself and local authorities in Wales. Did you see any evidence of sustainable development as a duty for the Assembly actually being passed down to a local authority, or indeed to the quangos in Wales? Ms Bennett: Yes, we looked at that, but I think you could almost quote the Sustainable Development Commission's report - must try harder; shows promise but must try harder. Perhaps you know about the Wales Programme for Improvement, which is equivalent to best value, performance assessments, performance management framework for Welsh local authorities. They clearly built sustainable development into that and said that Welsh authorities should look into sustainable development within their authority analysis, et cetera, but, again, that was not followed through. In fact when I interviewed the senior person within the Assembly responsible for local government she quite openly said that they had not got the resources to go out and check that local government were really doing that. Q156 Mr Thomas: So as well as the gap that you identified in issues that were not being addressed, there is perhaps an implementation gap as well? Ms Bennett: Yes. Q157 Mr Thomas: Or there was a year ago? Ms Bennett: Yes, and similarly with the Assembly sponsored public bodies. Q158 Mr Thomas: We call them quangos! Ms Bennett: They have tried to put into remit letters - because the National Assembly when they award a grant they provide a remit letter setting out, "This is what we expect you to be doing to meet the National Assembly's priorities." - they did build in sustainable development priorities within those, but at that time they tended to be quite marginal, so they might be for the National Health Service, you will look at energy consumption in your properties. Very valid, of course, but it was not looking at the whole issue of health improvement, et cetera, although in fact the NHS is driven by that anyway. So it tended to be quite marginal. Again, I think it is time. The Assembly had been going four years when we looked at them. Q159 Mr Thomas: You are very kind! Ms Bennett: They had got structures in place to start thinking about how they were going to build sustainable development and make sure that it was really feeding out to their public bodies. The question again, I think, is we have to see. They have now said, "We are really going to decide what the crunch issues are. We are going to feed that into remit letters; we are going to feed that down through to our public bodies." Another point I should make is they have said that now their action plan for sustainable development, attached to the scheme, is going to feed through into the corporate plans for each Assembly department - that is what they have said - so it should be clearly feeding down, and monitored. So hopefully now the ASPB remit letters will start to really focus on big sustainable development issues that the Welsh Development Agency or the Welsh Tourist Board really need to tackle. We will have to wait to see, but they are at least trying to get some structures in there to feed it down. Q160 Mr Thomas: Just on that, is there a final thing from the review that you did in Wales and the work that you saw there, is there one thing - or more than one thing - that you would say that this was a very good example of what is working within the sustainable development scheme and should be taken up either in the regions of England or at a UK level? Ms Bennett: I think one of the key things for me, and also for Scotland - and Phil will talk about that - is the Sub-committee on Sustainable Development. During its time before the last elections it was chaired by Rhodri Morgan. He always attended, Ministers always attended. In some ways it was weak because it has been pointed out that the action plan was weak; the annual report of the action plans tended to focus on successes, so they were not really focusing perhaps thoroughly on what they should be doing on sustainable development, but that Committee was driving things. Hopefully now, if they get their action plan more focused on the big issues that they have to address, that sub-committee will continue to drive the issues. Q161 Mr Thomas: So having the First Minister committed is one of the key points? Ms Bennett: The First Minister does not chair it now, but attends. Also the Minutes are always published; they are out there, everyone can see what they are discussing. I could look at those Minutes and say, "It was a bit scattergun what you were discussing; you showed a commitment but it is a bit here, a bit there, be more focused," which I think is something that we really lack here. Chairman: Shall we move on to Scotland, and Mr Savidge. Q162 Mr Savidge: Obviously we appreciate that the Select Committee has not yet endorsed or published your reports, so we look at them in that context. Could you give us some idea of the key issues which you feel that you have identified? Mr Matthews: It is, as you have identified, quite difficult to speak about this because I do not want to pre-empt what we have been asked to do by the Environment and Rural Development Committee of Parliament. Q163 Chairman: We understand that you are speaking in a personal capacity. Mr Matthews: Yes. So if my comments can be taken on that basis? Q164 Chairman: They will be. Mr Matthews: Our analysis in general of what the Executive has done since 1999 on Sustainable Development is that it started off really affording it very low priority in 1999 - lower than, for example, the Welsh Assembly Government did. From about 2002 onwards there has, I think, been a significant improvement in the Executive's performance in Sustainable Development. This is partly because of outside pressure; it was quite an interesting report from WWF Scotland, which seemed to start quite a lot of political discussion in Scotland. Also the current First Minister appears to have had a clearer understanding and a clearer support for Sustainable Development than the previous two First Ministers had. So we have seen a number of mechanisms come into place. As Joan said, like in Wales, there is a current Sub-committee on Sustainable Scotland. There has been a Sustainable Development statement, Meeting Needs, produced, and there have been a number of policy making tools introduced, and so on, to facilitate the consideration of sustainability across the way the Executive works. So I see those as the key element of the current approach. Q165 Mr Savidge: You mentioned an Executive statement, Meeting the Needs. Do you feel that that amounts to a Sustainable Development Strategy? And if not, why not? Mr Matthews: No. The first reason I say that is because the Executive themselves do not claim that it is. The Executive themselves do not claim that it is a Sustainable Development Strategy, so I do not think anyone is putting it forward as such. I think in terms of why it is not a strategy, there are some clear reasons. First of all, it has a general vision which alludes to economic progress, and it alludes to social justice and to environmental sustainability, but it is very vague and very short. For example, around economic development it essentially says that the Executive's vision, as set out in Smart Successful Scotland, which is the vision for the enterprise networks in Scotland, will be their sustainable economic vision. Anyone who has looked at Smart Successful Scotland would not feel that that is really a vision for sustainable economic development within Scotland. It also leads to the Social Justice Strategy and talks about the work on health, but there is no sense of trying to bring all these issues together and, as Joan said in the Welsh context, try and resolve crunch issues, try and identify work where the key pressures are within Scotland. I think there are other failures with it; it has no clear action plan linked to it, as in Wales as well; it was not really the result of a debate which identified priority issues; and it has no measurable outcomes in a clearly defined sense for Executive departments and so on. I think we would accept that it has clearly moved on from what was there before, and that it was useful at the time, but it is not really a coherent strategy. The final point I would say as well, that the key areas for action are all around environmental issues, resources, energy and travel rather than trying to seek a broad approach integrating economic and social issues. Q166 Mr Savidge: Leading straight on from that, to what extent do you think a strategy would make a difference, given that the Scottish Executive have already identified certain priority areas for action. Do you think it would matter? Mr Matthews: Yes. I think we are all agreed that strategies are not the only element of a caring approach and strategy is not necessary to delivery, unless they are properly formulated and clear actions, which are monitored and evaluated, independently if possible. I feel that it would particularly have made a difference around issues, for example economic development. There is a review on currently of the FEDS - the Framework for Economic Development in Scotland - which will inform what the enterprise networks do. That is currently being reviewed and I understand that the consultation document will come out later this year. So there is an acceptance that there needs to be movement around economic development and linked to sustainability. There is also consultation out on an agreed job strategy for Scotland. But that link has not been made as yet, and I would have liked to think that a proper strategy could have made that link at an earlier stage. Q167 Mr Savidge: Where is the responsibility for Sustainable Development currently positioned within the Scottish Executive? Do you think it is in the right place? Mr Matthews: It is within the Environment and Rural Development Department. There is a fairly well resourced team there - 14 staff currently - and the Environment and Rural Development Department does currently have responsibility for Sustainable Development across the Executive, and the Minister, Ross Finney, sits in the Cabinet sub-committee. So there is a link across the Executive, and I think clearly around the various policy mechanisms that they have established - for example, there is a policy memorandum in Bills and people involved in development Bills in the Executive do appear to be consulting this centralised resource, even if they are not within their department. The OECD research, which we have been looking at, which is looking at good sustainable development governance, would see that the central Sustainable Development policy people should be centralised within the bureaucracy rather than in the department. Again, you could have a debate how important this is. For example, equalities issues, which is another cross-cutting theme within the Executive, is located with the Development Department, and I do not think people feel that that has necessarily affected its ability to engage with staff across the whole bureaucracy, but I think in terms of what would be the ideal location for it, possibly one would say within the Office of the Permanent Secretary within that centralised bureaucracy, as it is in Wales, as it is in a number of other governments across the world, as seen as exhibiting good practice. Ms Bennett: Interestingly, Wales did shift theirs; it was out in an Environment Department and they did move it into the Strategic Policy Unit at the Centre of the Welsh Assembly Government. Q168 Mr Savidge: Your study concentrates on the issues of governance rather than implementation. How far do you think it might be argued that governance is not so important, given that the Welsh study seems to imply that it was the commitment of the actual individual officials and the Ministers that really drove progress? Mr Matthews: We work with national government and regional government as a consultancy. One of my key conclusions is that if you have people who are committed to this agenda and who are able at the top of an organisation, and committed and able people in key positions within that organisation, committed to Sustainable Development, that is probably more important than just about anything else in driving this forward. I think strategy and frameworks are important. The Executive is a large bureaucracy with thousands of staff working on a whole range of issues, and I think you need a coherent vision and you also need mechanisms and frameworks which enable staff, who may not be aware of this agenda, to consider how it might integrate into their particular area of work. Clearly the Ministers and senior executives within the Scottish Executive cannot be responsible for all policy development, policy generation and policy synchronicity across the whole bureaucracy of the organisation. So I think governance is important but we would not claim that it is a panacea; we would not claim that it is the only element of a caring approach. Clearly deliverable outcomes are essentially what any organisation, any government should be finally judged on, rather than whether they have the right frameworks and strategies in place. Q169 Mr Savidge: We are going to be meeting some of the Members of Environment and Rural Affairs Committee next week. Are there any particular issues that would be interesting for us to raise with them, and do you think it would be an idea for us to suggest to them that they might consider having an Environmental Audit Committee that could look at the work of the whole Executive, if we put it very politely? Mr Matthews: I actually came here on the back of meeting the Committee yesterday to talk about progress with our research, so again I am maybe in a difficult position in terms of what I should be saying to you on the record about what you should be saying to them. Obviously their undertaking is the scrutiny role of the Executive themselves. That was actually raised by somebody yesterday about the need for some sort of auditing committee, or possibly an external audit. One thing I think might be useful would be what is done in Wales, which is some form of external scrutiny, possibly after four years, of how the Executive is doing. That could be done through the Sustainable Development Commissioners in Scotland - three Commissioners with particular Scottish interests - or it could be done, as you say, through the Parliament, through some sort of Environmental Audit Committee. I think it is one of a number of different mechanisms that could be used and I would not want to get too involved in that. Q170 Chairman: Before we move on from Scotland, you have said - and many others have said to us as well - that the commitment of individuals is in the end more important than any number of structures or strategies, and I was wondering how effective you think the Scottish Executive have been in communicating a vision through the individuals who are signed up to this, to the rest of the governance in Scotland? Mr Matthews: There has been some research work on awareness of, not necessarily the terms of Sustainable Development but the need to look within environmental limits, which I think is referred to in Taking It On. It seems to show that there is a higher awareness of this concept in Scotland than in the rest of the UK. There have been advertising campaigns around particular issues like climate change and energy and waste, which seem to have had a high level of public awareness. I am not aware whether the Executive commissioned independent research and whether these have had an impact. In terms of the wider selling of the message, in terms of the five to 14 curriculum, the school curriculum in Scotland, there is quite a good education for citizenship strands; there is also an environmental awareness strand within that. I think both of those would be seen as quite good and quite challenging and quite provocative in terms of schools' education. In terms of the wider population possibly quite a lot more needs to be done. Q171 Chairman: Scotland is not unique in that respect. Mr Matthews: No. Q172 Mr Savidge: Something which impressed our Committee when we were in Edinburgh was the way that, for example, there had been a report on renewable energy, and the way in which with things like wind farms there had been much more positive work at actually trying to get the public interested and supportive. Mr Matthews: You are right, and it is partly, I think, because there may be greater resources with energy resources, but I think it might be partly cultural issues. There is also a heavy engineering basis in Scotland which is seen possibly as allied to that, so it is not necessarily some sort of esoteric green agenda. It is linked both to climate change, which people think is important, and also to diversification from the oil industry in Aberdeen, which you are very aware of, but also in the Clyde in terms of the heavy engineering base, based around shipbuilding in the past. I think it has been affected because of the links we have made with the economic and social benefits as well as environmental benefits, and also the community benefits for, particularly, Highland communities, in terms of funds to help regenerate their communities in terms of their releasing the potential to do other things, and so on. I think that is an area where certainly there is great potential. I am not sure, but I think Scotland and the UK missed the boat on the first round of the Renewable Energy Development. Hopefully there is now a greater emphasis, particularly through things like the Technology Institute in Aberdeen, to try and engage business and academia and government in pushing forward the next generation of Renewable Energy and making Scotland a world leader in that. I think the important thing is making those links with economic and social issues as well as environmental concerns. Chairman: Let us now move on to English regions. Q173 Joan Walley: You have already made reference to the Sustainable Development Commission's report, that shows promise but must try harder, and in view of the progress that has been made in Wales and Scotland, I was interested in how that squares up with the progress or lack of progress that might be being made currently in the regions. Would you say that the work that has been done through the frameworks carry little weight? Would you say that is a fair assessment? Ms Bennett: I will pass to Trevor, who led our work on the frameworks. Mr Houghton: I think the Regional Sustainable Development Frameworks generally have a lot less weight than what is being seen in either of the devolved administrations. I think things are moving up a gear now. In terms of when they were first developed they were developed at a time when maybe awareness raising was the primary objective and they have now moved on to a level where, in terms of what has developed in the regions in terms of regional Assemblies, the RDAs, et cetera, are really coalescing into something rather more effective. I think we can see over the next few years the whole thing moving forward in a more effective fashion. Q174 Joan Walley: I hope that your optimism proves to be founded, but coming back to what you were saying at the very beginning, do you think that we should have a strategy rather than a framework? Where do you put the responsibility for ending up with these frameworks, which need to move on? Mr Houghton: It is interesting in terms of how the regions themselves see it. Some regions have very clearly stated that they want a framework as opposed to a strategy. Q175 Chairman: What is the difference? Mr Houghton: I will go on to explain. The West Midlands at the moment is reviewing its Regional Sustainable Development Framework. Q176 Joan Walley: I am glad you mentioned the West Midlands! Mr Houghton: It is very clearly saying that it wants to stay with a framework that is there to guide Strategy Development. Q177 Joan Walley: Can I stop you there and ask you how, in what you have seen so far? You have seen the strategy adopted by the West Midlands being informed by the framework? Mr Houghton: I think the West Midlands framework, the original framework, is relatively unusual; it was the first one, it was a very awareness-raising document, and probably in terms of its practicality in the terms of influencing other strategies it was not the right sort of document to have. What they are trying to do now is to turn it into a practical document that helps to inform other strategies. Q178 Joan Walley: When you say "they", do you mean those responsible for producing the framework or do you mean those responsible for producing the Economic Strategy of the Regional Development Agencies? Mr Houghton: The grouping that is actually taking forward that Review has representation from the Assembly, the RDA, et cetera, in taking it forward. So, yes, those are people involved in actually developing the main regional strategies. What I would say, there is a need for a strategic view overall of how Sustainable Development has been taken forward in any region. So what I am saying is that there is a need for a framework to guide other strategies, but there also needs to be this overview, which is looking at how all those strategies are working together. That in some regions is coming forward now into Integrated Regional Strategies, but there needs to be a view about whether the guidance is working with the Regional Economic Strategy to deliver Sustainable Development. Are there any conflicts between them, and are those being sorted out? There needs to be something around that to see whether Sustainable Development is really moving in a region. Q179 Chairman: Going back to my question, I am not entirely clear. A framework implies a structure, does it not? Mr Houghton: Yes, it does; or a process as well. Q180 Chairman: A structure rather than a process, and is that the difference between a framework and a strategy, that the strategy is a list of things that people have to do and a structure is the context in which they have to do them? Mr Houghton: The way it has been used in several regions is that there is a framework being set out of how you develop any strategy and how Sustainable Development should feed in various points in the development of a strategy or a plan that may be dealing with housing, dealing with energy, or whatever it might be. Q181 Joan Walley: My difficulty is whether we have a framework or a strategy. Unless there is some leadership amongst those who have responsibility for it there is no likelihood of it being translated into action. So you can have all the frameworks and all the strategies, all the consultants' reports, but unless that is linked to implementation - and what I really want to ask you is whose is the responsibility for showing that leadership for ensuring that in each of our regions the Regional Assembly or the Regional Development Agencies are focused on putting vision into action? Mr Houghton: I think in many regions it is now coming down to the Regional Assemblies who are have actually taken that leadership role. Q182 Joan Walley: They do not have any control over the Regional Development Agencies, do they? Mr Houghton: They have a scrutiny function where they are using that to look at Sustainable Development and we are involved in helping Regional Assemblies do that. So it is feeding through from that level. Also, round tables, Sustainable Development Commissions or whatever, that are at present in each region are assisting in that process. So I do think that there is some leadership there, and within Assemblies there are Assembly Members who are taking that role quite seriously. Q183 Joan Walley: Given that you volunteered the West Midlands as an area to look at, could you give the Committee one example of where there is best practice in terms of this happening on the ground in the West Midlands? Mr Houghton: I was not necessarily putting forward the West Midlands as best practice. Q184 Joan Walley: No, but you mentioned West Midlands, and I am asking you to give an example of best practice in the West Midlands. Mr Houghton: In terms of their Regional Planning Guidance, for instance, they have in the Regional Planning Guidance fairly comprehensively dealt with Sustainable Development; there has been a good, sustainability appraisal of that, and that is helping to take forward Sustainable Development effectively in the region. Q185 Joan Walley: Can I move on to Defra? One of your recommendations is that Defra should work with the regions to agree a core set of Sustainable Development indicators, so that they could be used at a regional level. But Defra already publish a regional set of Quality of Life Counts headline indicators. Mr Houghton: Yes. Q186 Joan Walley: So are they not sufficient and what more do you think is needed? Mr Houghton: They will be sufficient but I think in every region there is also the argument that you should have some indicators that are there, that are decided at a regional level, that deal with specific issues related to a region. So I am not saying that the regional indicators that exist at the moment, the core set, are necessarily inadequate, though I do think that they need to be kept under review and there should be good linkage with regions that actually do that. In each region you also need indicators that are decided by that region dealing with regional matters. Q187 Joan Walley: Can I move on to Sustainable Development and how we actually get it put into practice? You made one recommendation which is saying that ODPM should consider - and I emphasise the word consider - looking at Sustainable Development as a statutory duty. Mr Houghton: Yes. Q188 Joan Walley: I remember that this was a much-discussed issue at the time when the Regional Development Agencies were set up. Are you not saying that ODPM should make it? Why are you so hesitant? Mr Houghton: There is a mixed view in the regions themselves about this and we have to reflect that view. If you are asking me as an individual with a professional interest in it I would say that it would be useful. I would say that it is particularly useful in Assemblies that are not elected in the sense that they always have the problem of legitimacy in dealing with other stakeholders. If they have a statutory role to progress a Sustainable Development I would think it would give them more legitimacy in this area and would put them on the same level as the RDAs, who do have it written in there, and I think it would be helpful. Q189 Joan Walley: Were you involved in this debate at the time when the legislation was going through? How has the issue moved on since then? Mr Houghton: We were not directly involved in it, but I think the argument is still going on amongst the practitioners in each of the regions, and I think it often comes down to how effective each of those regions are. The southwest, which I think has done very well in terms of both using its framework and progressing sustainability, the view expressed by people we talked to there was that they do not need this. I do not think that they were necessarily against it but they said that they did not need it. Maybe in some other regions, where they felt that they needed the clout to do it, they were more behind the suggestion that it should be a statutory requirement. Q190 Joan Walley: Finally, may I just ask you, in terms of the knowledge that you have of the different regions - and we have heard about Scotland and Wales - do you think that there is a big gap in understanding this issue across the country? Do you think that much of the progress on this whole agenda will only be made where there is perhaps a greater understanding, and with people of expertise and knowledge of this, or do you feel that right the way across the country there is a general understanding of this issue and it is at the top of everybody's priority list? Mr Houghton: It is certainly not at the top of everybody's priority list, but I do think the understanding of Sustainable Development has increased markedly in the last few years, and I have been impressed by the level of understanding, particularly amongst people we have met from Regional Assemblies and RDAs about those issues. Q191 Joan Walley: What do you think has instigated that? Mr Houghton: One of the things that has helped is actually the process of developing Regional Sustainable Development Frameworks. The fact that those key regional partners had to work together to put these things together, and are now involved in reviewing many of them, it means that they have to develop their understanding of Sustainable Development, and I think they have done that. Where you see the gaps is if you move down a level, if you like, and how it is influencing individual strategies in the constituencies that are linked to those because there is sometimes a lack of awareness and understanding, and I think one of the challenges for the regions, and, indeed, for the national strategy, is to put Sustainable Development in the language that can be understood by each of the sectors that it is trying to deal with, whether it be the business sector or whatever. We have not talked about the definitions, et cetera, about Sustainable Development, I did not particularly want to get into that. Q192 Chairman: We may be coming on to that. Mr Houghton: Yes. I think the key issue is putting it in terminology and relating it to what each of those sectors are doing and showing how it is relevant to them, is what matters, rather than spending hours trying to define it. Q193 Chairman: You took the example of the southwest and you said that they did not really believe that they needed a statutory duty to promote Sustainable Development. I can tell you that there are an awful lot of people in the southeast do not think there is any need for a Regional Development Agency or a Regional Assembly at all. Going back to something that Simon Thomas raised, an awful lot of the real work that gets done, to improve bio-diversity, and so on, has been done at a very local level, through Agenda 21, through the activities of District Councils, through the activities of County Councils. To what extent are any of these regional bodies connected to the people who end up having to deliver? Mr Houghton: If I could turn the question round a little, in the sense that I think there are real issues that need to be dealt with at a regional level. I am very familiar with climate change, where there are some real co-ordinating decisions that need to be made at a regional level, particularly adaptation to climate change. How does a region actually deal with the impact of climate change? Many of those are actually spatially quite big. Q194 Joan Walley: Is not climate change by definition much bigger than a region? Climate change is a global change and the actions that people need to take are in their own homes or in their own local communities. I am not quite sure what the purpose of a regional approach to climate change is. Mr Houghton: We have been doing work on that at a regional level. You could be looking at the big issues around flooding, for instance, and the increased incidence of flooding, which covers a whole river catchment, which could be a region in terms of a river catchment, and the decisions around that, and how we deal with that, and its impact on all the services that are going on there is a regional issue. Q195 Chairman: It could be pan-regional. Mr Houghton: It could be pan-regional but it is just one example. If you looked at energy, which is another one, you have a UK Strategy on Energy. For example, regional assessments have been made around renewable energy and trying to set targets for that, and then the whole issue about trying to co-ordinate where renewable energy is then developed at a local level, I think there are some clear levels of decision making where the region does have relevance. Q196 Chairman: But are they connected to those other organisations that I have mentioned? Mr Houghton: I think on both the issues I have cited, yes, is the answer. The southeast, for instance, has a very effective climate change partnership at the regional level, which links into the Regional Assembly and the other regional bodies, and is feeding down into what is happening at a local level, and relates to the National Strategy. Q197 Chairman: I am aware of southeast climate change, and it is very good and it is expressed very clearly. I am not sure that it has changed anyone's behaviour, though, least of all the behaviour of the RDA, which is still obsessed by economic growth. Mr Houghton: Indeed, and this comes back to the whole function of looking at Sustainable Development. This is a crunch issue. The whole thing about what is going to be going on with the Sustainable Communities Plan and the big developments that are related to that and how that relates to climate change is a Sustainable Development crunch issue for the southeast. Q198 Mr Challen: Before we move on to pan-regional Assemblies, can I go to my first question, which is from the evidence this morning and from your memorandum it does seem to me that there is a patchwork quilt in terms of the implementation of the UK Strategy. Do you think that suggests that awareness is itself very patchy of what this means to them and that actually most Regional Assemblies, RDAs and what-not, do not carry a great deal of weight? Mr Houghton: A patchy picture. There are some RDAs, for instance, where it is maybe not taken as seriously as we would wish. On the whole the Assemblies are taking it very seriously and are trying to put in place mechanisms to make it work, and in particular in their relationship with the RDAs. It is very much an evolving picture; none of these institutions are very old, they are still learning how to work together. I think particularly at a regional level they are only now really getting down to good working relationships between government offices, the RDA and Regional Assembly. Pointing to the government offices, for instance, again there is a very inconsistent picture in terms of how they deal with Sustainable Development and how many resources they have to deal with it. They play a lead part in many of the Regional Sustainable Development Frameworks, but since then they have drawn back a bit. In some of them they do not have dedicated staff dealing with Sustainable Development; they do not have a lead department on it and they do not have any budget relating to it. Q199 Mr Challen: So even in government departments at the regional level this is still very much in its infancy and that suggests to me that the perception that we used to have of the RDAs, in particular in the 80s and 90s, is that they compete with each other to try and get economic growth. Mr Houghton: Yes. Q200 Mr Challen: And that would still be the case? Mr Houghton: Yes, I still think that is an issue and there were examples in our research where there was obviously some conflict between Assembly and RDA about objectives. There was one RDA, for instance, who wanted to make their region within the top 20 regions in Europe, and this was described as the "Armageddon option" as far as the Assembly was concerned because its impact on the environment and society would be in many cases detrimental, if they were actually to achieve that. Q201 Joan Walley: Which region was that? Mr Houghton: That was actually in the eastern region; it is quoted in the reports, so it is public. Q202 Chairman: The southeast stated that they wanted to be the top region. Mr Houghton: Yes, exactly. These aspirations and objectives sometimes are not that realistic when you actually look at the environmental capacity of that region. But is this not the stuff of politics and political decision-making? There are these conflicts and in the eastern region instance there was a real conflict between RDA and Assembly and they did actually achieve some changes as a result of challenging that sort of thing. Q203 Mr Challen: So in terms of the four aims of the UK Strategy, the last one, which is the maintenance of high and stable levels of economic growth and employment, that still is their driving force, is it not, and all the rest is just lip service and green wash? Mr Houghton: That is what I am saying. Here was an example of where, to some extent, that aspiration being put forward in isolation was challenged. They were saying that this is inconsistent with the other aims of the UK Sustainable Development Strategy, and therefore we will challenge this, and it was moderated. Q204 Chairman: So they now only want to be in the top 30! Mr Houghton: I am not saying it is a perfect process but I am saying that there is an example of where there was some questioning made as a result of looking at Sustainable Development in the round. Q205 Mr Challen: So this does make the definition extremely important. Do you think that the definition should be a driver to action or simply some way of putting some kind of framework around what the action really is - and we know what the action really is, it is about airports and all sorts of things like that? Mr Matthews: I think out feeling is that having a clear definition is important in the sense that it enables people within government to understand what this agenda is about. For example, as you have already referred, one of the key defining criteria within the UK Strategy is economic growth. Many people would rather redefine the economic element of sustainability in different terms than that, and, clearly, as you stated just now, it enables quite a lot of sustainable development to go ahead. I think the definition only matters in terms of that broader aspiration or understanding. It is more what happens underneath it, what underpins it than specific actions, that we feel are more important. So, yes, clarity of definition; the definition should be clear, it should be underpinned by clear, sustainable development principles that are widely understood, but it is only one small element, it is not the overall approach. Ms Bennett: If I could come in there, as well? We feel that we do not want to spend another four years re-defining sustainable development. What matters is the UK Strategy says, look, we have some big conflicts here between what the RDAs are doing and bio-diversity, or whatever it is, how are we going to tackle it? Let us feed down some clear guidance to the RDAs on what we decide to do to tackle this issue. That is what matters, not spending another four years squabbling over whether we have economic development, GDP in there or not. It is really facing up to the issues as to what are the conflicts between those four aims on sustainable development and how we are going to deal with them. Q206 Mr Challen: One of the problems of course is that we might have a very clear definition but if that is not backed up with hard cash then it will matter very little to the RDAs in any case because they are funded to do economic things not environmental things. That is generally true, is it not? Ms Bennett: I would not say that completely. Mr Houghton: I think it is how they apply their cash and whether they seriously put in sustainability criteria in terms of how they apply the funding that they are responsible for, and that comes back to issues like whether sustainability appraisal and things like Objective 1 projects are done effectively. Q207 Mr Challen: They will measure their success in terms of jobs created and how much per job they reckon that they can credit to themselves, and this is no doubt how the government sees it too. Ms Bennett: But this comes down to the link that we were talking about, the Welsh example, where the Welsh Development Agency, the Welsh Assembly has tried to build in clear sustainable development standards into their remit, and how well is the UK government doing that with the RDA? Are they really tackling that? Should they be tackling that? We certainly would not say that RDA should not deal with employment in regions, but what we are saying is that they should be dealing with it in a way that tends not to conflict with social economic environmental objectives. Q208 Mr Thomas: Does that work in Wales? Ms Bennett: I was going to talk about the Dee Estuary because I was reading our report in preparation for this and I noticed that one of the big conflicts that one of the officers raised was that there was a big conflict around the Dee Estuary, which has large employment along the Estuary, but it is also a special site of scientific interest. They had not dealt with that kind of issue, they had not said, "How are we going to deal with that?" and of course it has just blown up in their faces, just recently. You probably know it was British Aerospace, was it not? Q209 Mr Thomas: The stretching of the docks to take out some wings. Ms Bennett: They wanted to get some wings down. So what we are saying is that we have to face those issues or otherwise suddenly British Aerospace says, "If you do not get those wings down the Dee Estuary we are going to move all these jobs." So you face the issues at the start, feed them down through your strategy and through your guidance to RDA as well. Q210 Mr Challen: All this regional "stuff", if I can use that expression, does it not get in the way of addressing issues of climate change? Are there not bodies out there that are actually doing real things now at the regional level? We have had all these talks, we have heard that they are in their infancy, we have to have strategies, frameworks and they have to be revised and re-visited, and it is just talking shop. Should not the agencies who actually do these things get our attention and be allowed to get on with it without having a huge panoply of bureaucracy to deal with it at the same time? Mr Houghton: For instance, we have spatial strategies which have much greater significance in terms of planning, and I would say that those are the areas where climate change should be addressed, and it does provide the broad strategic view of what should be happening in the region that then feeds down to the local level, and I think it is appropriate that that is there. They are important strategies and they do need some body to bring those together. Q211 Mr Challen: If I want something to happen in my constituency you would think normally you go to Leeds City Council. Leeds City Council may well say, "We cannot do anything until the Yorkshire Forum has discussed it," and the Yorkshire Forum says, "We might be happy with this as long as Leeds City Council is happy with it as well," and then you might have one or two other bodies involved. So eventually we have too many people to deal with. Ms Bennett: I think my answer would be that on some issues like climate change there clearly is a regional role. On other issues, for example, we are flying in exotic out of season vegetables, so huge energy consumption, the use of pesticides, chemicals, et cetera. There is a national role there; you might be dealing with CAP, you might be dealing with general grants to the farmers, et cetera; and there is a local role, that authorities can have a role in persuading schools to purchase local products, et cetera, developing home markets. There probably is not a big regional role in that particular issue, although I might be persuaded. So it does depend to some extent on the issues. Mr Houghton: What I would say is that the UK Strategy should actually be saying, what is the role at each different level on particular issues? And it does not do that at the moment. I think there would be a lot more clarity in terms of the strategy and responsibilities if that were the case. Q212 Mrs Clark: Talking about the UK Strategy - and probably what I am going to say has been discussed a bit anyway - should it simply provide an overall statement of aims and principles or should it be really a driver of progress? Ms Bennett: In our view it has to be a driver. If you just have aims and principles - and what has typically happened in the regions where you have aims and principles and everybody does their appraisal, you cannot be sure that all the different policies, all the different actions out there add up to enough to deal with the big issues. So you have to have drivers for the big issues. Not for everything, but for the big, clear unsustainable trends; you have to have clear drivers that are then feeding down into government departments and then hopefully feeding on out, into how are we going to tackle these big unsustainable trends. Q213 Mrs Clark: If it is going to be a driver what implications would this have for some of the strategies of the devolved administrations that we have talked about today? Mr Matthews: Obviously in the Scottish domestic policy it is devolved now down to that sub-national government level. I think it is good what Joan said about clear definition of what needs to be addressed at what level. Q214 Mrs Clark: Do you have a core set of targets and objectives, which should be common to UK strategy and the devolved? Is there a basic minimum that has to be threaded through? Mr Matthews: Yes. For example, the Scottish Parliament has an enormous remit around domestic affairs but key fiscal decisions are still retained by Westminster, and if you are talking about sustainable consumption and sustainable production the Westminster and UK level still has an enormous amount to address around that. So it is just about being clear exactly where power rests to address certain issues. Obviously the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly have far more power than the English regions do, so there needs to be a different forum from, say, regional government in England. Q215 Mrs Clark: So back to the regions again. Are there any issues that can only be dealt with or should only be dealt with at regional level? You have talked quite a lot about the eastern region today and my constituency is in the eastern region and certainly all the newspapers in the eastern region recently have been going on about people protesting about wind turbines, et cetera. What leadership was actually given there by the region and the RDA? I would say none at all. Mr Houghton: I know that the eastern region has carried out an assessment, has developed a target, and is being integrated into --- Q216 Mrs Clark: It has not got the message through though, has it? Mr Houghton: No, I agree there is more to be done. I do not deny that. I do think that there is a role there in trying to think about - particularly with something like wind turbines, which are immensely controversial - how you decide where they go. That is an appropriate thing to be looking at at a regional level because at a local level we might be thinking that that is going to be near a local church, it is going to spoil this view. Q217 Mrs Clark: Not in my back garden. Mr Houghton: No, not in my back yard, whereas at regional level you can start to make some more sensible decisions. Mr Matthews: There are two slightly different issues here. One is where is the appropriate level for power to rest when you address certain issues, and the other is are regional based or local based institutions being effective in doing what they are supposed to do? Whether or not the eastern Assembly, which I know very little about, unlike Trevor, if they are failing to do that, that is partly a failure of them to exercise the powers that they have, rather than necessarily the framework being wrong or their powers in that framework being wrong. Q218 Mrs Clark: You have suggested as well that the UK Strategy should be accompanied by what we call an action plan. We have strategies, we have frameworks, we have action plans, we have Uncle Tom Cobbley, et cetera. Is this not going to be just another tier of bureaucracy administration and actually a slower to progress? Ms Bennett: Could I give you an example of this? The difference between a strategy and action plan, a strategy might be you as a Committee, you decide at the beginning of the year you will do the following reviews, and then you go off and you deal with your constituency, as you deal with your other work. You come back at the end of the year and you say, "We didn't do those reviews, did we?" Because you forget to tell who to prepare the background for papers, who to invite to come and give evidence. Unless you have the action plan, which is how we are going to implement a strategy, then you might as well not have the strategy as far as I am concerned. So an action plan or an implementation plan is an essential part of making a strategy effective. Q219 Mrs Clark: Finally, you have been quite severe on the UK Development Strategy for failing to come to terms with crunch issues. At the same time you do seem to accept that it is very hard to assess how the new policies and the new legislation actually have an impact on social, economic and our environmental goals. Is this not really, at the end of the day, the key difficulty which we are all facing in trying to develop more radical proposals to promote what we all want to see - Sustainable Development? Ms Bennett: I am not convinced that it is hard for us to know what the issues are and what the impacts are going to be. When we talked to the Welsh Office, as I said, they knew very well that the Dee Estuary was a burning issue; that it was important for jobs and that it was an absolutely essential nature site. They knew what the issues were but they have not dealt with them. That is the issue; it is saying, we have to face up to this issue and how are we going to deal with it? Chairman: If I can come back on that response to Mrs Clarke. You have just said that you did not think it was terribly difficult to identify the crunch issues, but in your memorandum you said it is an "administrative nightmare". Shall we leave it on that basis? Thank you very much for your evidence, it has been very helpful and lively! |