Examination of Witnesses (Questions 800
- 819)
WEDNESDAY 10 NOVEMBER 2004
MR ELLIOT
MORLEY AND
LORD ROOKER
Q800 Gregory Barker: You state in
your response to the recommendations for the code, "It is
essential that any code is practical, cost effective and flexible
enough to be achievable by all." If you are too practical,
too cost effective or too flexible, you could end up with such
a minimal standard that, while it might be achieved by all, achieves
very little for the environment. Should not the aim be to have
a meaningful environmental benchmark for developers to aim
for?
Lord Rooker: The description you
paint is a fair one. You are quite right. If you take any one
of those aspects to extremes, you will fail. That is why you have
to take it as a package. There has to be a balance. You will never
get it 100% correct. There has to be a balance because you cannot
go growing and developing without taking account of the effect
on the environment. On the other hand, there might be people who
say that the effect on the environment is so bad in principle
we do not think you should grow any more dwellings in this country.
Frankly, we reject that because that is too extreme a view. You
have to take a balanced approach and if you take any one of those
factors to extremes, you will undermine the overall package.
Q801 Gregory Barker: It is the qualitative
judgment of where you draw that balance.
Lord Rooker: I am answering the
question perhaps you did not ask but the one I thought you were
thinking of asking.
Q802 Chairman: What kind of balance
have you on the steering group that is taking forward the code?
Lord Rooker: Did we give you a
list?
Q803 Chairman: I do not think we
have seen that.
Lord Rooker: I do not have a list
with me but I will provide you with one.
Q804 Chairman: It has been suggested
that the steering group is very heavily dominated by industry
and it is an opportunity for the industry to lobby the government
which would tend to suggest that it is not going to be an enormously
effective code in terms of protecting the environment.
Lord Rooker: I am not sure where
you are quoting from. We are in the process of sending invites
out at the moment. We do not have names on it.
Q8055Chairman: The draft is coming out
in January?
Lord Rooker: The draft will be
next January, yes.
Q806 Gregory Barker: You are sending
out the invites to serve on the steering group now?
Lord Rooker: Yes.
Q807 Gregory Barker: Do you think
you will get people to commit to a draft by January?
Lord Rooker: My experience in
the last 18 months or two years, since the communities plan was
published, is that when we have asked for help and advice from
those outside, whether they be in industry, in the professions
or in local government, we have had incredible support and goodwill
and people prepared to give up their time and not simply tell
us what we want to hear.
Q808 Chairman: I am not surprised
if they are all members of the House Builders' Federation.
Lord Rooker: That is, with respect,
a trivial remark from a chair of a select committee.
Q809 Chairman: Who have you invited
to be on it?
Lord Rooker: Not all house builders
are members of the House Builders' Federation. One of the biggest
in the country is not even a member, so you cannot simply paint
everyone in the same colour like that. That is very unfair.
Chairman: Perhaps you could let us know
who you have invited to be on the steering committee. That would
be a start.
Q810 Gregory Barker: When will the
committee meet?
Lord Rooker: That will be up to
them. They will have terms of reference and a secretariat. When
they meet will be up to them. They will not meet at ministers'
dictat. Ministers will not be sitting at their elbows.
Q811 Gregory Barker: If they are
going to produce an answer in January, when do you anticipate
that they will meet?
Lord Rooker: I am not going to
prejudge. You are asking me to tell professional people, mature
adults, who are going to offer to do a task for the government
within the communities plan context, about their detail. They
will have terms of reference, a remit and a timetable that approximately
we want to work to. We will let them be the best judge of how
they do it.
Q812 Mr Francois: Can you tell us
who is actually on this steering committee or who the invitations
have been sent to?
Lord Rooker: No. I said I do not
have a list.
Q813 Chairman: I thought you said
earlier you would send us a list.
Lord Rooker: No, that was a list
of one of the other task forces. I am sorry. There was a task
force I was asked about—I think it may have been the Barker
one. It is true the Building Research Establishment and the Waste
Resources Action Programme and indeed the House Builders Federation,
but I will make sure that all the house builders are asked
because some of the key people who are building sustainable communities,
quality mixed developments, do not want anything to do with the
House Builders Federation because they think their language is
wrong. In other words, you cannot compartmentalise the industry
just by the trade associations, if I can put it that way. We want
as wide a spectrum of views from the professions in the industry
as possible.
Q814 Gregory Barker: People can draw
their own conclusions on that, but if we drill down to a little
bit of the detail, in response to the recommendation that there
be a regulatory requirement that 10% of all materials in a project
should be reclaimed, reused or recycled, John Egan told us that
he thought that was a very unambitious target, but in response
to that, you stated, "It is important to be confident that
such a requirement does not drive procurement decisions at the
expense of broader sustainability objectives." What broader
sustainable objectives might count against such a moderate target?
What did you have in mind when you said that?
Lord Rooker: I could not give
you an example on that. The fact of the matter is, I freely admit
I have not read the exchanges with John Egan. I was astonished
when I saw the figures of the amount of building materials per
person used in this country. I will stand corrected because I
am not sure where it was, but I know I read it was six tonnes
a year, an astonishing figure. The potential for avoiding waste
ought to be quite large.
Q815 Gregory Barker: How does using
more recycled, reused, or reclaimed materials, to quote you, somehow
affect the broader sustainable objectives?
Lord Rooker: I do not know. We
might have to do too many imports, for example, things like that,
which I do not think would be a good thing. We want as much home-grown
as possible. First of all, if there is less importing, it means
there is less transport anyway, so there is an effect on the environment
with the weight of stuff that is moved around the world.
Q816 Gregory Barker: You anticipate
that the target for recycled, reused or reclaimed materials could
be met by importing recycled materials?
Lord Rooker: No. In fact, I was
making exactly the opposite point. You asked me where we would
deviate from it, and I said we might not want to import recycled
materials. We might want to use stuff that is home-grown. That
may affect the amount of recycled materials we use. That was the
question you asked me. You asked me what were the factors that
might mitigate against achieving that objective, and I said one
of them might be—I do not know what the detail is—that
we want more home-grown materials, and they might not be recycled
and therefore we do not meet the target, but we have actually
saved on imports.
Q817 Gregory Barker: So you would
sacrifice an environmental target to achieve an economic target?
Lord Rooker: I am not rigid at
100% achieving everything. What I want to do is try and achieve
the overall goal of sustainable communities. I am not going to
be tied down.
Q818 Gregory Barker: So you might
not even achieve the 10% goal, which John Egan says is very unambitious,
if it compromises an economic target. So really, this is about
economic sustainability, not about environmental sustainability.
Lord Rooker: No. There is a huge
potential for using recycled materials, whether it is new build
or whether it is in the refurbishment, in the Pathfinder areas.
I have seen examples of it. I think I mentioned one when I was
here before, in Sandwell, where, to avoid knocking dwellings down,
to get them up to modern eco-standards, could you do it with these
Victorian properties? There is an example there. A family is living
in what is an experiment in terms of whether it is the doors,
the windows, the floors—everything. The amount of recycled
material there was just unbelievable. It was to be able to prove
that. It would be very expensive for one dwelling, but it is an
experiment. The potential, I think, is enormous for re-using materials.
Q819 Gregory Barker: Why did you
make that statement then?
Lord Rooker: Because we are not
prepared to be, how can I put it—too rigid. We need to build
some flexibility.
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