Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-79)
17 DECEMBER 2003
LORD HASKINS
AND MARCUS
NISBET
Q60 Diana Organ: Just from the other
side of the argument, are you not a little concerned that, having
recommended the abolition of the Countryside Agency, actually
we are skewing the whole of your new structure in favour of the
environment? We are not really interested in rural proofing and
rural delivery and rural affairs and rural services, it is all
going to be really a glorified—
Lord Haskins: No. If you have
read that into my Report then you have misread it. First of all,
remember, the big activity of Defra is still to pay out to farmers
big cheques and subsidies. I did not look at the £2.8 billion
of the existing payments which goes through the Rural Payments
Agency. One would argue that the farmers are being quite well
looked after, as a result of that. My recommendations on social
and economic delivery and getting that into the local authority
network and getting it into the local partnership network, and
the RDAs, are every bit as important as the environment. The problem
is, that the environment stuff is coming to the top of the sections
policy agenda and Defra has got to be ready to deal with running
not one set of CAP policies but two. They are going to have to
run the existing CAP, which is the subsidies system, as well as
the agri-environmental. Pillar 2 schemes, as they come through,
and that is the real challenge. From a delivery point of view,
if I were sitting at the top of this pile, that is what I would
put as my priority.
Q61 Diana Organ: Why were you ambiguous
about the Forestry Commission, why have you decided that they
are not really going to be put into the integrated agency? You
seem to be not sure about what they are really meant to be doing
and where they are?
Lord Haskins: There are two things
about that. First of all, I do suggest that it should go in to
the new agency, but I also recognise that you could leave it out.
I do suggest taking all the policy stuff away from them, by the
way, that goes into Defra itself.
Q62 Diana Organ: You have left them
hanging in limbo, have you not, you have taken in their policy
and then you have got them hanging outside, not clear what they
are?
Lord Haskins: They have the choice.
They can be disbanded and put into the new agency, they can do
that, and, on balance, that was my preferred position. There is
a complication with the Forestry Commission because of devolution.
The Forestry Commission operates in Scotland and Wales, not in
Northern Ireland, and that is an aspect which is not within my
remit.
Q63 Joan Ruddock: I wanted really
to turn now, as it follows very much on what Diana has been asking,
to the primary purpose of the new integrated agency. I wonder
if you could just say briefly what you see as the primary purpose?
Lord Haskins: The environment
agenda is clearly becoming more and more important in the rural
agenda. Everybody recognises that. It has been growing for the
last 20 years and it is going to continue to grow. What I am trying
to develop is two approaches towards the environmental agenda.
On the one hand, the Environment Agency, which primarily is a
regulator, its job is to ensure that directives and laws related
to the environment are implemented properly, although I hope it
does it with some flexibility. The other side is the conservation
of the landscape and the landscape management, which is going
to become very much part of Pillar 2 in the way CAP develops.
This is about encouraging people in the countryside to do good
things, rather than regulate them to stop them from doing bad
things. The new agency's job is going to be to do just that. First
of all, to conserve what is already there, but secondly to develop
the programmes, the incentives, which are going to get farmers
particularly, but not just farmers, to perform in a responsible,
environmental way going into the future. The essential element
of that is that those two key agencies complement each other,
so a lot of the things that the new agency can do will help the
Environment Agency in its work, for example, incentives to stop
farmers from doing things which create flood problems at the top
of rivers. The Environment Agency will be closely interested in
what the new agency is doing and vice versa. At the moment, this
is all very much unconnected and unco-ordinated, and I hope this
gives more sense and coherence to it. The other thing about the
environment, is that you cannot do all that at local level, you
have got to do it also at regional level, at national level, at
EU level.
Q64 Joan Ruddock: Within the new
integrated agency itself, how much of a tension is there between
enhancing access to the countryside and protecting the countryside?
Lord Haskins: It is a good question.
To an extent it is a policy issue, because the Government has
put a priority on access, and the tone of previous policies vis-a"-vis
National Parks would be protection rather than access. That tension
is there because the Government has put it there. I think, putting
access into the same agency as conservation is a good thing, because
then you force people to realise that we have got to provide access.
The countryside is full of trade-offs, and the best way to manage
those trade-offs is to have one single body managing them. You
have to make sure that one voice does not prevail over the other,
and it is tricky.
Q65 Joan Ruddock: Why do you think
that so many of the environmentalists were very worried by your
proposals, thinking that English Nature was going to be taken
apart in some way, or subsumed into an agency which would not
have the same kind of independence, the same concern for biodiversity,
in particular?
Lord Haskins: There are two things.
The environmental journalists, many of whom are my deepest friends,
have a great capacity not only (a) to pick up the wrong end of
the stick, but also (b) to want to pick up the wrong end of the
stick. I think, in this particular case, that can only be the
case, because whilst I thought of all sorts of criticisms this
report was going to engender I never thought of that one. I thought
the criticism was going to be much more that this report was spending
too much time on the promotion of the environmental agenda at
the expense of the other agendas which somebody has just referred
to. Actually, I suggested that the new agency might be an enlarged
English Nature. Somebody said that my recommendations cover some
sort of fiendish plot to undermine English Nature because English
Nature had said something rude about the Government in regard
to GM. This is stuff you can only think up late at night.
Q66 Joan Ruddock: You are saying,
essentially, the new agency is English Nature with add-ons?
Lord Haskins: Broadly speaking,
that, and I talked to the whole Board of English Nature about
it, and a lot of the work that went into developing these ideas
came from English Nature.
Q67 Joan Ruddock: Might the new agency
be called English Nature?
Lord Haskins: Why not? I have
suggested it. It seems as good an idea as any. They are very sensitive
people in Defra. They said, "No, no, because if you do that
then other agencies will say they are being taken over by English
Nature. We can't have people taking other people over." Actually,
I think that takeovers are rather better than mergers because
everybody knows where they stand.
Q68 Joan Ruddock: We heard earlier
about possible concerns and delays because you needed primary
legislation. In relation to the proposals on an integrated agency,
is a delay in legislation a similar problem as it was with other
issues?
Lord Haskins: It could be a problem,
because the new agency would take responsibility for the National
Parks. I do not worry about that one very much because the National
Parks are going to continue, more or less, as they did before.
The other big area is access, the new agency will be responsible
for access, but I think we just have to manage that in a grown-up
way. Bear in mind, all the excellent people, in the Countryside
Agency who are dealing with access will transfer, at any rate,
that activity will transfer, so I think that is a perfectly manageable
period until you guys make up your mind about the primary legislation,
which I hope we can minimise.
Q69 Mr Liddell-Grainger: Lord Haskins,
I am fascinated about who is going to be the lead in this, because
potentially you have got diametrically opposed people you are
integrating together to advise the Government. English Nature
and the Countryside Agency have not always agreed, `phone masts
is an obvious one I can think of, and, to an extent, windmills,
at sea and on land. Surely, you are creating a machine which could
be totally unwieldy, because they cannot operate together, English
Nature and the Countryside Agency, and to an extent the Forestry
Commission, because they have competing ideals as to what they
are trying to achieve?
Lord Haskins: That was the reason
why I was rather keen to see the end of the Countryside Agency
and the Forestry Commission. Bear in mind, the concept that Mrs
Beckett has for the Countryside Agency is purely to be a policy
adviser. Ministers then have to take into account the various
advice they get from different people. It is the ministerial responsibility
to balance off that advice.
Q70 Mr Liddell-Grainger: That is
not what has happened to the Countryside Agency, they have become
a policy deliverer?
Lord Haskins: It will not be that
any more.
Q71 Mr Liddell-Grainger: Will not
this new body, potentially, grow by whatever means to become a
policy deliverer as well?
Lord Haskins: The new agency will
be a deliverer of policy. Obviously, any delivery agency has got
to be in a position to give advice. But The Countryside Agency
is creating its own schemes, running its own schemes and is meant
to be evaluating its own schemes, and that is a dangerous situation.
Q72 Mr Liddell-Grainger: Every MP
here will have come across it, because of village halls, etc.,
which is a well-known one, but is not that a danger which could
well happen with an integrated machine which you are creating
now, which is going to run parallel on advice to Defra and to
the Environment Agency, etc?
Lord Haskins: I think we have
to be careful not to overstate the policy advisory role of this
new agency. This new agency is in the business of delivering Government
policy. Government must consult with that agency when it is changing
policy by asking is there a delivery problem here? I do not anticipate
that the agency would be proposing new policies, as such, it will
be responding to a question, can you deliver our policy?
Q73 Mr Liddell-Grainger: Let us take
it as policy delivery, then you have the situation with the Environment
Agency which will be sitting to one side of this, or somewhere
in the middle of it all, or wherever. The Environment Agency,
potentially, has the problem of falling foul of this new one,
because it could be called English Nature, it could be called
Estates Department, or whatever you want to call it. Do you see
problems, which legislation will not be able to resolve, with
the Environment Agency falling foul of another body?
Lord Haskins: No, I do not. One
of the suggestions we have is that the boards of these two bodies
should exchange members, because their agenda, is complementary.
They both contribute to a sustainable environment; one is interested
in resource protection and the other in conservation. Promotion
of access and recreation actually is the responsibility of many
agencies at the present time. Landscape protection and enhancement
is not the responsibility of the Environment Agency. Biodiversity
is part of the Environment Agency's remit anyway, as it is of
English Nature; natural resource protection is also. There is
an overlap already.
Q74 Mr Liddell-Grainger: This is
a marvellous sort of integrated policy, is it not, because you
have got everybody still doing bits and pieces? Why do you not
just get rid of the whole thing and put it into one group?
Lord Haskins: We have talked about
that, there was talk about creating one big agency, but, again,
I thought that was just a little bit too big, and we had a regulator
and a deliverer under the same roof, and I am nervous about that.
It is like a local authority with care homes, which is both running
them and regulating them, it is a very dangerous practice, and
I think this would apply here. Separating regulation from delivery
as much as possible is very important.
Q75 Mr Liddell-Grainger: You might
get more coherent people in a nursing home. Following on from
what Austin was saying, there are a lot of policies delivered
now from Brussels. Would it not be better actually to integrate
the whole thing? I know the Secretary of State says she wants
to keep the Countryside Agency as an independent advisory body,
I think probably that is the wrong way to go. Surely then it must
be right that we look at a more integrated system, because so
much of this information now is coming from Brussels, and we are
mid-way through the CAP reforms, and all the rest of it? Surely,
that is a better way to go, is it not?
Lord Haskins: You are proposing
a more integrated system than I have suggested.
Q76 Mr Liddell-Grainger: Yes, in
other words, with the Environment Agency and other bodies coming
into one organisation because of the effect of Brussels?
Lord Haskins: No. I think that
is a different issue. You have got to keep the regulatory role
and the delivery role separate, because otherwise they would be
regulating themselves.
Q77 Mr Liddell-Grainger: That is
happening now, the Countryside Agency does it and, to an extent,
the Environment Agency?
Lord Haskins: That is exactly
why I want the Countryside Agency to give up its delivery activities.—
Q78 Mr Liddell-Grainger: I mean no
disrespect to you, the Environment Agency is still going to be
there doing it?
Lord Haskins: The Environment
Agency's responsibility is regulation, primarily it is regulation.
The new agency's remit is incentivising and encouraging people
to do good environmental things, it is also habitat. They are
different roles. You can make a case for one organisation; it
is a very big and demanding role.
Q79 Mr Liddell-Grainger: I can see
this ending up in a complete muddle, to put it very politely,
because you are trying to integrate people who are potentially
diametrically opposed to each other?
Lord Haskins: I do not understand
why they are diametrically opposed to each other.
| 
