Examination of Witnesses (Questions 240-259)
11 JANUARY 2005
MS BRONWEN
JONES, MS
KELLY FREEMAN
AND MR
BOB RYDER
Q240 Chairman: You are not involved in
what comes out of Tomlinson in terms of the next draft that will
presumably be a White Paper?
Ms Jones: No, we have not been
involved. I shall go back and see if we should be but at some
level one has to trust departments to take things forward, taking
into account what is emerging in the new SD Strategy and taking
account that Sustainable Development is a cross government requirement
for all departments.
Q241 Mr Challen: Moving on to informal
learning, youth work, work based, adult and community learning,
paragraph 33 of the memo that we received from DfES refers specifically
to Defra and says, "Defra are developing the theme of empowerment
of the community sector and voluntary sector. This will involve
new training which will roll out through the Learning and Skills
Council, the Community Development Foundation and Connexions,
amongst others." I would like to know a bit more about this
work. First of all, where this is happening, who you are working
with, what are the other bodies that are involved in this work
and how developed is it?
Ms Jones: I am pleased to have
the opportunity to clarify for the Committee that the work that
is set out in paragraph 33 is still under consideration as part
of our approach under the new Sustainable Development Strategy,
so I apologise if that did not come out clearly in paragraph 33.
What we are looking at here is working to educate through community
activity, or to change behaviour through community activity, better
and more effectively than is being done at present. We are in
discussion with a number of voluntary sector and NGO groups but
we are also working very closely and very constructively with
the Home Office to link this up with their general community engagement
programme.
Q242 Mr Challen: So you are talking directly
with some of the groups that I have already referred to and are
referred to in paragraph 33, for example the Learning and Skills
Council?
Ms Jones: Yes.
Q243 Mr Challen: You speak to them at
a national level or at a regional level?
Ms Jones: National level, I believe.
Q244 Mr Challen: Is DfES involved in
those discussions? Do they in any way mediate with them or set
the parameters on how far they can go?
Ms Jones: I am not sure I can
answer that because it is one of my team that takes this work
forward, so I cannot answer for how those meetings go exactly.
Q245 Mr Challen: Do you have an assessment
of how much this kind of work is going to cost or is that still
under consideration?
Ms Jones: It is still under consideration
but it should not be extremely expensive because what we are talking
about if this comes to pass is really capacity building, so providing
tool kits, providing training materials and developing those.
Q246 Mr Challen: Can you give me an example
of capacity building?
Ms Jones: For example, there are
a lot of people who are already working in the communities and
working with voluntary groups. It is not clear that they have
sufficient access to materials that will help them understand
Sustainable Development better and how they can embed Sustainable
Development in what they are already doing with their local community
groups. So if that need exists that will be an area where we can,
in partnership with voluntary and community organisations, and
draw up some material that will help them to embed Sustainable
Development more in what they are doing.
Q247 Mr Challen: Will this process be
driven entirely by Defra or will you have joint funding with DfES
on some of these initiatives?
Ms Jones: That is still to be
decided but I am very keen that this is not just driven by Defra,
that it is actually across government and that it operates in
partnerships with organisations who are much closer to voluntary
community work than Defra is.
Q248 Mr Challen: Are you involved in
any of the other initiatives in this section of the memo from
DfES and, if so, what is your involvement?
Ms Jones: Those are the Corporate
Social Responsibility Academy, which is a DTI issue, Sector Skills
Development Agency in DTI, and the Big Lottery Fund. We have been
involved with Lottery Fund discussions[1]
Q249 Chairman: In terms of the Lottery
discussions and in terms of issues like, for example, sustainable
timber and approaches towards those making applications, does
that come into your educational aspects of this?
Ms Jones: I am sorry; I am not
clear what the connection is with timber?
Q250 Chairman: It has been one of the
issues that our Committee has looked at in the past, that, for
example, Lottery bids do not specify a requirement for legally
sustained timber.
Ms Jones: Okay. I think I would
have required notice of that question; it is quite a detailed
one. Would you like me to get back to the Committee on that?
Chairman: I would be interested, yes.
Q251 Mr Challen: And a bit more detail
on some of these areas where you are working or where things are
under consideration at least, following on from that paragraph
33.
Ms Jones: So just on the ones
under 33, some more detail?
Q252 Mr Challen: I would find that very
useful.
Ms Jones: Okay.
Q253 Mr Thomas: While we are on that,
could I go back to the community initiatives that you talked about,
of consultation with the Community Development Foundation and
Home Office type initiatives? Could it not be seen as one of the
failures to embed Sustainable Development across the government
departments that you are taking an initiative in an area where
we would have hoped by now, perhaps, that that particular department
would already have embedded Sustainable Development in its own
work with these organisations? Do you sometimes feel frustrated
that it is not just the general public but that government departments
who have not yet woken up to the possibility of added Sustainable
Development, embedded Sustainable Development into their own activities
with the public?
Ms Jones: That is exactly what
we are doing. The Home Office have been extremely constructive
in taking this forward.
Q254 Mr Thomas: But you are taking it
forward.
Ms Jones: No, we are talking it
forward jointly.
Q255 Mr Thomas: You took the initiative,
or the Home Office?
Ms Jones: To be honest I cannot
recall, but it is absolutely a joint enterprise.
Q256 Mr Thomas: I am interested to see
where the leadership is coming from because from what we have
had so far in these sessions it seems that there is a potential
difficulty emerging between Defra's overarching leadership role
on Sustainable Development and the individual leadership role
that the DfES has on Education for Sustainable Development, particularly
when you get into the informal sector. Where does education end
and public awareness begin and changing public perception and
public attitudes? It is a much more holistic process. And that
there may be the danger of things falling through the cracks because
of a slightly shared responsibility.
Ms Freeman: Can I put an alternative
view based on experience? Actually things are really improving
in that respect. I can see why you would think that that could
be the case but actually there is a lot of work obviously going
on within our department and also in the way in which we interact
across Whitehall leading into different strategies. Perhaps we
are not good enough yet at making it visible but it is happening
and it is very good. So I can see where you are coming from but
possibly we are just not making it visible enough.
Mr Challen: It follows on from that point,
it is about communications to a certain extent, and the Global
Action Plan told us that Defra as an organisation does not have
a strategic approach to communication, to the extent that its
agencies "operate fairly freely" and they use types
of media campaigns, such as the WRAP Recycle Now campaign, which
have been discredited by its own research—I think that is
referring to Global Action Plan's own research. Would you say
that that is a fair assessment of Defra?
Chairman: Can I just come in? I think
it is actually referring to Defra's research.
Q257 Mr Challen: Is it? Perhaps you both
researched it and came to the same conclusion?
Ms Freeman: I think to be honest
that it is difficult for me to comment on WRAP's particular activity,
but what I will say is that pretty much what I said before, that
we have taken the opportunity to step back and to build a strategic
approach, that is exactly what we are doing through the research
that we have undertaken. I think a lot of the agencies that we
fund do some very good work; they are focusing on specific audiences.
What we are now looking at is really focusing on moving into behaviour
change and that is the research that we have commissioned and
that has been welcomed by people like the Energy Savings Trust
and the Carbon Trust because it is actually challenging a lot
of existing thinking.
Q258 Mr Challen: If we take a couple
of examples. Yesterday we had a second reading of the Defra sponsored
Clean Neighbourhoods Bill; what kind of approach will you be taking
to that in communicating it, assuming of course it gets on to
the statute book? Secondly, given that the Prime Minister this
year is chairing the G8, I believe that the government is proposing
some kind of public campaign and can you tell us anything about
that?
Ms Freeman: It is difficult to
comment at the moment because it is all being discussed with Ministers,
but what I can say is that we will be taking the principles of
the research that have been widely agreed both within the public
and private sector as being the way forward, and using that as
a basis for planning future communication activity.
Q259 Chairman: In relation to the Bill
yesterday though, that had its second reading?
Ms Freeman: It is very difficult
to comment at this stage, obviously, but in principle we will
be taking the research and using it as a basis for communications
activity.
1 Witness addition: though I am not sure on this specific
aspect. Back
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