Examination of Witnesses (Questions 360-379)
1 MARCH 2005
BARONESS YOUNG
OF OLD
SCONE AND
MS MARIAN
SPAIN
Q360 Chairman: There are 63 days until
5 May. It is pretty sharp, is it not? Are you going to conclude
things by then?
Ms Spain: We will not conclude
things and we are not attempting to. We are saying that this is
a programme that evolves over the next 18 months to two years
as and when the Integrated Agency comes into being. We are confident
we can conclude enough to give some clarity to our staff and also
some clarity to the outside world, because that is another part
of this, to our external customers about what we will be doing
and how we will work together and how we present together a united
front to the farming and other rural communities.
Q361 Mr Jack: I am intrigued, Barbara,
that you say you do not want much of what you have just been discussing
laid down anywhere on the face of this Bill. Given the point that
Marian has just made about two halves of the same universe, and
certainly if you look at the agency's general purposes there are
statements in there which read right across to what you already
do, do you not think there would be value in having a schedule
which might lay out in more detail the relationships because you
have a number of statutory functions, things you have to do. The
Integrated Agency has a number of things it would like to achieve
and therefore you can start to see some differences. You also
talk in your evidence about a management statement, which I presume
is your generic for what you have just been talking about as opposed
to the management agreements which are covered in Clause 7 of
the Bill. If you are going to have management statements and then
you talk about expecting to be statutory consultees on any statutory
guidance, in other words you seem to be laying down here functionality,
things that you think you ought to be involved in in this definition
of the relationship between the Integrated Agency and yourselves,
do you no think there is some merit in having a schedule to deal
with these issues?
Baroness Young of Old Scone: We
would rather it was not a schedule in the Bill, to be honest,
because that is a fairly inflexible process. We think there are
a number of things that already safeguard the distinctiveness
between us and also guide us to working together and a number
of things that we would like. At the moment of course one of the
major ways in which we can establish what we are about is through
our own statutory definition and that is pretty clear about what
we are there for, for the avoidance of doubt as it were. The other
thing that we think it would be extremely useful for the new agency
to have and would be vital for us is statutory guidance from the
minister to the new agency. We have statutory guidance which ministers
give us every five years and which is at a pretty high strategic
level, which we find extremely valuable in that we can write a
contract between ourselves and our government sponsors as to what
we are going to try and deliver over the next five years and we
believe that that is something that the new agency usefully could
have and that would be the area where those five-year priorities
for us and the five-year priorities for the new agency could be
laid alongside each other and agreed. We think that statutory
guidance on which we would be consulted is important.
Q362 Mr Jack: Do you think it should
be a requirement in the Bill that the minister provide that statutory
guidance?
Baroness Young of Old Scone: It
certainly is a requirement in the Bill that establishes us. At
the moment the government is not keen to do that but we would
be keen that the agency did get statutory guidance.
Q363 Chairman: Why is that?
Baroness Young of Old Scone: We
think it is a useful way of—
Q364 Chairman: No—why is the government
not keen?
Baroness Young of Old Scone: You
will have to ask the government.
Q365 Chairman: What do you think?
Baroness Young of Old Scone: I
think there has been some reluctance on the part of the Countryside
Agency and English Nature folk that guidance sounds a bit draconian.
We would like to reassure them that we have not died of it yet
and we have had it for 10 years now. It has been useful. We also
have a similar version of guidance, of course, with the National
Assembly for Wales. We would like to reassure them that it is
not prescriptive government laying down when we can breathe in
and when we can breathe out but useful handshaking on the key
strategic priorities for the future.
Q366 Chairman: But clearly you want flexibility,
so you do need some clear signposts. It is getting the balance
right, is it not?
Baroness Young of Old Scone: The
one that we would be most anxious about is how the Rural Development
Service and particularly the agri-environment schemes are tasked,
how they are prioritised and how they are delivered because that
is the money. We make no bones about it: we tried to persuade
Haskins to give us the RDS and we failed. We felt it was pretty
vital because although a lot of what the RDS is going to deliver
in the new agency will be vital for biodiversity, landscape and
access, it is equally vital, perhaps more so now as the Water
Framework Directive comes ahead with the focus on soils and the
interaction between land and water comes to the fore, it is going
to be more and more vital that those agri-environment schemes
really help to deliver those objectives. Apart from any strategic
guidance from government to the new agency we really do believe
that there needs to be a joint framework for both the high level
priority setting for agri-environment schemes and priority setting
at regional level and day-to-day management of the schemes, because
it is often in the way the schemes are managed that the real direction
of them comes to pass. I hate to say it with Marian here but I
used to rail when I was at English Nature against the fact that
when the Countryside Commission was running the countryside stewardship
scheme there was a lot more money went to dry stone walls than
went to biodiversity.
Q367 Mr Drew: If you look at Schedule
5 of the Bill it lists all these worthy designated bodies. I have
to say that I am struggling to find much in common between those
bodies, particularly as I am not sure if you see yourselves as
more worthy or less worthy than the British Potato Council. Do
you see some dangers in just listing lots of organisations in
the environmental and rural field? Some are obviously licensing
bodies, and obviously you undertake licensing, but others are
not. What is the logic of this? These bodies all had a legislative
underpinning; that is why they are set up the way they are, but
here we have them grouped. Is this neat or is there some reason
that is beyond me for so doing?
Baroness Young of Old Scone: I
think the aim of the Bill here is to give a degree of flexibility
in being able to adapt to future change, because at the moment
if you want to change the way in which any of these bodies relate
to each other or any delegated responsibilities you have to go
back to primary legislation which is incredibly inflexible. The
safeguard we believe is that this can only be done by agreement
because the one thing we did not want was to suddenly discover
that we had either large quantities of stuff delegated towards
us without any funding or any rationale, or, likewise, anybody
delegating away from us anything that we felt was pretty fundamental
to our role in integrated environment protection. Certainly there
will be a move in government to reduce the number of regulators
and to streamline some of the smaller regulators and this provision
could be useful there. There are some things that we would quite
like delegated to us, perhaps more appropriately from central
government rather than from any of the bodies here, but certainly
the ability to draft our own regulations in common with many other
regulators across other government departments which we do not
currently have. I think the provisions are quite interesting and
they need to be used with considerable care because, as you said,
these bodies have all got statutory underpinning and Parliament
did not set them up out of the goodness of its heart; it set them
up with a view to a purpose. If their purpose has moved on it
may well be that the arrangements have to change but I would be
interested to see how Parliament sees this in Henry VIII terms.
Q368 Mr Drew: Do you have a relationship
with all the bodies listed there?
Baroness Young of Old Scone: Some
of them we had not even realised existed, quite frankly. Obviously,
some of them we work with very closely, but I must confess the
Gangmasters Licensing Authority is one which has not touched my
life so far.
Q369 Chairman: It starts on 1 April!
Let us go back to agri-environment schemes because I think you
made some interesting points there. Did you actually say to us
that you made a bid for the RDS to come in to you because it would
help you deliver on issues like diffuse pollution and the Water
Framework Directive? That is the rationale? Let us have a look
inside government. How did those discussions go?
Baroness Young of Old Scone: We
tried very much at the early stages when Lord Haskins was doing
his report, and I think he will not mind me quoting, but his view
of life at that stage was that the RDS could equally well have
sat with us or with the new agency but he thought we were a bit
too big already and he did not want to give anything more to us.
We did not pursue it after he had come out with his report that
he would very definitely prefer it in the other direction because
we were not getting any support from anybody on that one really.
Sad, but you win some, you lose some.
Q370 Chairman: Are you confident that
the RDS is now going to deliver for you? Again, this is difficult
ground because the policy has not been set, but you are asking
somebody else in reality to deliver a set of aims that in a sense
you are not prescribed.
Ms Spain: That is why we need
working agreements between ourselves about how these things will
run in practice but also why it does also need the backup of some
fairly firm guidance from Defra, whether it be on the face of
the Bill or whether it be set out in clear terms. At the moment
we are quite comfortable with the way the scheme has been running.
We work closely with Defra. The new scheme that is being launched
in the next few weeks will have measures for farmers to look at
the way they manage land in relation to water courses, for example.
We are comfortable about that but we do need to be clear that
that will continue, that there will not be a change of political
direction, local will and so on. That is why we are keen to have
these safeguards.
Q371 Chairman: Do you have a copy of
the Bill there?
Ms Spain: Yes.
Q372 Mr Drew: Clause 15 refers to guidance.
I just wonder what you make of that. I get the impression you
do not think that is strong enough.
Ms Spain: It is not as strong
as ours. The provision for our guidance is a little more robust
but, as Barbara said, we are comfortable that this is an administrative
form of guidance but we are keen that whatever guidance comes
out it is something we are involved in developing. We are discussing
with Defra ministers that they will consult with us before they
finally dot the i's and cross the t's. We are keen to see this
as something that is effectively guidance which both bodies would
be involved in, and likewise I am sure the Integrated Agency would
wish to have a similar view on ours, that the two sets of guidance
would need to complement each other.
Baroness Young of Old Scone: It
is very permissive, the guidance in here, whereas ours is "Thou
shalt give guidance", and indeed there has been an expectation
therefore that when the five years come up we all start looking
at the guidance again. We certainly would not want to be having
to put a lot of pressure on ministers. English Nature's concern
about the way it is presently drafted, and I am putting words
into their mouth which you can ask them about, is that it looks
like ministerial whim—"The Minister might give guidance
or on the other hand he might not"; you know, whenever something
gets up his nose he might give us a bit of guidance on it. Our
guidance is altogether rather more strategic and thoughtful. I
am not saying the minister would not be strategic and thoughtful
but the way in which our guidance is constructed is certainly
that.
Ms Spain: The other value of our
guidance is that, with bodies like ours and with the Integrated
Agency where the purposes are deliberately quite general, it is
quite a challenge for the boards of those bodies to begin to look
at relative priorities. Again, in that sense it is helpful to
have some strategic direction as to how to interpret things such
as sustainable development and so on. It works at that level.
It is not task guidance; it is priority and interpretation guidance.
Q373 Mr Jack: Just so that we can understand
a little more about the real world that this new Integrated Agency
is going to go into, can I refer you to paragraphs 1.3 and 1.4
of your evidence where you talk about the Water Framework Directive
which brings together your work, that of the Integrated Agency
and the Rural Development Service. Just give us a little commentary
as to how in the real world that area is going to work out, bluntly.
Who do you think is going to do what and how specific at this
stage can you be? Are there any problems that you can see arising,
frictions between organisations each competing for their share
of the Water Framework Directive action under the new arrangements?
Baroness Young of Old Scone: I
do not think we need to worry about the statutory basis for that
because we are statutorily the competent authority and therefore
we hold the ring as it were, and I think that is incredibly important.
There was a brief moment when there was a suggestion that there
would be joint competence and I think that would be a recipe for
elbows out. We will be doing the statutory process of preparing
management plans, consulting widely, involving stakeholders, one
of the most important of whom will be the new Integrated Agency.
I hope that that work will bring us to a point where there is
agreement about what needs to happen on some catchments and sub-catchments
and where the role of the Integrated Agency in all of its functions
will be clear. There will be, I believe, inevitable pushing and
shoving on priorities between biodiversity and natural resource
protection when we are in a situation where the agri-environment
funding is not adequate to do the full whack and is likely to
come under heavy pressure with the review of the Rural Development
Regulation and further changes in European funding. We could see
in a few years' time a lot of pressure on that budget and I think
it will become quite tense at that stage. The important thing
is to get these catchment management plans and also to get the
work on the ground under way. That is the work that we are doing
in pilot form at the moment with English Nature and with the RDS,
looking at how you can work with groups of farmers to try and
achieve some of the diffuse pollution changes and other changes
in environmental management at sub-catchment level where it will
probably be immaterial whether it is us in the lead or English
Nature in the lead. It may be one of the NGOs in the lead, FWAG,
the RSPB. It could be a whole range of groups, whoever is most
comfortably working with that group of farmers, but working to
a common pattern that we have all agreed.
Q374 Chairman: If we can turn to the
agency's general purpose as the new Integrated Agency, the rules
are set out in clause 2(2) and there are five of them there. Are
these all compatible or did there ought to be a hierarchy? We
have heard suggestions that the first one there, sub-paragraph
(a), voting nature conservation and protecting biodiversity, is
of paramount importance but the others have lesser significance.
What is your view on this?
Baroness Young of Old Scone: I
suppose I am a bit biased, coming from a biodiversity background
and would think that to some extent these are one to five in number
order or A to E in priority order, but I suspect that the new
agency will very rapidly discover that it needs to press forward
with all of these in order to be able to get the whole. They are
a cohesive set. If at any stage there is conflict between them
I think we have got to look to the useful experience that the
Countryside Commission had with the Sandford principle where,
if push came to shove, the environment had to get the upper hand.
Q375 Chairman: Let me turn to a finer
point. It is important that people are involved in it. I think
you have got a duty to promote recreation, canoeing and the like,
on waterways. Is this not something the Integrated Agency ought
to be doing? How are you going to divvy this up?
Baroness Young of Old Scone: The
issue of water based sport and recreation is always going to be
a complete—it is always going to involve collaborative work
with a whole range of folk, quite frankly.
Q376 Chairman: I thought you were going
to say it was a complete pig's ear.
Baroness Young of Old Scone: I
was going to say something not quite like that but I decided not
to. I think it will need collaboration because there are not just
us and the new agency, and inevitably, with our navigation duty
and with the relationship of navigation to the management of rivers
generally, I do not think it is sensible to split that off. Do
we have a role? The new agency will have a role in general countryside
recreation but there is a whole load of other folk who have a
role as well. DCMS have a role in their sponsorship of sport,
the sport lottery bodies, the sports governing councils. It really
is going to have to be a collaborative venture, and particularly
the water-based navigation and fisheries activities that depend
quite heavily on the way we manage the rivers in general should
remain with us. We do need to work very closely with all those
other bodies to make sure that we have got an integrated package
for water-based recreation.
Q377 Chairman: Can you just help me with
that on the ground? I am interested in the Grand Union Canal.
Your colleagues in Nottingham are very involved in this and there
is a range of activities taking place. Who takes the lead on this?
How are we going to make sure that those happen in reality?
Baroness Young of Old Scone: I
think that is again where statutory guidance would help. We have
guidance that says what we need to deliver in terms of our recreation
and navigation function and that would be the opportunity, presumably
on a five-year basis, to have the debate about what is it we are
all trying to achieve and what are the shares of that which we
all contribute. I do not know enough about the Grand Union Canal
but I can imagine it is probably—
Q378 Chairman: It is beautiful.
Baroness Young of Old Scone: It
is irreplaceable—
Q379 Chairman: Absolutely priceless.
Baroness Young of Old Scone: But
it probably supports a whole range of interests. I should imagine
folk boat on it, fish on it, walk along it. It probably has some
role in flood defence and water supply as well and it probably
plays quite a big role in regeneration and the net result is that
we have all got to play our distinctive roles around water based
things like that.
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