Select Committee on Environmental Audit Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 202-219)

11 JANUARY 2005

MS BRONWEN JONES, MS KELLY FREEMAN AND MR BOB RYDER

  Q202 Chairman: Good afternoon. I would like to welcome you to our Select Sub-Committee this afternoon, and thank you for taking the trouble to come along. To go straight into the series of questions we have for you, one of the things that we did want to establish for the record, before we begin to discuss the detailed questions that we have for you, was to confirm that the memo we have from the DfES, to which you have contributed?

Ms Jones: Yes.

  Q203 Chairman: In terms of Defra it stands alone as the Government's response? I want to check that you agree with all the points made in that memo because it seems, to us at least, a bit odd, your taking such an important role in this whole agenda. It is difficult for us to see how you contributed to it. We wanted to confirm that you are happy with all the points in that?

  Ms Jones: Yes, we did make a contribution to that and we are happy that it stands not just as a joint memorandum from the DfES and Defra, but actually I understand from DfES colleagues that it includes points made by other departments. So it is really a government-wide response submitted by DfES on our behalf.

  Q204 Chairman: One of the things that we wanted to look at as well, in the memo that was submitted by the DfES it said that Education for Sustainable Development is "a good description for the enterprise of making people in all sectors of education and skills `aware of how our actions affect the people we interact with,'" and it goes on to say that, "The DfES believes that most people today would acknowledge the importance of this activity." Do you think that is right? Do you think that is a little bit over optimistic or do you think that that is where people are at or where the professionals are at? How much currency do you think it has?

  Ms Jones: I do not think Defra can answer for the educational sector specifically because DfES know their clients rather better than we do. But we lead on communications for SD in general, and it is our experience that professionals and practitioners understand the term Sustainable Development and, by extension, the term Education for Sustainable Development. But with the general public it has less resonance and the research that we have commissioned recently certainly backs that up. So, yes, it is understood by professionals and practitioners, but for wider public communications Sustainable Development and ESD are less useful terms. I do not know whether Kelly wants to add to that?

  Ms Freeman: I do not think so.

  Q205 Chairman: Mr Ryder?

  Mr Ryder: By extension there are parallels with other forms of communication around sustainability and I deal particularly with the theme of Sustainable Consumption and Production, which perhaps trips even less easily off the tongue. But Defra and the DTI have produced a policy framework and are building a number of frameworks around that theme. We think it is something which, again in very similar terms, can be understood by practitioners, policy makers, opinion formers, but is not at all suitable for general messages to the public, and in that case one has to segment the audience to find what kind of behaviour changes we want particular stakeholders to make and then to communicate in those terms.

  Q206 Chairman: Our dilemma is that if so many people are unconvinced or do not recognise the importance of this and are not, if you like, converted to understanding this, what is Defra's role in helping to make them aware? It is very difficult to see how Defra is carrying out that role.

  Ms Jones: To clarify, we are talking about the general public now or the education sector?

  Q207 Chairman: We are talking about the general public who are not convinced about the need for all of this, who are not necessarily in the education system per se, or who could be, and this split between DfES responsibility and Defra's responsibility, who is actually responsible for it?

  Ms Freeman: I can see where the Committee is coming from. I think for our part, with Defra, there is enough evidence that we have to suggest that people actually understand environmental issues. The greater challenge for us is getting them to focus on what behaviour change is required. We have to educate all audiences and obviously young people are very important within that, which is where we really cross specifically to the work that the Committee is reviewing today. But on the wider scale we know that we have to work harder and that is a bigger challenge for us as a department. I can either pick up now, or later on when you ask us about how we are getting the message across, to tell you about where we are and how we are going to move that on. How would you like to play that? Would you like that now or later?

  Q208 Chairman: It might be helpful to have a brief overview of it now and we may well come on to that in a bit.

  Ms Freeman: I think from where we are, we know that there are a number of national campaigns that have been run that have focused specifically on raising awareness but have not specifically translated into behaviour change, and what we have tried to do over the last year to 18 months is to step back a bit and look specifically at what are the drivers for changing behaviour. How might we better plan our communications to support that because we felt that we needed to stop and to learn some lessons. So we have commissioned some research, which has been received very well both across government and also within the wider NGO communications groups and I think that will help us to move forward.

  Q209 Chairman: We may go into more detail in a short while, but in terms of UK Sustainable Development Strategy and the review that is taking place there, am I right in thinking that Defra is part of the inter-departmental working group?

  Ms Jones: Yes, Defra is leading the review, although clearly Sustainable Development is a responsibility right across government for all departments, but we have a particular role to lead and champion it, so we are coordinating the review. The inter-departmental working group was a temporary and informal group involving Defra, DCMS and DfES, which met, I think, only twice.

  Q210 Chairman: Did that include then the Sustainable Development Commission or not?

  Ms Jones: I do not think it did although they have seen a lot of the deliberations on the Strategy Review, so if they were not formally in the meetings they were certainly involved. The group only met twice and its remit was to take the consultation responses and analyse them and generate ideas and proposals and analysis for consideration in the review of the Sustainable Development Strategy. The group has now closed because they have completed that task.

  Q211 Chairman: In terms of the membership of the group, were there other organisations or government bodies or agencies that you think could have been added to the debate that was going on there? Was the inter-departmental working party as comprehensive a group as it could have been?

  Ms Jones: It was not that nature of group. What they were doing was taking the consultation responses, which included all of the groups that you might imagine would have a view on this topic, and produce some analysis in order for us to take the work forward. So I think maybe inter-departmental working group is perhaps too grand a title and sounds a little misleading; it was simply to analyse the results of consultation because we did not want to do that purely in Defra, we wanted other departments to feel part of that as well.

  Q212 Chairman: With the benefit of hindsight do you think that there were others that could have been included, or was it as comprehensive a group of people as you could have got around a table?

  Ms Jones: Clearly there are other people who could have been involved.

  Q213 Chairman: Who do you think they might have been?

  Ms Jones: I cannot give you names off the top of my head, I am sorry. But their input had already been made, we felt, through the consultation exercise. So we had a very wide range of views already and the task was to put those into some kind of manageable summary so that departments and Ministers could make sense of them, and that was the task.

  Q214 Mr Thomas: Could I just ask on that, what is happening now? The inter-departmental working group may be a grandiose title, but if it has done its job and dealt with the responses to the consultation how are you taking forward the strategy now, because you are the lead obviously within Defra?

  Ms Jones: Yes, there are inter-departmental discussions.

  Q215 Mr Thomas: Is that on an ad hoc basis? It is not formalised as such? I am just trying to get a grip on how it is happening.

  Ms Jones: It depends what you mean by formal.

  Q216 Mr Thomas: Everything in government is formal, I know!

  Ms Jones: Okay, then it is formal. It is being taken forward at various levels. There is a Programme Board that is looking at various papers that are coming out as part of the review strategy. That includes the Sustainable Development Commission, the devolved administrations are involved, and that will soon go for ministerial clearance.

  Q217 Mr Thomas: So everything is coming back to one department rather than going into an inter-departmental—

  Ms Jones: No, this is an inter-departmental process. Defra is leading and supporting it but other departments are involved and it will be cleared by the Ministers through Cabinet Committee.

  Q218 Chairman: Just returning to the Sustainable Development Strategy and the new strategy that is being drawn up at the moment, from the work that you have done so far do you think that Education for Sustainable Development is going to be playing a greater part in what comes out of the new strategy than the previous one?

  Ms Jones: Yes, I think it is fair to say that education has been raised by many consultation responses and it will be a major theme. Education in its broadest sense, that is, so including informal education, social learning and behaviour change.

  Q219 Chairman: If that is the case now why was it not the case when the previous strategy was drawn up?

  Ms Jones: I think anything I say on that would be speculation. I was not in this post in 1999.


 
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