Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 349-359)

1 MARCH 2005

BARONESS YOUNG OF OLD SCONE AND MS MARIAN SPAIN

  Q349 Chairman: Can I welcome Barbara Young, Chief Executive of the Environment Agency and Marian Spain? Marian, this is the second time that you have been to see us. My recollection is that you used to work for the Countryside Agency until fairly recently.

  Ms Spain: Yes.

  Q350 Chairman: Barbara is an old friend of the Committee. What the Committee want to do is have a fairly quick overview of the draft NERC Bill (I have been told it is now called the NERCO Bill) and try and produce a report before the Easter break in order to get a feel for the Bill. We are very pleased that you have been able to come and join us. You have followed this discussion fairly closely, Haskins' rural strategy, now the Bill. Does it all hang together? Has it got the same sense of direction and are there any surprises in the Bill?

  Baroness Young of Old Scone: The Bill is a very clear strand in the delivery of the strategy following Haskins but it is, of course, only one strand and there are a whole lot of other things that we would want to see delivered. Particularly for us the delivery of the strategy is going to be heavily dependent on extremely good working relationships between us and the new agency, delivering a kind of model for how we achieve change in the countryside both for natural resources, which is what we are responsible for—air, land and water in an integrated fashion, and the agency working on biodiversity, landscape, access, recreation, and between the two of us, holding hands, as it were, shoulder to shoulder, deliver a model of change that is partly about the incentives that can be delivered through environment schemes, partly about regulation and partly about a whole range of other instruments like economic instruments, voluntary agreements, cross-compliance, the whole panoply of stuff that needs to happen if we are going to see some change in the countryside. For us the Bill is just the bit that sets up the agency really.

  Q351 Chairman: Lying behind that then is a set of agreements, a memorandum of understanding or whatever it is going to be called, that defines your relationship with the new agency?

  Baroness Young of Old Scone: I think there is a range of things that we would be looking for, partly the memorandum of understanding between us and the agency, to make sure that there is a clarity of roles between us. We had a moment of terror when there was a suggestion that the agency might be called the Natural Environment Agency because that implied that we were going to be the Unnatural Environment Agency.

  Q352 Chairman: Some of your clients say that.

  Baroness Young of Old Scone: We were a bit worried about how confused the public and others could get about that. There needs to be a distinctiveness of the roles described in the memorandum of understanding, as I think they are described in the Bill. We need to make sure that the arrangements we have nationally, regionally and locally are clear about those distinctive roles and how they are going to operate together, and particularly how the bit that straddles the middle will operate, which is the Rural Development Service, because that is the funding that delivers not only for the new Integrated Agency's objectives for biodiversity, recreation and landscape, but also for our objectives in the protection of air, land and water, so the RDS needs to deliver for both of our objectives so we have to have a joint role in tasking it to do so with Defra.

  Q353 Chairman: So where has this memorandum got to? Have you started discussions yet?

  Baroness Young of Old Scone: We have. It is in a fairly embryonic stage at the moment. We are now pressing ahead with it because I think we need a bit more detail in it, to be honest. It is a gentlemen's agreement between the two colleague organisations. We do not necessarily deal with it as a statutory instrument or instrument of government. We have already got an agreement, for example, with English Nature and we are able to meet it and it is really taking on the tradition of having a clarity about what we are both trying to achieve and then some clear programmes in terms of things like how the agri-environment schemes would work, how we will contribute to special site conservation and habitats directive, SSSIs, how the new agency will contribute to our work in flood risk and management. Those two-way processes will need to lie as a series of agreements behind the memorandum of understanding.

  Q354 Chairman: So how is that decision being taken forward?

  Ms Spain: It is being taken forward between the five bodies because the Forestry Commission are also working with us on this.

  Q355 Chairman: Is there a round table discussion?

  Ms Spain: Yes.

  Q356 Chairman: Just explain the practicalities of what is going on.

  Ms Spain: There is a round table discussion, kick-started at chief executive level, as these things are, and as Barbara has described. The way forward is that we have a general agreement which sets out where our shared objectives come together. We are not starting from scratch. We have already got a number of joint programmes. We have a joint programme with English Nature on SSSIs and our role on aquatic SSSIs and their role on terrestrial, if you like, and we have identified three areas which are probably the most significant budgets, where we are developing new collaborative programmes, one on tackling catchment management and all the big challenges ahead under the Water Framework Directive, one on agricultural land use policy and looking ahead to changes in European policy. The third area, which is perhaps the trickiest to try and catch in a box if you like, is how we are going to work together with regional government and how we bring an environmental voice into decisions at regional level.

  Q357 Chairman: Because there are no firm signposts there?

  Ms Spain: Absolutely.

  Baroness Young of Old Scone: If we were talking about the generality of the policy and how it is reflected in the Bill, the areas that are clearly not in the Bill but I do think need clarification outside the Bill are the issues of regional delegation and how that is going to work, how we make sure there is a clear national framework, how relationships are going to happen at regional level, not only between the new agency and ourselves but also the Regional Development Agencies and a whole load of other new regional stakeholders, and how we make sure that national priorities for air, land and water and for biodiversity and landscape and access are able to be delivered with a distinctive regional flavour but without losing sight of the national priorities. That does not necessarily need to be delivered at a local level by local bodies. It can be delivered at a local level by a body like the agency which has got a national role, a regional perspective but very local delivery on the ground.

  Q358 Chairman: I think, Marian, you were telling us there were five strings to this.

  Ms Spain: Three. The other point I was going to make if I may is that the other thing we think we need in order to pull this picture together is the work agencies themselves will do, but we are also keen to see some clarity from government on where they see the priority areas for the joint working; we are looking to see some guidance coming along. The model we are developing is that we are two bodies delivering two halves of the same whole and that whole is government's environmental policy.

  Q359 Chairman: What is the timetable for these decisions?

  Ms Spain: We hope to have at least some frameworks agreed by the start of the financial year, so that at the time when the Integrated Agency comes together as a confederation we are already starting to pull together these new programmes.


 
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