Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100-114)
16 JUNE 2004
SIR BRIAN
BENDER, MR
ANDREW BURCHELL
AND MR
LUCIAN HUDSON
Q100 Joan Ruddock: Is there any sense
of urgency, though?
Sir Brian Bender: Absolutely.
Mr Burnside was asking about communications successes and I think
the way in which the Department has got a better handle on what
is going on with waste in the last 18 months is something I am
quite proud of, the way we have actually got our act together
and are understanding much better what is going on and the way
the different levers can be used. There is absolutely a sense
of urgency but, using the mandarin words I was not allowed to
use earlier, this is a very challenging time.
Q101 Chairman: Would you apply the same
optimistic view to the disposal of hazardous waste?
Sir Brian Bender: I do not believe
everything I hear in the media at the moment on this. We have
been having intensive discussions with the Environment Agency
about it. There is a short-term issue on the ending of co-disposal
in the middle of next month; that will lead to a reduction in
the number of landfill sites that are taking hazardous waste.
As Elliot Morley said on Newsnight last night, about 60%
of such waste at the moment is contaminated soil and asbestos,
which need not and should not go to landfill. The chemical sector,
again as he said last night on Newsnight, believes that
the changes should not have any problems in their sector. No,
we are not complacent about this issue. We are working closely
with the industry and with the Environment Agency on how to manage
what will be happening in a regulatory sense in the middle of
July.
Q102 Chairman: Does that mean in layman's
speak that we will have enough licensed sites?
Sir Brian Bender: Taking everything
together, we think there is going to be a projected capacity of
over one million tonnes a year, which is less than there has been
in previous years. On the other hand, we do not expect future
arisings to be as high as in the past from the point of view of
industry. This is something that we are discussing, as the French
would say, incessantly with both the Environment Agency and the
industry.
Q103 Chairman: Given, as you know, that
the Committee produced a detailed report on that and questions
of definition and licensing were part of our findings, I think
we would find it helpful to have an update as to exactly where
we are, the relationship between the demand facilities and the
availability of those with some indication of timescale to see
whether in fact we are on track.
Sir Brian Bender: That is understood.
Q104 Mr Breed: On rural policy, and this
revolves around PSA Target 4, may I say that I think for very
many people, and particularly those of us who represent largely
rural areas, this particular target is probably one of the most
important we would look at both in terms of the economy and trying
to get the productivity up and also the accessibility to services.
I think the five key services you have identified are exactly
right as such. We get back to the whole idea of being challenging
and it is difficult. There is no doubt that the difficulty must
be matched, if you like, with its importance because those particular
aspects of the economy and accessibility are absolutely vital
to rural areas. Can you expand a little bit as to why it is difficult
and challenging? Is it to do with the timescales that you have
got to do it in? Is it to do with the general economy of the country?
Is it to do with a lack of resources or insufficient resources
actually to meet that sort of target quickly? What are the component
bits which make the thing difficult?
Sir Brian Bender: The first thing
to say is, when Defra was created, which is only three years ago,
for the first time we were bringing together the various bits
of Government dealing with rural policy, and one of the first
things we worked out was that actually we did not have a very
good evidence base. You may find that, representing a rural constituency,
a strange remark but actually the national evidence base of what
the position and issues are in rural areas was pretty weak, and
therefore one of the first tasks was to get the right evidence
base, to identify the right sort of interactions. The second issue
on something like this, and the Committee I know has looked into
this in a number of areas like rural schools and also broadband,
is that the effectiveness of our actions depends, rather like
on sustainable development, on influencing others. Of course,
there are some things which are within our own gift and we can
do them more or less effectively, but the extent to which we can
persuade the Department for Education and Skills to do the right
sort of things on Sure Start or on rural schooling, persuade the
Department of Transport do the right sort of things on rural transport,
and so on, is what it is about. Therefore it is a combination
of the power of persuasion and having the right evidence to go
to them. One of the most significant gains we have made in the
last few months on this is actually getting it agreed that other
departments will now report their performance with what is called
a geographical marker, so that performance in rural areas will
be identified. Otherwise, one could have a situation where Department
X can achieve its targets nationally and be on track by getting
it 95% right in urban areas but only 60% right in rural areas.
This persuasion of other departments that there should be this
geographical marker is another thing we have achieved. It is taking
a while. I have a brief which gives lots of examples, but you
will know better than I where there is genuine progress being
made.
Q105 Mr Breed: We have about two years
to go before it is supposed to be met, and it indicates we have
not made a preliminary assessment as to how far along the trajectory
we are. When do you expect to make some sort of preliminary assessment
of how close we are?
Sir Brian Bender: In the course
of calendar 04. We have been using the first year to actually
get the information data, the evidence, together and refine the
delivery plans. I am glad I am getting other members of the Committee
to use this word "trajectory". We will aim to have the
necessary delivery plans and trajectories refined during the year.
I do not know exactly what is going to emerge from the Spending
Review on the new PSA on rural policy but I would be surprised
if it was radically different, there is bound to be a PSA which
mirrors some element of services and productivity.
Q106 Mr Breed: We recognise you are going
to involve departments to assist in that—
Sir Brian Bender: Yes.
Q107 Mr Breed: —but there are some
aspects of that which are contained solely within your control,
and you dedicate monies to various organisations and bodies to
ensure you meet your targets and objectives. What sort of activities
do you undertake to ensure that these monies, when they are provided
to other organisations and bodies, are being used to achieve these
targets?
Sir Brian Bender: Mr Burchell
may want to say a bit more about this in a moment, and I give
him that 30-second warning. One of the answers to that was announced
by Margaret Beckett last November when the Haskins Report on Rural
Delivery was published, and she wanted us to do a review about
rural funding streams. There is a plethora of different funding
streams provided by Defra, which the Haskins analysis compellingly
said—I cannot remember the exact words—was pretty
confusing for the business or individual in a rural area, needed
to be simplified, and needed to be simplified from the point of
view of the customer. So there was a sort of initial evaluation,
if you like, at that stage which said, "It is too complicated",
and one of the pieces of work which is underway is this review
of rural funding streams. I do not know if there is anything more
you want to say about evaluating what the Countryside Agency and
others do with the money?
Mr Burchell: We have had the mid-term
review of the England Rural Development Programme, which includes
some socio-economic schemes within the portfolio—it is not
just the agri-environment—and also we had the review of
the Rural White paper last year, published earlier this year,
which was trying to look at the effectiveness of policies in relation
to the White Paper which was published several years ago. I know
the Countryside Agency do evaluations of their schemes but I do
not have the data on those. But effectively there is a portfolio
of evaluations around things like the ERDP, the Rural White Paper
and so on, which inform and supplement the review of rural funding
which Sir Brian has already mentioned.
Q108 Mr Breed: Bearing in mind the all-encompassing
nature of the target, which is enormous, the whole of the economy
of the rural areas, totally dependent on the co-operation of loads
of other departments, is it actually realistic? However much I
support the aim, is it actually a realistic target to set when
so much of it is dependent upon other people and other things
happening which are beyond your control? If it is not really in
your ability to control it, is it a sensible target for you to
have?
Sir Brian Bender: This comes back
in a different way to the line of questioning earlier about who
is going to be driving the review of climate change. There is
very little in Government which is solely in the control of one
department. This area is one where clearly the levers we have
are very rubbery indeed and involve lots of people. On the other
hand, if you do have a department with "rural affairs"
in its title, it seems to me a fair cop that that department is
held accountable to this Committee and more widely on whether
it is doing anything on the economic performance in rural areas
and on service delivery in rural areas, even if the doing anything
means persuading other people to do so. It is our responsibility
to try and ensure this happens at national level. Also, a key
part of this is working with local government, RDAs and others
at regional level, because that is where a lot of the real difference
is going to be made.
Q109 Mr Breed: I wondered whether you
thought it ought to be broken down a bit more, into more focused
targets which will produce the aims but be more focused to achieve
a certain target rather than this all-encompassing one?
Sir Brian Bender: We have thought
about, and are in discussion with other departments, on whether
we have specific pacts with them about whether or not to publish
a target; "What this will mean in this area is DfES and we
will jointly work for this" and so on. So that is something
which is under discussion, but I do not think it will be published
as part of a PSA this summer.
Q110 Chairman: I would just like to bring
our proceedings to a conclusion with one or two questions about
BSE. Just on a point of record, on page 115, Figure 23, "allocated
cost of BSE eradication", the Science Directorate figure
for 2003-04 is shown at £5.4 million, it leaps up by a huge
amount to £54 million—
Sir Brian Bender: It is an error
and I apologise. It should indeed be £5.4 across the lines
and I apologise. There was a tiny handful of errors but this is
rather a stark one.
Q111 Chairman: On the next line down
from that, the Over Thirty Months Scheme; we did probe you informally
about that but could you be accused of counting your chickens
before they are hatched, because you seem to be factoring in the
reduction in OTMS here in rather a big way?
Mr Burchell: The Spending Resettlement
2002 made an assumption that over the period of that review up
to 2005-06 the rule was likely to be relaxed on the back of the
FSA review of the OTM rule, and that was factored into our baseline
for the SR02 period. Given that we used the figures from the Treasury
data base which have to be consistent with the settlement, that
is why you have this declining run of figures in 2005-06. Clearly,
the review of the OTM rule has not yet concluded and, until it
is, these numbers are just indicative numbers for future years
if the rule was relaxed.
Q112 Chairman: We have touched briefly
on the emergence of a new cattle disease and your Department has
received representations from those whose lives are being tragically
blighted by new variant CJD and deaths in their families as to
whether in the light of the emergence of this new disease there
is a need to reconsider the removal of the OTMS. We are in an
area where science continues to develop. Let us say hypothetically
that somebody says, "I suppose we had better carry on being
cautious in this area because there are new pieces of emerging
science", is there scope to revise those numbers should a
decision be taken not to eliminate the OTMS?
Sir Brian Bender: Can I first
of all say what is happening on the analysis of the situation?
The new disease is not considered at this stage to be a relevant
factor but the data on tonsils and appendices is an arguably relevant
factor. The Spongiform Advisory Committee is meeting later this
month to have a second look and give its opinion on what their
interpretation of that data may mean for the cases of variant
CJD. The Food Standards Agency will then be meeting early next
month to review its earlier advice, bearing in mind of course
that what is under discussion is not actually necessarily the
complete removal of the Over Thirty Months Scheme, but the removal
of animals born after 1996. Coming to your direct question, what
is going to happen if the scheme does not go, the taxpayer is
going to need to fund the gap between the cost of testing which
will have to be done in the event the OTMS is got rid of, and
the cost of continuing with the scheme. The £91 million figure
for 2005-06 represents the cost of testing, the £318 million
is about the cost of the OTMS, so we are talking about a gap of
about £200 million over a full year. There are current discussions
going on between us, the Treasury and the Department of Health,
in that hypothetical situation about where that money might be
found.
Q113 Chairman: If OTMS goes, on the record,
I presume you have to remit that money back to the Treasury in
the light of these figures?
Sir Brian Bender: No. What the
Treasury did in the 02 Spending Review was move the categorisation
of the OTMS from Annually Managed Expenditure to Departmental
Expenditure Limit, and therefore if we make a saving we keep it.
Also, as Mr Burchell indicated a while ago, we have cut our baseline
to assume there would be some saving, but what it does mean—the
silver lining in all this—is if we do make the savings,
Defra retains the money.
Q114 Chairman: We have had a very good
session of over two hours and we are grateful to you for this
as well as our previous exchanges. There are one or two questions
which the Clerk may wish to write to you about which we have not
touched on but can we, as always, thank you and your colleagues
for your answers and indeed in certain places the candour with
which you have responded to our probing. Thank you very much.
Sir Brian Bender: I worry, Chairman,
when I am thanked for my candour!
Chairman: As an avid reader of all additional
material, the Clerk looks forward, as I do, to the further material
you send us. Thank you very much indeed.
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