UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 83-i

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

ENVIRONMENT, FOOD AND RURAL AFFAIRS COMMITTEE:

(SUB-COMMITTEE ON THE GOVERNMENT'S RURAL DELIVERY STRATEGY)

 

 

THE GOVERNMENT'S RURAL DELIVERY STRATEGY

 

 

Tuesday 30 November 2004

 

COUNCILLOR ALAN MELTON, COUNCILLOR PAT ASTON COUNCILLOR CHRISTINE REID and COUNCILLOR MILNER WHITEMAN

MR NEIL SINDEN, MR TOM OLIVER, MS RUTH CHAMBERS,

MS DONNA O'BRIEN, MR MICHAEL ALLEN AND MS STEPHANIE HILBORNE

LORD WHITTY, MS OONA MUIRHEAD and MR ROBIN MORTIMER

Evidence heard in Public Questions 226 - 348

 

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Oral Evidence

Taken before the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee:

Sub-Committee on the Government's Rural Delivery Strategy

on Tuesday 30 November 2004

Members present

Paddy Tipping, in the Chair

Mr Colin Breed

Mr David Drew

Mr Michael Jack

David Taylor

________________

 

Memorandum submitted by The Local Government Association

 

Examination of Witnesses

 

Witnesses: Counsellor Alan Melton (Fenland), Chairman, Councillor Pat Aston, (Kerrier), Vice Chair, Councillor Christine Reid (North Wiltshire), and Councillor Milner Whiteman (Bridgnorth), LGA Rural Commission, examined.

Q226 Chairman: A very warm welcome for representatives from the Local Government Association, a week when the local government finance settlement is going to be announced, so perhaps the best you will get out of it!

Cllr Melton: We wait with baited breath, Chairman.

Q227 Chairman: So do we all! For the record, can I welcome Counsellor Christine Reid, Councillor Alan Melton, Councillor Pat Aston and Councillor Milner Whiteman. Thank you very much for coming. Tell me, do you think local authorities are involved enough in this rural delivery strategy?

Cllr Melton: Possibly not enough, Chairman. We ought to be involved a lot more. We are on the ground, so to speak, we are local, we are accountable and we know our patches, and I would hope that in the future there will be a bigger role for the delivery of rural services via local government.

Q228 Chairman: Why in the future? Why not now?

Cllr Melton: Well, now.

Q229 Chairman: How are you going to make this happen?

Cllr Melton: I think, with several initiatives that have been announced recently, we have an ideal opportunity to demonstrate to yourselves, to government, to regional RDAs, that we can deliver and that local government can, through its professionalism, deliver to the coal face and demonstrate to our electorate, going back to accountability, that we can deliver our outcomes and show exactly what we can do.

Q230 Chairman: There is a feeling around ‑ I do not know whether this is true or not, but perhaps you would give me your opinion - that the relationship between local authorities and Defra is not as strong as it might be. It is not a department that we have a great deal of contact with or influence with?

Cllr Melton: I will just say, from my own personal point of view, I have been in this job for the last five months and I have already had five meetings with Alun Michael, and I would say that that is the ideal consultation, and I am thrown in at the deep end, but my colleagues, who have been here a lot longer than me, might wish to comment on that.

Cllr Reid: The Central Local Partnership, which you have probably heard of, has a rural off-shoot, and Defra has been extremely positive in its links with local government. Local government and also the National Association of Local Councils have engaged with a whole range of rural local government, and talking to one of our officers, our lead officer, who was invited to a sort of Defra away day for Defra officers in order to put a local government input, we have got strong links at all levels; so we cannot thank Alun Michael enough for the support that he has given to us. It is a bit of a pity that it is not reflected as strongly as we would have perhaps liked in the paper that came out of government, but, nevertheless, I think John Mills (the chief policy officer) said to us when he came that this is not silver service, it is self-service; and I think if local government is very proactive in how it responds regionally, then we have the opportunities, the opportunities are there. If we have got the ideas, if we have got the confidence and competence to take the opportunities, I think they are there.

Q231 Chairman: What does he mean by "self-service"? You have got to make the bid. You have got to make the running. Is that it?

Cllr Reid: To an extent, yes, and I think that is fair enough, because the point about it is, as with everything to do with rural areas, and certainly rural government, there is no "one size fits all", the variety is enormous and the variety of solutions is enormous. We are very grateful for the setting up of the ten Pathfinders, one in each region, which are very different, each of them aiming to deliver in a different way. The opportunities for local government are there to get engaged, and we have just got to take the opportunities.

Q232 Mr Jack: I wonder if you could flesh out in a bit more detail what you see are these areas of opportunity: because the Countryside Agency, which has now diminished under these proposals, was the inventive bit of rural delivery coming up with all kinds of initiative but never with enough money to sustain the good ideas. In terms of the economic regeneration of rural Britain, the RDAs are currently tasked with taking the lead role; and in terms of priority setting through the regional forums, the government offices have got a key role to play. I was struggling to find what it was you were going to be allowed to do. What is it that the Minister thinks you ought to be doing?

Cllr Reid: I think it is going to be absolutely impossible for either the Government offices or the RDAs to deliver small projects on the ground. The point about rural projects is that they are relatively small.

Q233 Mr Jack: Can you give us an example?

Cllr Reid: The famous one, which I am sure you have heard of, is from Shropshire, the Waters Meet Project. Is it Waters Meet or Waters Foot?

Cllr Whiteman: Waters Upton.

Cllr Reid: Waters Upton. I swore if anyone had to say it again I would explode, it has been spread so widely. It is a combination of working on housing, on economic development, on a Post Office shop, a one‑stop shop, in one very small community, working with every agency that delivers those services, pooling funding to create a very small but extremely important for its community bit of economic, social and, indeed, also environmental development which is combined in one small package. RDAs tend in many cases to be supporting the "big bangs for their bucks" sorts of developments in urban areas where they are leading large packages of land, putting together partnerships and packages, you know the sort of stuff, and I do not think that they have either the capacity, the knowledge or the will to deliver small rural projects. So when it comes to delivery this will have to be sent down through probably either the local strategic partnerships, which I think are getting stronger in most rural communities, or the sub‑regional partnerships, which are the delivery arm of the RDAs, and I think in that case it is local government who will have to do the delivering because there ain't nobody else!

Cllr Melton: I think also we need complete community engagement to deliver. Speaking for myself and people around me whom I live amongst, the words "countryside agency" and "RDA" (or EDA where I come from) mean very little to them, but they can relate to the district council, even the parish council and the county council, and they also recognise the people who are responsible for delivery, i.e. local members; so that brings me back to what I said earlier, accountability.

Q234 Mr Jack: To follow that up, Lord Haskins had you marked down as a clear and very important group for delivery. Defra's strategy has moved you away from that, and, Councillor Reid, every one of the routes to resources that you identified meant that you were going to have to go through an established intermediary, a partnership, an RDA, a government office. In your many meetings, Councillor Melton, with the Rural Affairs Minister did you register with him that you might like to be a little bit more in the driving seat with some of your own resources to deploy or to have access one to one with Defra for resources for the kind of project which Councillor Reid has just outlined to us: because the alternative at the moment is that you are going to have to always go back cap in hand to bodies that you have just said you do not think are ideally suited to a rural role, but for whom you have a rural role and you will have to get the money from them?

Cllr Melton: I have made it quite clear to the Minister and also to his advisers that, as far as I am concerned, I would like to think the delivery is directly from government through to local government. The £100,000 that we have been granted - and I am in a Pathfinder area in Fenland - we have not seen the money yet, but I am hoping that the accountable authority, which is Cambridgeshire County Council, will be able to spend that as it feels fit to spend it without direction from any of these other bodies that you mention.

Cllr Reid: Can I also say, I think it is impossible to expect Defra to deal directly with over 400 local authorities; there really has to be some layer in between. It would have been perhaps better if it had been just the RDAs, not the Government offices as well, but the RDAs are the obvious, if not perfect, solution.

Q235 David Taylor: Can we move it on a little bit? We were talking about concerns about local government's role, and I declare an interest as a long time employee of a county council and a rather shorter period as an elected member of a shire district. I recognise the truth of what the Country Land and Business Association told us, that they often observe conflict between various parts of a local authority which can be damaging to the needs of the rural economy. I would have seen it perhaps in a lack of common approach between planning and economic development and housing in a shire district, for instance. Do you believe that there is some truth in what the CLA have told us, and are the local authorities that you represent and of which you are members adequately rural proofed, even though you are often rural authorities?

Cllr Melton: I will start off by saying, as far as planning is concerned, as a former Chairman of a planning committee and also a Chairman of an economic development committee, I have felt that for quite some time, but recently guidance has come out and it has recognised that planning departments and economic departments should talk to one another. In my own local authority in Fenland itself we have amalgamated a department with one super head of service to bring the two together. The other thing, of course, is you talk about counties and districts. For my sins, I am a twin‑hatter, being a Cabinet Member of the County Council and leader of the District Council, which is quite unusual. I call that the perfect partnership, and that does actually help get through some of the red tape and some of the objectives that are in the way that you describe, but I will ask Pat to come in and say a few words on that one.

Cllr Aston: I think people have to bear in mind that every local authority now has a community strategy, that across shire areas each district has a community strategy and it is supposed to nest with the county council's community strategy, and they are beginning to do that. Also, we have a link to government: local public service agreements. Public service agreements have been common in central government between departments of state and the Treasury. Public service agreements between local authorities and departments of state are a new thing, and the first round did not have that many rural targets in it. As a result, Cardiff University has done some research. We have copies for you, and we have produced some fact sheets. We hope that the next round, which is just beginning, will have more rural targets. In order to do that counties and districts have to work together. The rules are that all districts must be involved this time round. Also there are going to be more local targets this time rather than imposing national ones. So we think that under this agreement we will have locally arising activity based on what we actually need locally. It is difficult sometimes to define these things across the whole of England, because it is not the same across the whole of England, and we want, therefore, with the Pathfinders and these local partnerships to have as much flexibility and freedom as it is possible to get for them. We also want them to be adopted by the whole of the central government family. This is not about Defra by itself or the ODPM; it is for everybody joining in. If you really want to deliver economic, social and environmental well‑being in an area, everybody has to join: the Department of Health has to join, the Department of Education has to join; everybody has to join. You can then maximise what you are putting into an area, and we do that a little bit now, but we could do it a lot better.

Q236 David Taylor: Would you agree with me that with two‑tier local government - and I would go into Whitehall and mount the barricades to defend it, I really would - where one, perhaps a shire, district is under one form of political control and the county is under another that that is too often evident in the failure to cooperate at those two levels, because it can be a real difficulty to establish an effective rural policy in a two‑tier areas where political differences cannot be set aside in the common interest of a particular area?

Cllr Whiteman: Can I come in on that, Chairman, as a shire district member. We now have local strategic partnerships. In the county that I am from, Shropshire, we are working very well together, the districts and the county work well together. They are on different political structures, but that does not seem to make a lot of difference - we work very well together with the districts and the council - and I think the delivery will come through the local strategic partnerships which are working extremely well in some areas, not so well in others, but they will come together and they will work. I think that is the way we should do this local delivery from the RDAs down to the LSPs, and I think that is the level where it will work with our councils working together in partnership.

Cllr Aston: A good example is Lincolnshire. We have brought with us one of the Lincoln Council pieces of paper for you where South Holland District Council was a leading role in it and took with it the whole of the county, effectively. Sometimes people over-estimate how political districts are. They are very political during the year of an election, but by and large, on a daily basis, it does not get in the way that much.

Q237 David Taylor: The Countryside Agency in their oral evidence to us have stressed the absolute importance of across government definition of what is "rural". As an accountant, I am attracted by trying to label up things in nice, neat unambiguous parcels. Would you say that there is a common definition across all local authorities where you use the 10,000 in one, or 10,000 and more would be in urban areas or urban communities? What is your view on this? How important is it and does it exist?

Cllr Melton: From my own personal point of view, I do not believe that you can say that "rural" is one word that you can use in every area. Where I come from, in Fenland, we are a rural area but based on four market towns. In neighbouring districts, such as South Cambridgeshire, that is a scattering, say, of 100 villages all centred around getting their services from Cambridge City, and you see this right across the spectrum. In other areas, because we are mainly flat where I come from and it is an agricultural area, mono crop growing, whereas in other areas, of course, you have got - which Milner knows better than I do - sheep farming, cattle and that sort of thing. So what do you call "rural"? I suppose I look upon myself as a rural person living in a reasonably small market town surrounded by small villages. Having said that, somebody who lives in rural Norfolk way out in the sticks may consider themselves rural; so I do not think there is any definitive answer to that.

Cllr Reid: I have been involved in the Rural Commission since it started, and we have never ever tried to define "rural"; we have left it to member authorities to say whether they felt they were rural.

Q238 David Taylor: Is not self‑definition fraught with difficulties?

Cllr Reid: It may be, but it is less fraught with difficulties than bickering about more rural than thou, which is what is likely to happen, and it has happened informally from time to time.

Q239 David Taylor: Finally, Chairman, on the role of local authorities, we are in a position, are we not, and I am sad that this is the case, that large numbers of people come to this place for the first time as Members of Parliament with a local government background and then immediately go native; they turn a blind eye or are sanguine about the neutering of local education authorities, the steady absorption of social service powers into the NHS, the coerced sell off of council houses in all types of local authority, and seemingly oblivious to the fact that the electors out there increasingly see local authorities as merely agents of central government. Do you believe that that is true? Do you believe that it is helpful in trying to deliver a rural agenda; and, picking up, finally, the point that Councillor Aston made a moment or two ago, if you set large numbers of targets for authorities that are seen by everyone other than those that work for them or are elected to them as mere agents of that very rural part of the country that is known as Smith Square, Westminster, you are not going to get very far?

Cllr Melton: I cannot certainly remind my friend and local Member of Parliament that he started through the same route I did, the Borough Council, District Council and the County Council and then finally made it here. He got one step ahead of me, and I often remind him of where he came from, and I have to say from my personal point of view that he helps us quite a lot on that and has opened a lot of doors for us. This is something that I am glad you said and I did not say it, but it is something I hear a lot across the political spectrum in my work in the wider LGA family, that councillors do tend to turn native when they get to Westminster, but people such as myself have been accused of that in a smaller role from a parish council to district on to county; so you can say that right across the board. Pat is dying to say something.

Chairman: I know Pat wants to get in on this, but having had Mr Taylor made his pitch as Vice President of the LGA, I think we will move on. We have talked about RDAs. I think Mr Jack might want to pursue this with you a little.

Q240 Mr Jack: I want to pursue one line which I did not in my other questioning, which followed neatly on from what the Chairman was saying. One thing that has been bothering us is where the RDA is going to get its increased rural focus, knowledge and perspective. Where do you think it is going to acquire this knowledge?

Cllr Melton: From people like me.

Q241 Mr Jack: Whilst you can go and talk to them, you personally are not a part of their decision‑making process?

Cllr Melton: Yes, that is absolutely right. I am not a member of the Board. I think it has been recognised recently that more local government members are going on to RDAs. Can I just say, in defence of my own regional development agency (EDA), over the last couple of years or so there certainly has been a move to engage more with local government and particularly the rural part of local government. The first thing the new Chairman and Chief Executive did on taking office was to visit me in my lair, so to speak, at Fenland, which I was quite impressed with, rather than going to Thurrock, or Luton, or Cambridge initially; so I think the message is there, but Christine, who is a member of RDA, would like to comment on that.

Cllr Reid: I am a member of the South West RDA Board, and they are very different. They are like local authorities. Each RDA is very different and is tackling the new rural agenda differently, but currently there is a whole series of meetings to develop the regional rural development frameworks that are taking place in each RDA consulting with local government, with the Government Office, with the Regional Rural Affairs Forum, to resolve this. Certainly the LGA has regular meetings for Board members of RDAs.

Q242 Mr Jack: Let me just stop you, if I may, because you have talked about structure?

Cllr Reid: Yes.

Q243 Mr Jack: Under the new Rural Strategy 2004 and the plan that Defra are supposed to be implementing, what is going to be different for the rural South West of England when the new architecture is put in place? What will you get that you are not getting at the moment, and what do you want from this new architecture?

Cllr Reid: Can I answer those in reverse order? What I want from the new architecture is a simplification of the grant giving processes to rural areas, and that is the whole thrust of Haskins, and that is actually, I think, probably going to be the most difficult thing to deliver of all. I do have concerns about how effectively this is going to happen at the moment. I think we are in a very important deliberation stage now in the regions, trying to establish the mechanisms and the processes, and I think the LGA is working pretty hard centrally with the‑‑‑

Q244 Mr Jack: Why do you think it is going to be so difficult to make the biggest single improvement that you want?

Cllr Reid: Because of the very nature of what we are trying to do. I really think that what we are trying to achieve is a very complex thing. We are trying to pool together a variety of agencies in very small scale programmes to work over something that always takes a long period of time. There are no quick wins, by and large, in rural development. I think of its nature it is an immensely complex process, so it is always going to be difficult to achieve. Can I point you in the direction of the Lancashire rural futures where they have been working on this for a long time, since 1999 in the Forest of Bowland it started. I do not know if you know rural Lancashire.

Q245 Mr Jack: I represent a Lancashire seat?

Cllr Reid: So you know the whole thing. It is grand mothers and eggs?

Q246 Mr Jack: I do not know all of it, but go on, you tell us?

Cllr Reid: This started off as a group of advisors supporting the farming industry to diversify and making the facilitation of grants and planning ‑ exactly what you were talking about earlier. The RDA gave them £16 million, so the RDA was thoroughly engaged in this, and this has moved on now and widened to cover the whole of rural Lancashire. It even takes in a bit of outer Greater Manchester, the rural bits of Greater Manchester, and the steering group consists of the government office, the RDA and a whole range of local partners, including housing, economic development, planning, but the delivery is focused on every applicant who wants any sort of rural grant gets a single person, a named person, in an office at the end of a telephone who facilitates the whole process. I think for people developing these very small and very tricky schemes this is a sort of model of the way that it can work, and it is local government at heart of it. I think in one of those books we have got an example of it. An officer from Lancashire is behind us, so if you would like to go and visit this we would be delighted.

Chairman: I would like to have the reference after the meeting. It would be helpful.

Q247 Mr Breed: If we could turn now to the regulatory role. Haskins was quite supportive of local government. He made some good noises, talking about giving local authorities a supplementary role in regulation and compliance, talking about taking a lead on coordinated general regulation and compliance on farm premises - so he was being very specific - and then your organisation suggested that you were rather disappointed that these sorts of areas were the least progressed. Perhaps you could flesh that out a bit. To what extent does this lack of progress, as you see it, with these recommendations rather suggest to you, and perhaps to others, that Defra is a little reluctant to go down this path?

Cllr Whiteman: I think that is the case. I think Defra, the Environment Agency involve all these different bodies that need to come together, because I am a farmer myself and I do know that you have several different agencies to go to for these regulations. So it would be a lot simpler, and I am sure the local authorities could help a lot, because we have our environmental department at district, we have got the animal health at county, and all this sort of thing. If they work together, I am sure that could happen. In fact, the Pathfinders that have been set up which have been mentioned, the rural delivery Pathfinders, I believe Hampshire is going to particularly home in on this regulation side of it.

Q248 Mr Breed: So, despite all this plethora of meetings with Alun Michael, basically Defra do not trust you?

Cllr Aston: Since July!

Cllr Whiteman: I think this is very new, and I think Defra will trust us when they have seen how it can work. That is the whole idea of Pathfinders, to see how new things can work, and if Hampshire can show that it will work, and I believe they will show that it can work, I think that is the way forward, because that is the whole idea of setting these Pathfinders up, to see if we can work in new ways.

Q249 Mr Breed: There is no reluctance on behalf of the local authorities themselves?

Cllr Whiteman: Absolutely none.

Q250 Mr Breed: You are keen to go?

Cllr Whiteman: We are very keen. We are very keen to work together, yes.

Q251 Mr Breed: We sweep up local authorities in one great big thing, and, of course, we realise that there are at least three tiers, but principally between district and county, you have indicated there you have got environmental departments.

Cllr Whiteman: Yes.

Q252 Mr Breed: How do you see those working together within some sort of unified regulatory role?

Cllr Whiteman: We mentioned the LSPs, and that is where they will come together. Working together through the LSPs at county level, the regulators at district level work with the county regulators so that we can have an integrated regulatory service, and that would be far better than having it broken up at the moment. I have only got to go back to the foot and mouth thing and look at what a mess we got into there because nobody knew what they were doing. Defra could not have managed without the local authority. It would have been far better if Defra had acknowledged that the local authority had a job to do, they are on the ground and they could have done it far better; and I note that we are not getting all the money from Europe that we should have had because we did not do it well enough; and this is something we should pick up on. Hopefully it will never happen again, but this sort of thing is where we need better working together with regulation.

Q253 Chairman: Let us hope it does not happen again. Let me finally ask you about Pathfinders, which both Councillor Melton and Councillor Whiteman have drawn to our attention. Is not this a bit cart after the horse? Surely you should have done the Pathfinders before we define the policy?

Cllr Melton: Maybe we should, but I think hindsight is a wonderful thing. Some of us are saying that we are suffering at the moment from partnership overload. It probably is a good thing that we are going to bring all these strands together and work together through various mechanisms, whether it is working with LSPs or working through any accountable authority, but at least the Pathfinders are going to be given the opportunity on a trial and error basis - as Milner was saying, freedom to do things, make mistakes, learn from those mistakes. The Pathfinder areas that have been announced are all completely different, so there is nothing very similar between, say, Fenland and the Peak District, but by looking at the way each other work we can pick up best practice and we can learn from the mistakes of others. We must not forget either that, although some of us are very privileged to be given this opportunity to try this out, the majority of the country, rural areas, whatever the definition is, has not got that, so they will also be taking note of what we are doing, the mistakes that we make and the successes that we have (and I am sure there are going to be many), and so the whole thing is a big learning exercise. I think it is a great thing that the Minister and the Government have recognised that local government should be given this opportunity to be the trail blazer, I use the word Pathfinder, to set this scheme up.

Cllr Reid: This is a very important change, so it does need some time. I think it would be very helpful for us all to have a bit more time to see what is going on, and Pathfinders are about delivery and we do need to know the policies first. We need to be really clear about the policies before we can deliver them.

Cllr Melton: Once we know the solutions through the local government network, we can ensure that that is rolled out throughout the whole government network, and then, of course, that helps us for their case of further funding and further projections forward?

Cllr Reid: And Whitehall will do the same.

Cllr Melton: Yes, and Whitehall will probably do the same, although we should not say that.

Q254 Chairman: That is a very positive point to finish on. You are going to let us have a reference to the Lancashire experiment. If there anything else that you think you should have told us about, do drop us a note. That will be helpful. Thank you very much for the invitation to come to Lancashire to the Forest of Bowland. I am often there. I am very keen to come to Bowland, but before that the Committee are coming to Cambridgeshire next week. I hope we will see you there, Councillor Melton.

Cllr Melton: I hope so too, and I hope to see you in rural Fenland, my part of the world.

Chairman: Thank you very much indeed. Thank you for coming.

 

Memoranda submitted by The Campaign to Protect Rural England,

The Council for National Parks and The Wildlife Trust

Examination of Witnesses

 

Witnesses: Mr Neil Sinden, Director of Policy, and Mr Tom Oliver, Head of Rural Policy, Campaign to Protect Rural England; Ms Ruth Chambers, Deputy Chief Executive, and Ms Donna O'Brien, Policy Officer, Council for National Parks; and Mr Michael Allen, Honorary Secretary of the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts, and Ms Stephanie Hilborne, Chief Executive, The Wildlife Trusts, examined.

Q255 Chairman: Can I welcome some old friends to the Committee, Neil Sinden and Tom Oliver from CPRE, Council for National Parks - we are very pleased you could come - Ruth Chambers and Donna O'Brien, and, of course, the Wildlife Trust, Stephanie Hilborne, a particular welcome from Nottinghamshire, and Michael Allen. Let me start by asking you, in essence, about the three priorities for delivery strategy, economic environment and social, which is the key one? Have they got it right?

Mr Oliver: Sir, if I may answer on behalf of us in the best spirited and integrated approach to the evidence we are giving, we strongly argue, as you will have seen from our evidence, that the protection of the natural environment is a quantum scale more important than the other two priorities that are set out in the rural strategy.

Q256 Chairman: Because that provides the landscape, the backdrop, the spatial material that the rest springs from. Is that the argument?

Mr Oliver: Indeed; but we would argue at a more fundamental level that all economic and social success and happiness is founded on there being essentially a sustainable environment.

Q257 Chairman: What is Defra's view on this? Which are they giving priority to?

Mr Oliver: I think careful reading of the strategy suggests that they are mindful to be more concerned about the natural environment and the extremely welcome initiative to set up the Integrated Agency, and their listing of the benefits within the strategy of what that will entail suggests a strong inclination in that regard, but I think it is incredibly important that we, as the NGOs, amongst others, make it extremely clear that the confusion of relatively unimportant social and economic objectives with the fundamental protection of the natural environment should not be made up.

Q258 Mr Jack: Quickly, on the second page of your evidence in paragraph six, you say: "We cannot see a defensible case for the special support of enterprise across rural England in general when much of rural England is in many ways more prosperous than urban England." Does that not rather drive a complete coach and horses through what we have just had heard from the local government representatives who want to see, amongst other things, some renewed economic activity because they think it is important they are responsible for the local people and translating their demands into action? Here you are saying, "Let's preserve the whole thing in aspic. We do not want any more economic activity"?

Mr Oliver: With respect, sir, I would say, not at all. I do not see any conflict between their evidence and ours. The crucial point is this. Every citizen is due, one hopes, a reasonably equal share of opportunity and Government initiative, and to the extent that people in the countryside require that, that is their due and a politically wise thing to decide to do. Our point is that within the remit of government the rural strategy is aiming first and foremost to deliver the crucial question of protecting the natural environment which no other part of government specifically does. Thus it is crucial to distinguish between that fundamental strategic importance and the known recognised but relatively localised need for economic and social regeneration in parts of the countryside; and the new definition of "the countryside" is very useful it in that regard, as published by Defra in the summer, in showing where those small areas of very severe deprivation. Personally brought up as a vicar's son in North Devon in the early 1970s, I can speak for the need for some social deprivation to be dealt with.

Q259 David Taylor: Chairman, there is no clarity or consensus from the evidence that we have received about the role and status of the Integrated Agency. The CPRE (and I declare an interest as a member) are quite right to talk about the protection and enhancement of all aspects of natural heritage and the securing of access to, and promoting knowledge of, that natural heritage to a wider group of people. On the other hand, at the other end of the table the Wildlife Trust talks about remaining a champion for diversity and an independent source of advice to government. Is there not a risk that having more duplicity of primary objectives will lead to a confused agency lacking a compass to steer by and the whole thing could finish up in a swamp of confusion? That is certainly what the RSPB believe, although I am not quoting them directly, I am summarising what I believe their view is. Mr Oliver first and then perhaps somebody from the Wildlife Trust?

Mr Oliver: I thoroughly agree with the intimation you are making in the question, but I think that our evidence and that of our colleagues has a clear solution to this, which is to recognise very clearly the twin purposes of the Integrated Agency and to give precedence, where the integration of those policies requires it, to the protection of the natural heritage. In this regard we are drawing on the wisdom of the Sandford principle, as set out in the Environment Act 1945 which amended the 1949 Act, and we see that clarity, if you like, of precedence as leading to a much freer and more uninhibited pursuit of both purposes.

Ms Hilborne: We speak as one on that aspect of the need for the Integrated Agency to have its primary role as being the protection of natural heritage, and we have no differences between our organisations over that. We feel particularly passionately looking at some of the evidence that has gone before in his Committee that essentially this agency is not seen as the focal point for agreeing between different sectors upon what is the ultimate sustainable development answer to any question. We need to have a champion for the environment, just as we have champions for the economy and champions for certain aspects of our societal needs.

Q260 Mr Jack: But if we have an Integrated Agency, Chairman, that focuses predominantly on rural and unbased issues, will that not set at nought the extensive work and reputation that has been built up by English Nature for their focus on urban and marine aspects, for instance? Could they not be marginalised if we just single-mindedly tunnel vision down the route that seems to be suggested?

Ms Hilborne: When we say "natural heritage" we mean the natural heritage in the urban environment, in the rural environment and in the marine environment. In fact, we do not see a distinction between the rural and urban environment in the way that we operate as organisations, and we feel to an extent that the rural focus that has instigated this shake up of English Nature and the other agencies has led to opening the door to much wider issues which, I think, were not envisaged to be part of discussions, such as the increasing urgency for us to address the natural heritage of our marine areas, which, of course, are of critical importance in the European context, and the urgency for us to make in‑roads into urban areas in terms of encouraging or allowing people to have an appreciation of the natural environment wherever they live. In fact, now that we have shaken that up and it is in the context of the Government's final and eventual high level recognition of climate change in the context of what is happening regionally, surely this is an opportunity to invest a great deal more in this new agency in terms of its capacity to deliver what we need in terms of resilient countryside and environment in a marine as well as an urban context to tackle that.

Q261 Chairman: Could I take that on a little bit? I know, Stephanie, that the Wildlife Trust and the other bodies are very keen to see a new approach, new legislation on the marine environment where English Nature, by definition, needs to be a driving force on that. Given the scale of changes that are in front of the organisation, given the multiplicity of tasks, is there not a slight reservation that the kind of process issues will detract from the focus on priorities?

Ms Hilborne: Do you mean by that the process of the restructuring will detract from the urgency of the issues?

Q262 Chairman: Yes.

Ms Hilborne: We always have that concern, and it was that which very much drove our opposition to previous proposals for mergers between English Nature and the Countryside Commission, as was. There is clearly a nervousness there, but we do appreciate that there is a definite benefit in bringing together the aspects of the natural heritage, landscape and wildlife, and we therefore do back, in principle, that bringing together. It is certainly critical we do not lose the plot particularly over marine issues from a major conservation perspective.

Q263 Mr Jack: All of you have used the word "sustainability", I think, and it has become a word that people use almost because they feel they have to use it. Could each one of you give me a priority sustainability issue which you hope the new agency will address?

Mr Oliver: I think, to answer your question directly, I would say that we need to ensure that the legislation and the outcome of that legislation is not subject to the vicissitudes of reinterpretation of what sustainable development what sustainability mean. In other words, I would argue that we are very conscious that it is not possible to attach a single common understanding of the term, and, as such, any legislation should avoid using it statutorily to prevent confusion and misdirection of that organisation and its associated activities.

Q264 Mr Jack: You have given me a definition of what I must not do as a legislator with the word sustainability, but you have not actually answered the question I asked. I was seeking a practical example, or something which you would put at the top of your agenda for the new agency to tackle to fulfil those things which you think are important in terms of sustainability from a CPRE stand point?

Mr Sinden: If I may come in there, whilst I would emphasise fully the comments that Tom has made about the vital importance of the agency not getting tied up in its own knots about the interpretation at that time of the concept of sustainable development, I think at the moment, from CPRE's point of view, the overriding priority is to make a reality of the Government's commitment to the creation of sustainable communities; and I think this debate, which is beginning to erupt in a very real sense in parts of the south east and the eastern region about plan levels of massively increased house building in some of these areas, is a key challenge, not just, we think, for the new Integrated Agency, when it comes into being, to get to grips with how we can make more sustainable and effective use of our scarce land resource in England, but also at this moment it is a very urgent issue for English Nature and for the other agencies that are in existence to show that they can have a purchase on the way in which these plans and proposals are evolving and emerging?

Ms Chambers: We would pick, for the sake of having a different issue, land management in its wider sense, and we feel that National Parks here have a very vital role to play in helping the Integrated Agency tackle the many issues associated with land management, particularly at the regional agenda, which we may come on to later. That is the issue we would pick.

Q265 Mr Jack: Does that take into account the fact that the Forestry Commission is not part of this new agency?

Ms Chambers: The Forestry Commission is not something that we have a particular view on per se around the table.

Q266 Mr Jack: National Parks?

Ms Chambers: In terms of their relationship with the Integrated Agency. That is not something on which we hold a strong view.

Mr Allen: I think for the Wildlife Trusts part of what we are trying to do with our large landscape projects is to demonstrate that sustainability and the development of rural communities can go hand in hand with proper environmental protection and development. For example ‑ I am sorry this is becoming rather Fen‑centric this afternoon ‑ in the north of Cambridgeshire we have a great Fen project, and I am Chairman of the Wildlife Trust that is responsible, in partnership with English Nature, the Environment Agency and Huntingdon District Council, for developing a scheme which will link to massively important national nature reserves and recreate the Fenland between them, and we have been working very hard to establish that this will also produce additional employment and sustained communities which actually would be very difficult to sustain were the land to stay as it is (agricultural). So I think genuinely we are looking to build a truly sustainable operation there, and I think that would be the answer that you might be looking for from us.

Q267 Chairman: I think it was Stephanie who made a point about the independence of English Nature, and we were promised a draft Bill in the New Year defining in law what the English Heritage Agency is going to be. What are you looking for in this draft Bill? What do you want the legislation to say about the Integrated Agency?

Mr Oliver: We wish the legislation to make it blindingly clear that we have a bone crackingly independent force which is resourced satisfactorily to achieve all its statutory purposes, that it has a constitution and a council which is not influenced beyond the expertise of those appointed to it, that it has a seamlessly good connection with its existing expertise and different elements which are being brought together and that it should have an independence of research commissioning which would be on a par with that which the nature conservancy achieved in the 1950s in dealing with the huge problem of organo-chlorine pesticides, for example.

Q268 Chairman: That is pretty clear. We can get that into one clause of the Bill! Does anybody else want to add to that?

Ms Chambers: One thing that we would be very keen to see in the draft Bill is absolute equality for the natural heritage of the new agency and access of recreation. One thing that we think might help the thinking in that is looking at Defra's PSAs. At the moment there are not any PSAs for Defra on landscape or recreation beyond 2005, and we think that would certainly help the thinking about this in the context of looking at the draft Bill as well.

Q269 Chairman: Somebody suggested that climate change ought to be an issue for the new agency. What do you think about that?

Mr Oliver: We suggest in our evidence that the monitoring anticipation and response to climate change on the English landscape and the English bio‑diversity in natural systems should be statutory obligation of the new agency.

Q270 Mr Drew: There are a lot of good words going on here, and if I was to relay the question which I am asked to relay to you there would be even more good words. It is not very sharp-edged, though, is it? This is all about good people doing good things in partnership with everybody and it all coming right. How is this going to work in practice? Can someone give me some real hard evidence that all this partnership is really going to make a lot of difference?

Mr Sinden: If I can kick off on that one, I think that is a critical question, and we have tried to make it clear in our oral evidence so far that we believe this new Integrated Agency should be the leading spokesbody for the protection and enhancement of the natural heritage of this country, it should be unequivocal in pursuing those primary purposes and it should not be afraid of taking its views and its arguments to government departments which may be rather disinclined to listen to the views of such an agency. I would add, just to perhaps emphasise a point that was intimated earlier on, that we have a real challenge in this country now in terms of land use and land management across the board, not just in terms of land use change driven by housing and house building projections, but also landscape management in terms of changes in the funding mechanism surrounding that crucial function. What we would like to see is a very forceful powerful advocate for the protection of natural heritage and, as a result of this body performing that function, perhaps rather more serious debate and discussion about many of the proposals some government departments are pursuing in relation to land use and landscape change.

Q271 Mr Drew: Does anyone else want to add to that?

Ms Chambers: We would very much agree with all of that and certainly stress it is independent, it is nature as a strong environmental champion, the strong national presence of the agency at the centre, but that should very much be complemented by adequate funding for delivery at the regional level because the two are in completely interdependent, in our view. We will be looking for the right words and the hard words, if you like, in the draft Bill, but also making sure that the agency is set up with the right culture and that we learn the lessons from, for example, the establishment CCW in Wales on that, and that the relationship with Defra is set at the right tone from the very beginning. So those are some of the places we will be looking for the right words and messages.

Ms Hilborne: I think "bone crackingly strong" was quite a good expression for how hard hitting we want the agency to be, and it is certainly representing an interest that has never faced as many challenges as the natural heritage currently faces in the sense of the Government's priorities for large-scale development of all descriptions and in the context of climate change being such a threat to the natural heritage. Not only should it be an exceptionally powerful advocate nationally and have considerable resources for delivery and solutions regionally and locally, but should be a powerful advocate regionally where so many more decisions are now being taken where in the last five years there has been an absolutely inadequate attention of government resources on the environmental strand of the debate. Can we add, slightly off the question, if that is fair, taking forward the climate change issue and something that I know you have touched upon before in this Committee of the need for us to look for the Integrated Agency to not only cement the positive work it has been doing on the nationally protected sites, but to look beyond that at sites which have not to date received national protection but perhaps hold as much, if not more, by way of resource, about linking them up, about landscape to scale change and about the necessity for increasing resources for the Integrated Agency to do that.

Q272 Mr Drew: Let us imagine that Defra calls you in and says, "If we are going to make this Integrated Agency work, what should we do as a lead ministry?" - quickly from each of the three organisations - what would your advice be?

Mr Oliver: Our advice would be that the new Integrated Agency must be able to survive, even if Defra does not, in its present form. I think one of the most important things is that this is more than about departmental reorganisation. If we take the Government's word seriously, and we do on this subject, it is crucial that the Integrated Agency is able to deliver permanent understandable and reliable presence at all policy levels, including the highest, and in that regard the strategy is excellent when it talks about the ability of the Integrated Agency to anticipate, to be there at a timely moment, to be there before decisions are made, that authority and respect that will go with that level of independence is the single most important thing Defra can do to help.

Q273 Mr Jack: The RDAs, as you gather from our previous questioning, obviously form a central part of the economic development side. I suppose I was interested to know what your various views were as to whether they had the necessary environmental credentials to combine that with economic development. Particularly my eye was caught by a comment in the CNPs evidence where you say (paragraph 10), "However, the strategy fails to mention the important role that the Integrated Agency will have in protecting...." This was the disappointment that you had of the Integrated Agency to work in partnership with other agencies to develop sustainable tourism. In other words, the RDA, I can just see them thinking what a gung-ho idea, carve up all the national parks, develop tourism, lots of economic activity, lovely priority, everybody happy with the countryside, but that does not seem to be your agenda.

Ms O'Brien: What we would say there is that the Government sees national parks as role models for rural revival, sustainable development and integrated working on all sorts of issues, social inclusion, socio-economic issues, as well as making sure that that fundamental goal of protecting the landscape is ensured, so just to have a mention within the Strategy, in fact the only mention of the partnership working that national park authorities can do being on sustainable tourism, that is where our disappointment lay really.

Q274 Mr Jack: What I am interested in is the friction. For example, if the RDA in the north-west of England under the new arrangement says, "Hey, whoopee, lads! We can really get things moving in the Lake District. We will lean on these nasty national park people and tell them they have got to rescind the ban on the use of ski boats on Windermere because we think it's a very good idea, but all the economic activity is being lost by this thing disappearing, so we will put the screws on them and get things changed round", how are you going to react to an RDA that takes a line like that?

Ms Chambers: We hope very much that it will not get to that. Certainly there is one break in the legislation, Section 62 of the Environment Act, whereby all RDAs have to have regard to the statutory purposes of the national parks and AONBs also as they make their decisions or carry out their work, so we would hope that it would never get that far. The planning framework is going to be absolutely crucial here as well, as set out in the emerging Regional Spatial Strategies which all bodies in the regions, RDAs and others, will have to abide by. Clearly we do not know what those are going to say yet, but they will be very important for the RDAs and others, but by far and away the most important thing for the RDAs is going to be proper engagement with the national park authorities in the regions. Both organisations have a lot to learn from each other and can deliver much, much more in partnership than they can through conflict and opposition.

Q275 Mr Jack: So where is the RDA going to beef up its awareness of these issues in comparison with the sort of expertise it currently has at its disposal?

Ms Hilborne: Can I just come in on this because Michael and I have both had a lot of dealings with our respective RDAs which are East of England and East Midlands, and I think the RDAs said when they were here that they did not have currently the capacity to take on and deliver in terms of expertise a wider environmental agenda. It would be frankly wrong to expect them to be able to given that they are primarily an economic driver, just as they would laugh if the Integrated Agency said it was going to start delivering heavyweight on the economy with its current staff because ultimately we have got to respect the huge amount of expertise and skills that have built up in both agencies, and in the Nature Conservancy Council that is 50 years of expertise and skills built up there. The question really to me flags up the essential need for the development agencies, and the incentive to advise this to the development agencies, to work very closely with a bolstered Integrated Agency and with the voluntary sector which in this country is one of the most powerful parts, our voluntary sector, and yet it is often overlooked for its expertise and the advice it could offer at the regional and local level.

Q276 Mr Jack: Mr Oliver, do you think there is enough mechanism in place for the kind of consultation because at the moment it is all sort of optional? You would all like to be consulted, but there is no obligation under the new arrangements by RDAs to do any of that. Do we need, as legislators, to think of some way that all of you who have expertise, knowledge and thoughts should be plugged into the RDAs in some way, in other words, you have got to be taken into account as they move forward as opposed to they can do it if they want to?

Mr Oliver: In 1998 the CPRE was instrumental in getting sustainable development into the legislation for the RDAs, into the statutory framework, and we see that as a start, but we also, as you intimate, see that there is a great weakness at the moment in that connection. I think there are two good things which will arise from the Rural Strategy being implemented. The first is that, as Stephanie was saying, a very strong Integrated Agency at the regional level as well as nationally, the national one, if you like, facilitating the strength of the regional ones as well, will ensure that the RDAs will take note because on a planning issue of any consequence, the Integrated Agency will have a very substantial mass of evidence and authority to bring to bear. The other thing about this in terms of authority and connection is that you were hearing from the LGA the importance of local consultation and I think that RDAs have not missed that significance of the need to devolve down, and we strongly support that, where appropriate, particularly at the sub-regional level, for example, with national parks and AONB boards.

Mr Sinden: Just to emphasise that point, I think the environmental voice at the regional level, to be clear, is not very loud at the moment. It is clear that the RDAs not just in relation to specific schemes, such as the one you described, are driving the development agenda, the spatial development agenda, in many regions. We have seen this with the Northern Way proposals emerging in the north-west, Yorkshire, and Humberside in the north-east, and we are beginning to see this happening in the Midlands as well and I think we are seeing the indirectly elected regional assemblies and regional planning bodies in the south-east and the eastern region finding it extremely difficult to get to grips with the environmental impacts of the regional development plans which are being imposed on them by government.

Q277 David Taylor: The work of the Council for National Parks, and this final question is to their two representatives, is ever more important in the increasingly urbanised country and we have seen the New Forest designation and there is the upcoming South Downs designation, I believe, so when I looked at the Rural Strategy I was annoyed and upset about the cursory references to the Council for National Parks. You were diplomatic in expressing disappointment. You talked about your experience, and this is widely recognised, in delivering sustainability and formulating the Rural Strategy at the sub-regional level and you said that of course that ought to be immensely valuable to regional assemblies, if they continue to exist, and regional development agencies which will continue to exist. What has gone wrong? Why should the Government have set aside some of the successes for which you are well known? What should you be doing to promote yourselves? What role might you have because it is immensely important, what you have done, and it has been widely recognised by a large spectrum of people as being successful, so should it be incorporated in the future Rural Strategy of the United Kingdom?

Ms Chambers: I think we share your disappointment with the role that national parks played in the Rural Strategy. After all, they cover 8 per cent of the land area of England and, as you say, there are a huge number of very positive examples of how they integrate the objectives that we are all talking about, but also deliver real sustainable development on the ground, so we are disappointed. We hope that Defra will give them a greater role in the Rural Strategy and that the Integrated Agency will play a more prominent role in terms of promoting them, as the Countryside Agency has done recently as well. There are lots of examples not just in the Rural Strategy, but, for example, in regional and rural affairs fora where national parks simply are not represented despite the rural constituency that they bring. Only one national park has been elected as a pathfinder project, so there is lots more that could be done, and I will hand over to my colleague for some more specifics.

Ms O'Brien: Just talking really about their bottom-up approach, if the Strategy really is to deliver and they are there, delivering on the ground, they are really enthusiastic about the first-stop shop for agri-environment schemes and helping to deliver advice to farmers on that, the management plans of national parks are in effect a sort of mini-Rural Strategy for that landscape. It has got all these sorts of cross-cutting ideas that the Integrated Agency can learn from, so we hope that the Integrated Agency will be able to learn from them.

Q278 David Taylor: There is an all-Party group here, is there not, Chairman, and that has recently been formed for the national parks? Do you believe that the CNP and your members use that as fully as they might, the existence of that group and the powers and influence it has?

Ms Chambers: I think that the short answer has to be no. Inevitably, the members of the all-Party group are all passionate individuals who care very much about the protection and the conservation and the future of the national parks, but all-Party groups, by their definition, are quite often poorly attended and I do not think that any of us have used that to its full effect and that is something certainly we would like to look at with its members.

Q279 Chairman: Are you saying that as well as pathfinders, we should be using national parks in a sense as a learning experience for the new Agency?

Ms O'Brien: Absolutely, yes.

Ms Chambers: I think they have got 50 years' experience of integrating these objectives together in a way which they have learnt from themselves and if the Integrated Agency does not try and learn from that experience, in many cases there is a danger that it could be reinventing the wheel.

Mr Oliver: If I may just interject here, with reference to English Nature's evidence at your last session, and following, and germane to, what Ruth has just said, it is crucial that we recognise that the resources which will be given to manage the land throughout the environment reform are adequately managed through a statutory organisation which can cope with that both nationally and locally. When one talks about national parks, and they are 8 per cent of the land surface, and then one adds AONBs, which are another substantial proportion, and then thinks about the SSSIs and national nature reserves, which are also in the management and PSA target protection, there is a huge task for the new Agency within the wider environment, as English Nature referred to in their evidence, which I think we would emphasise, and the national parks example must be rolled out to a much wider amount of England for the public benefit.

Chairman: Well, that is great. Can I thank you all very much indeed. If, on reflection, there are other things where you think, "We should have told them that", sitting on the train going home, can you let us have a note fairly quickly. Thank you all very much indeed.

Memorandum submitted by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

Examination of Witnesses

 

Witnesses: Lord Whitty, a Member of the House of Lords, Minister for Farming, Food and Sustainable Energy, Ms Oona Muirhead, Programme Director, Modernising Rural Delivery, and Mr Robin Mortimer, Head, Rural Economies and Strategy Division, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, examined.

Q280 Chairman: Can I welcome Lord Whitty, Oona Muirhead and Robin Mortimer. This is our last evidence session, so I hope, Larry, you are going to set it all in context for us. We hope to produce a report fairly quickly. I think you wanted to make some opening remarks to the Committee.

Lord Whitty: Just as briefly as I can. First of all, can I just register that Margaret Beckett apologises to the Committee, but, on the other hand, she has, for my sins, given me the responsibility for seeing the legislation through, so I am probably the appropriate person here. The background to the Rural Strategy is the basis for our session and it sets out the progress since the Rural White Paper 2000 and it takes into effect the report from Lord Haskins, who looked at rural delivery, and we have accepted the bulk of his recommendations. The combination of the Rural Strategy and our intentions for legislation is about all three pillars of sustainable development in the regions at the rural level. It is about the economic regeneration in the rural areas and it is to help farmers and other rural businesses to be competitive and to diversify and we are putting money also into advice. We are increasing the amount of money in the RDA single pot up to £72 million this year all for rural regeneration. It is also about tackling social exclusion in rural areas, so we are putting money down to the community level, right down to the parish councils and similar areas, and it is about protecting and enhancing the natural environment, and it is this area that the legislation is primarily directed at by the creation of the Integrated Agency to have a wider range of levers and a wider remit so as to attract all areas of policy on the natural environment, biodiversity, landscape and so forth, but at the same time to recognise that that also contributes to the social and economic outcomes in rural areas. The RDAs from next year will be put into a position where they are delivering against a tasking framework which will ensure that the rural dimension of their work features high on their primarily economic agenda. We are also involved in devolving decisions and devolving funding closer to the community and to the customer. We have set up eight rural pathfinders last month which are all about delivering at the local level with local authorities in a lead role. We are carrying out major streamlining of our funding streams down from nearly 100 at the moment to three broad schemes which will give us flexibility and the public, clients and Parliament a much clearer link between the objectives and where our money goes to and perhaps, above all, it will make life simpler for applicants and clients. At the regional level, there will be joined-up activity through the Regional Delivery Frameworks which will be led by the Government Offices. We are also setting up the new Countryside Agency by next April and in due course that, through the legislation, will become an independent NDPB and its role will be to assess whether government policy and government actions are making a real difference on the ground in rural areas and particularly to focus on disadvantage in rural areas, so we have got quite a major programme of work here. A lot of work has been done and it is our intention, as you know, at the end of January or around there to publish a draft Bill to establish the Integrated Agency and the new Countryside Agency. I will leave some diagrams of all this with your Clerk if you like, and I do not want to distract you now, but you may wish, before you reach your final report, to have some graphic representation of what we intend to do.

Q281 Chairman: That is a big change programme and it needs careful management. One of the things about governments of all political parties is that they are pretty good on policy, they have got lots and lots, and some of them are here today, of real policy people, but they are not so good at managing change, implementing change and handling the timetable. Now, you are the man responsible, Mrs Beckett asked you to do this, so do you have anxieties about this?

Lord Whitty: I always have anxieties, Chair, but I think on this I am blessed, if that is the word, with a lot of expertise around the Department and we are not changing the functions of what we are trying to do or the objectives of what we are trying to do, but we are just trying to do it better, in a better and more integrated structure. I think it is not quite such a radical change in policy, but it is a fairly substantial organisational change, you are right, and one that is going to involve a lot of people and a lot of people will have to be taken with it and I am pretty confident that we can manage it.

Q282 Mr Drew: As Paddy has just said, this is a big change in the agenda. In the evidence we have taken so far, I think it is fair to say that the jury is out on whether Defra can handle this huge change agenda. In what ways do you think Defra will work differently with the new Integrated Agency and with the RDAs than it has been working in the past, given that Defra has had these responsibilities and is now, if you like, dispersing them in a wider range of organisations or to a wider range of organisations?

Lord Whitty: In total, it is not a wider range of organisations, but it is streams which will take the work of Defra and the delivery of our schemes, our support systems and our advice closer to the customer, so it is quite a substantial degree of devolution involved there. Haskins' main strategy was the separation of policy and delivery. Now, there are some grey areas there, but, nevertheless, that central theme we accept and we are pursuing and it means that those areas which were previously in core Defra either go to the new Integrated Agency or are delivered through the regional and local structure closer to the ultimate consumers and to the societies they are supposed to affect. At the same time, we are trying to simplify the range of instruments that we have, both funding and regulatory, and the structures that we have for delivering them so that the different aspects of biodiversity, landscape, soil, air and water that were dealt with by English Nature and aspects of it by Defra itself through the RDS and some aspects of the Countryside Agency's activity are brought together in the new Integrated Agency. So there is a rationalisation, a simplification, but, above all, there is a devolution of the way in which we are delivering our activity and that separation of delivery from policy.

Q283 Mr Drew: So, as a follow-up to that, Larry, how will we know if this works or not because there are a lot of fine words, a lot of good intentions, restructuring, we are looking at thematic diagrams, but where is the proof going to be, or otherwise, that this really will make a difference?

Lord Whitty: Well, I think it is three-fold: first, whether we have managed the change effectively, which is what you and the Chair were querying, and I think we will see that fairly quickly; secondly, on the response to the ultimate recipients, the rural businesses and the rural communities, how they perceive and react to the change; and, thirdly, we do have certain criteria in terms of addressing rural disadvantage and ensuring that the least well performing regional areas are brought up to a higher level of performance in line with our existing PSA target. On the way there of course there will be performance indicators by the RDAs and ourselves built into the management programme, but the ultimate aim is whether the customers are more satisfied and more effective in doing what they are doing and whether we have addressed these problems of differential activity and differential rural area performance. Of course the new Countryside Agency will be a sort of check on us, a monitoring and quality control operation on us and indeed other government departments as to whether we are delivering for rural areas.

Q284 Mr Drew: Would it help you if we were to say, as part of our report, that the objectives should be spelled out more specifically so that we can actually measure those targets?

Lord Whitty: Well, the PSA target is already spelled out pretty specifically. There is no harm at all in the Committee underlining that and perhaps making more clear the disadvantage targets, but of course part of the devolution is that we need the flexibility to meet local needs and local requirements, so to have an entirely across-the-board, single target I think would probably be a bit misleading.

Q285 Mr Jack: Why, Lord Whitty, after all the work that we were hearing from earlier witnesses that your colleague, Alun Michael, has undertaken to develop policy in this area, has it now been subcontracted to you?

Lord Whitty: Well, Alun Michael in the coming legislative programme has responsibility for the Clean Neighbourhoods Bill and for the Commons Bill and I would have very little to do really in the legislative programme if I was not given this.

Q286 Mr Jack: Ring your Secretary of State straightaway and say that you have got little to do and would like more then!

Lord Whitty: I really felt that I needed a bit more legislation to get my teeth into, so the Secretary of State decided I would take that on and of course Ben Bradshaw is taking on the Animal Welfare Bill, so we are spreading the load and that seems sensible.

Q287 Mr Jack: You mentioned the Defra PSA. Is that PSA 1?

Lord Whitty: No, PSA 1 is the sustainable development target. It is PSA 3, I think, and 4.

Ms Muirhead: The sustainable development PSA target, which is the overarching one, but within that there are three other PSA targets which are of relevance here, PSA targets 3, 4 and 5, which really take us into environmental, social, economic and particularly rural regeneration and also farming, sustainable farming and food, which is PSA 5.

Q288 Mr Jack: So I guess you would say that those PSAs joined together underpin the work of the new Integrated Agency because if that is the case, and do correct me if I am wrong, we have had evidence from Fiona Reynolds, the Director General of the National Trust, who said, "Defra has made real progress in changing some parts of the agenda but a joined-up strategy for managing our land and natural resources is currently missing and needs urgent attention". She conjectures that what you have got is a delivery body in search of a purpose, so I went to your evidence because I could not believe that such harsh criticism would not be immediately rebutted by all that you had said to us and under paragraph 18 of your evidence, Integrated Agency, I find the following: that, "Key improvements will be a holistic approach to conservation of our natural heritage", so if that is the case, what does that mean?

Lord Whitty: It is part of the reason why we are establishing the Integrated Agency, to bring together what clearly Fiona Reynolds describes as a lack of a totally coherent strategy in relation to landscape, biodiversity, natural resources and so on, which are covered by PSA 4 in Defra's objectives and which we have been working towards, but we think having an Integrated Agency to deal with all of that would indeed be a better delivery than we have got at the moment. I think to that extent I would not entirely disagree with what Fiona Reynolds said, if only to give greater clarity of how we do it.

Q289 Mr Jack: Just explain to me in this real world what this little phrase "a holistic approach to conservation of our natural heritage" means. What is going to be different in terms of how the Integrated Agency will approach that from what is there at the moment?

Lord Whitty: Well, English Nature has a number of responsibilities for biodiversity. There are a number of schemes which are currently operated by core Defra under the RDS which affect landscape, affect soil and affect water. English Nature has a general responsibility for landscape, but all of these things need to be brought together in the way that you manage the land and that is all that "holistic" means. It means we are bringing together those areas of policy and delivery or strategy and delivery which deal with the landscape, biodiversity and natural resources.

Q290 Mr Jack: And as a result of that exercise, how will the rural proofing activity within government be enhanced as a result of the achievement of the objective you have just described?

Lord Whitty: Which one?

Q291 Mr Jack: If you are going to bring together all of those things, something will come out of this exercise that the Agency in a practical sense on the ground will do certain things and I presume linking into government, because I wanted to ask about the line of accountability into Defra, so I presume information from this holistic approach will be moved upwards and outwards into other parts of government to guide government policy as it impacts upon the rural agenda. Is that not going to happen?

Lord Whitty: Not in quite the way you describe. The Integrated Agency will deal with the management of, if you like, the physical landscape, biodiversity and natural resources and its objective will be the enhancement of the landscape, conservation, the natural resources and biodiversity. In that respect, it is the body which will advise and deal with all aspects of government, so if, for example, there are planning proposals, it will be the adviser, as English Nature is now, on all of those areas, but with a wider remit taking into account all of those areas.

Q292 Mr Jack: I looked through the Rural Strategy 2004 and it is a sort of target-free zone. I am not quite clear how this new Agency is going to measure either its objectives or its outcomes. Is it going to publish material later on so that it will know whether it is sort of achieving its objectives and so that we will know whether it is being successful and, if so, how will that be communicated to us? What kind of measures are we going to look for for targets and success and achievement?

Ms Muirhead: Perhaps I could give you an example of the way in which the Integrated Agency will actually take a different approach on the ground. We have heard evidence from people, a number of your witnesses today, talking about the Fens and if you look at the Fens and if you look at the Norfolk Broads area, there are a number of sort of special sites of different types and designations in that area. If you actually go and hover above in a helicopter, you will see that there are different agencies dealing with each of these small bits of land, sort of islands, if you like. What the Integrated Agency will do will join up those islands, and I do not want to get too poetic, but sort of an archipelago, bring them together and really be able to look in a much wider area, so in the helicopter instead of, as I say, looking down at sort of spots, you will see a much bigger area which the Integrated Agency will be managing on that sort of area basis, so it will be able to take a much more holistic approach, which Lord Whitty was talking about. I thought that might just be a little bit helpful.

Q293 Mr Jack: Does that explain the phrase in the next paragraph of section 18 which says that you are about "joining up our natural heritage and people, bringing benefits in both directions. A better knowledge and sense of ownership of the resource of nature will help harness activity"? I was not entirely clear what that sentence meant either, but is that what it means, what you have just described?

Ms Muirhead: I think that is another benefit actually because we are bringing together the access and recreation functions of the Countryside Agency, who actually also of course, just going back to your planning point, are statutory advisers in that respect, but in relation to landscape, so you would have two statutory advisers at the moment, English Nature and the Countryside Agency and they will be brought together, but in terms of access and recreation, those functions will be in the Integrated Agency along with landscape, biodiversity and more general enhancement of the natural environment. This will mean that it will be much easier for this single body to think, when thinking about how to enhance the natural environment, about how we might also benefit people, both this and future generations, in getting health from visits to the environment, maybe even improving the use for sustainable tourism purposes, which you were discussing earlier, so it is those sorts of benefits that bringing it together in an Integrated Agency will deliver as well as the ability to look on a much wider area.

Q294 Mr Jack: Finally, can I ask on this section about sustainability because it is a word that has been used by all of our witnesses to date and it is a key function, I think, on the first page of the Rural Strategy 2004 in the first chapter where you have sustainability as one of the objectives of the new Integrated Agency. Just tell the Committee a bit about how the question of sustainability is going to be determined. Is it going to be quantified in a way again where we can measure movements towards sustainability or is it simply going to take all the statements about wanting improved sustainability and try and help achieve them? Are we going to quantify it or how will we recognise it?

Lord Whitty: I do not think there is a single index of sustainability, but clearly a lot of our rural landscape has at various points in history been maintained in an unsustainable way and our view is that the Integrated Agency's role will be to enhance the landscape, but also to ensure it does so in a way which is sustainable for future generations, so we are dealing with a system of land management which is sustainable, we are dealing with a biodiversity which is sustainable and we are dealing with the economic and social outcomes of that in terms of the rural community which is sustainable, so all of those are separately measurable.

Q295 Mr Jack: Bring me down to what I call "the world of the practical". Could you tell me what you might regard as, say, three key priority challenges re sustainability for the new Integrated Agency and perhaps just help me to understand how the new Agency would be better at tackling those key issues than the current arrangements. If you cannot do three, just pick the one that you think is the most important.

Lord Whitty: Well, I do not know that we would have three single key objectives, single-dimensional ones, but there are areas on the landscape and biodiversity side, the protection and enhancement of Sites of Special Scientific Interest, for example, which have gone backwards in some parts of the country and that situation needs to be reversed and that is measurable. You may have measurable indices of the level of biodiversity in areas which seem to have been subject to pressure on biodiversity. You will have in some areas, and this will partly involve the engagement of the Environment Agency as well as the Integrated Agency, pressures on water quality and on erosion and on the quality of the soil, all of which are measurable, so I do not think there are three big ones, but there are a lot of relatively measurable small ones.

Q296 Mr Jack: I had the pleasure of spending a morning with English Nature who took me around some of the Sites of Special Scientific Interest which border along the Ribble estuary and if there was one clear message which I got, it was the question of resources, particularly at the level of the local authority for sustaining the SSSIs. The clear message you have given me is that the new Agency may be much better, as Ms Muirhead indicated earlier, at joining together, teasing out, amplifying and developing the challenges to SSSIs, but unless the resources are there to respond to the challenges, we do not make progress. Will the new Agency be able to assist that agenda?

Lord Whitty: Yes, and the measures which come through our various funding streams now to be made more broadly available and more tailored to particular examples will help that as well, as will in a broader sense the changes in the CAP because the CAP's support for farming will now be based on maintaining land in good environmental and agricultural condition and, therefore, there is a further, very powerful lever to reverse any deterioration in soil, air and water in that respect and of course there will be substantial help through the entry-level scheme, Pillar II of the CAP reform, and the higher-grade agri-environment schemes, so there is a lot of help for land management in various respects.

Q297 Chairman: I was interested in the point you just made, Larry, and Oona took us on a helicopter trip a little while ago, which I did not think was poetic, but of course one of the bodies that has that kind of wider view of the world is the Environment Agency through the river basin catchment areas. Now, I am not entirely clear how the Environment Agency and the new Integrated Agency are going to link together. Clearly there is a commonality of interest, particularly, for example, the one you just referred to in a way, diffuse pollution, so how are they going to fit into the scene?

Lord Whitty: Well, there will need to be very close co-operation in these areas between the Environment Agency and the new Integrated Agency and in some areas it will be the Integrated Agency, for example, leading on landscape, and in terms of water management, it will be the Environment Agency leading, but there are many of the Integrated Agency's schemes and activities, for example, on soil management and so on which will contribute towards the Environment Agency's strategy. However, you are absolutely right that there needs to be a very close co-operation between the two and clarity of who does what, in particular, I would say, in relation to water and to water pollution, so the two bodies are already working together in a number of pilot areas to see how they can work that switch.

Q298 Chairman: Where is that clarity going to come from? Is that going to be in the legislation or is there going to be some kind of memorandum of agreement between the two agencies?

Lord Whitty: Well, both. I think the Integrated Agency's purposes and functions will be in the legislation, but in addition there will need to be something like, and I am not necessarily committing myself to precisely these terms, a memorandum of understanding as to who does what between the two bodies.

Q299 Chairman: You accepted or the Secretary of State accepted most of the recommendations of Lord Haskins. The one where there was a bit of variation was Haskins' view that the Countryside Agency should go, full stop, and it should be disestablished, but the decision has been taken to maintain a small policy group. Will you just take us through the thinking that took the Secretary of State to that conclusion?

Lord Whitty: Yes, Haskins was of course focusing on delivery and he felt, and we agree, that the executive role, if you like, of the Countryside Agency in relation to managing schemes itself would best be located in either a wider body or in a more devolved body and hence the Countryside Agency's expenditure on schemes will go either to the Integrated Agency or into the RDAs. Of course Haskins then did see that there was a need for some national focus for rural matters and suggested that what exists now as the National Rural Affairs Forum should effectively do that job. We felt we needed to upgrade that a bit and the advice role of the Countryside Agency needed to be maintained somewhat at arm's length and on a more institutional basis than Haskins foresaw the role for the Forum, and that is why we have gone for the new Countryside Agency with a strong advice role both to Defra, to all the agencies within Defra and right across Whitehall and also the Chair of that, undertaking the role of rural advocate across government, so it is a variation of Haskins, although Haskins did see that there was something to be done there and we have probably strengthened that quite significantly.

Q300 Chairman: But there are different sources of advice. You have got strong policy advice within your own Department, the National Rural Affairs Forum is going to continue in one shape or form and we are going to have this kind of revised rural advocate part of what is left of the Countryside Agency. Who does what between those? Why do you not just say, "We're the Department and we're going to set policy"?

Lord Whitty: Well, you know, Chair, Defra no longer takes this entirely Stalinist approach to things.

Q301 Chairman: That is news from you!

Lord Whitty: We no longer think we know everything. Can I just correct one thing you said, that the National Rural Affairs Forum will not be maintained under the new structure, but the regional ones will and they will feed into the new Countryside Agency, so there will not be any duplication there. Of course it is very important that I can rely on the expertise of officials and my co-ministers, but it is also important that we have somebody slightly at arm's length who has the authority and the resources to be able to criticise us and suggest different ways of doing things and do so, not necessarily wearing a Defra hat, with other government departments.

Q302 Chairman: So this is an open and listening Department?

Lord Whitty: Absolutely.

Q303 Chairman: Let me ask you about the Forestry Commission because that was an area of some debate within Haskins and eventually it was decided that it was not to come into the new Integrated Agency. Just again explain why that is the case and what the linkages are going to be because there are going to have to be some fairly clear linkages.

Lord Whitty: Yes, I think the distinction between policy and delivery is being applied in relation to the Forestry Commission as well in that the broader policy function of the Forestry Commission will come into core Defra, so that will be parallel, although the Forestry Commission is a sort of odd beast in some ways. The management of forestry and forestry expertise and the areas that are related to that, it did not seem to us sensible to put all of that management role into the Integrated Agency. I think there has to be with land management a lot of co-operation between the Integrated Agency and the Forestry Commission, but certainly at this stage it did not seem sensible to us to transfer the function into the Integrated Agency because they are somewhat different. It is also true of course that the Forestry Commission is a GB body, so there is quite a lot of forestry in the devolved administrations and we have all, us as England and the devolved administrations, felt that there is advantage in maintaining a single body in that respect, so there are quite good reasons for keeping the Forestry Commission separate. However, the Forestry Commission is very much part of the Rural Strategy and needs to engage with the Integrated Agency and the other bodies.

Q304 Chairman: You said "at this stage", so does that mean that you might come back to this issue?

Lord Whitty: I am not necessarily saying that. I do think that the creation of the Integrated Agency, we can see how that then runs and there may be some adjustment needed down the line, but at the moment I cannot see that there is an overwhelming case for incorporating the Forestry Commission in the Integrated Agency and indeed there are significant downsides of so doing. It is a relatively successful body and we shall continue supporting it in its present structure and we will see how the relationship between the various bodies works out over time.

Q305 Mr Jack: On the Forestry Commission, do I understand it that you are going to have, as a Department, overall policy control and effectively the delivery of forestry services is going to be the Commission's new role?

Lord Whitty: Broadly speaking, yes. There are forestry issues, policy forestry issues which Defra will take over and there will be parallel arrangements in the devolved administrations and also international obligations which Defra will broadly take over, so yes, the Forestry Commission will become more a management body than a policy body. As you know, it is sort of half-way between an agency and a government department at the moment, so that will change, but the number of personnel when switched in that context is pretty small as we are talking about a small function of the Forestry Commission.

Q306 Mr Jack: So just let's get this right. Defra are now going to be directly responsible for all commercial decisions in bringing major forestry ----

Lord Whitty: No.

Q307 Mr Jack: They are not? So if you are going to set the policy, surely that must, by definition, define the commercial decisions or the boundaries within which the Forestry Commission can operate?

Lord Whitty: Well, only insofar as general government policy informs everybody's commercial decisions, but we are not taking the commercial and the land management function away from the Forestry Commission. That will continue to be their role. It is the broader issues of overall policy which we will take into the core Department and, as I say, some certain international dimensions of that.

Q308 Mr Jack: Let's move on to cost savings. What are the financial implications of the new world into which we are moving because Lord Haskins forecast cost savings of £29 million per annum when he made his report? What is your current estimate of the situation?

Lord Whitty: Well, we are not quite as sanguine as Lord Haskins, but we reckon at the end of the process that we should make £20 million worth of savings a year.

Q309 Mr Jack: Well, let's just examine this thing called "the process". Just take us through in a little more detail what the process is because will there not have to be some up-front investment to get this new bird off the ground?

Lord Whitty: Yes, we reckon, roughly speaking, it will cost us £40 million to implement.

Q310 Mr Jack: Over what timescale?

Lord Whitty: Over five years, is that?

Ms Muirhead: Yes.

Lord Whitty: It will reach break-even point in five years' time, so we are talking about 2009/10 to begin to see the benefit, which is more or less the same time period as Haskins was saying, and the figure we are putting on it is slightly more cautious than his.

Q311 Mr Jack: Does that money include the establishment of the associated IT system?

Lord Whitty: It includes any new requirements on IT, but of course a lot of the IT systems were already in the pipeline or operating, so it is only extra money that is involved in that. For example, it does not include the follow-through on the RDP, the related programme of Genesis 2 which is the system there because that was already required before we decided to make these institutional changes.

Q312 Mr Jack: Mr Taylor is going to probe a little further and you have given him a little sort of flavour to start off his thought processes. How much in terms of the difference between what you thought the Integrated Agency might save and what Lord Haskins calculated was disturbed by the fact that you kept on, if you like, a rump Countryside Agency whereas he got rid of it?

Lord Whitty: Not much, but have we got the exact figures?

Ms Muirhead: I have not got the exact figures to hand, but Lord Haskins did anticipate that there would be an expert body set up within the National Rural Affairs Forum of around 18 to 20 people, so actually he did envisage some additional cost there which of course we are not putting in instead, but we are retaining a very small, well-focused, new Countryside Agency, so I do not think that those costs are likely to be in any way significant.

Q313 Mr Jack: Can I just stop you there a second, before I ask you one final question about where some of this money is coming from, because these various fora, I am a bit confused because we have got the National Rural Affairs Forum and then we have got some various fora at regional level.

Lord Whitty: That is what we have got now, yes.

Q314 Mr Jack: What do they do?

Lord Whitty: Well, the national forum is quite a wide stakeholder body, which deals with rural policy broadly. We discuss all sorts of matters related to rural policy there from the Rural Strategy, the Rural White Paper, the follow-through to that, and we discuss CAP reform there as well.

Q315 Mr Jack: How often does it meet?

Lord Whitty: Quarterly, roughly.

Ms Muirhead: Well, the National Rural Affairs Forum has actually now been stood down, so it does not meet anymore. It did until last month or the month before, so until very, very recently it did.

Q316 Mr Jack: So does it have a resurrection once the new Integrated Agency -----

Ms Muirhead: No, it does not.

Lord Whitty: The new Countryside Agency will perform the role that the national rural affairs policy originally envisaged it performing and which Haskins envisaged it would perform.

Q317 Mr Jack: So the new Countryside Agency is going to have to find its own consultative mechanism to inform itself?

Lord Whitty: Well, maybe, but it will inherit the existing Countryside Agency's contacts in that respect and the regional rural affairs fora will be maintained in being as the regional rural feed-in to the new Countryside Agency.

Ms Muirhead: Perhaps it would be helpful if I just explained a little bit of the rationale behind that.

Q318 Mr Jack: Just tell me who is on them.

Ms Muirhead: Well, I think we would have to give you the membership separately. They differ within each region because clearly for each region what is important is the institutions and the bodies and the stakeholders that matter in that particular region and each region's priorities are different.

Chairman: Perhaps you could let us have a note of each one.

Q319 Mr Jack: I asked a question about this at the last Defra Question Time and I did not get a proper answer, so perhaps you could include a proper answer in the note. Mr Michael sort of somewhat circumnavigated my question. Let me just ask then the final point about funding. You are going to have to find £8 million a year. We are always being told how tight your budget is. Who is putting up the extra cash or, conversely, where is it coming from?

Lord Whitty: Well, the whole Defra modernisation and rationalisation programme will save us money, so through this Spending Round we expect to shrink the total size of the core Department and shed substantial numbers of staff and improve the efficiency of our activity through new IT systems, some of which are virtually there and some of which are down the line, so we are talking about a smaller total spend on administration than we previously were, so the difference between £20 million and £29 million in 2010 will have been absorbed by earlier efficiencies.

Q320 Mr Jack: But on Thursday of this week, I think the Chancellor may be talking to us about more efficient government and he will want the savings back, so has he specifically given you enough of your savings to be realised to be the up-front money for the new Agency?

Lord Whitty: The Chancellor only deals with one Spending Round at a time, whatever he may say for the longer term more broadly. The cost of us making these changes in this Spending Round are covered by Defra's allocation as of last July, so there are no additional costs which are going to fall for the Chancellor or anyone else. Some additional money was given us for various aspects of the change in SR2004, but also some assumptions about improved efficiency were built into a trajectory for 2004-08. The position after that is that of course we do not have the Spending Round and we do not know how the Chancellor in the Spending Round 2006 will operate, but we are assuming or we believe that we will have done well enough on the efficiency targets, and possibly better than the efficiency targets, for this Spending Round to justify any additional expenditure on further rationalisation beyond that and that we will be in a positive situation on this particular part of the reorganisation by 2009/10.

Q321 Chairman: There are up-front costs of change and those are built into the budget and there are savings later on. Perhaps you could let us have a note about that to begin with. Perhaps you could also let us have a note about the variation between the Haskins' savings, which I think were bullish, and your projections as it would be interesting for the Committee to see how the two work together. Would you be able to let us have that?

Lord Whitty: We can certainly give you some of that in relation to the expected costs of reorganisation in the immediate period. One of the problems is that the £29 million and the £20 million are quite analogous because I think Lord Haskins himself said that his assumptions were fairly broad-brush and his assumptions may not be precisely the same as ours, so I am not sure we can entirely explain that away.

Q322 Chairman: But perhaps you would use your best endeavours.

Lord Whitty: We will give you what we can, Chairman.

Q323 Chairman: Can I just mention the question of buildings because you threatened us with diagrams right at the beginning of the session and I understand there are loads of working rooms going on and I think you are involved with them, Ms Muirhead, 57, and the rest of it. Are English Nature going to own their own buildings and is the Forestry Commission going to keep its own estate or, because of Gershon, are they going to be held centrally and belong to the Defra family? What is the present thinking on this?

Lord Whitty: I cannot give you the long-term answer. The Forestry Commission's assets are not touched by the proposed legislation, although we are not yet finalising the drafting of it, and the assets of English Nature would come to Defra to start with and then we may hand them back. In terms of the present position of English Nature, they rent most of their buildings so they are not actually owned as such.

Q324 Chairman: All the evidence we have heard is that this Integrated Agency should be separate and different and independent, and there is a long history about that. It would be a curious situation if they did not manage their own affairs and property.

Lord Whitty: It depends what you mean by "manage their own affairs and property", clearly they would take their own decisions on how they run their offices, how they run their activities and so forth, and they are independent, but there may be benefits to both of us - which Gerschon points out more broadly - of having some centralised estate management and people buying in the services. But they would be responsible for the management of that.

Q325 Chairman: This is clearly a management issue but I just think there is some sensitivity around this subject in that English Nature have been threatened with disbandment twice and that has been fought off. You will remember the scare stories that English Nature was being disestablished because they dared take a different view from Defra about GM, and I think the more you can make it clear that this is an independent body which runs its own affairs, the happier the stakeholders will be.

Lord Whitty: Certainly we make it clear that they are an independent body. I understand the reaction to the proposals on a certain level but I do not think it was very rational, because we were enhancing the role of English Nature in the broader Integrated Agency. As to how they choose to turn their affairs, there is the broader Gerschon agenda where there may be some centralisation of various functions but then they would have to decide whether to buy back into that or to use the private sector to manage their buildings or manage them themselves. In that sense they would be independent managers as they are now, so we are not implying any change of status by saying, "Let us look at all these options including the Gerschon placed options."

Q326 David Taylor: Is it not the case that senior civil servants and professional politicians are peculiarly susceptible to the blandishments of the modern day snake oil salesmen that are the IT outsourcers and the package promoters? The Defra track record on IT is not that great, is it?

Lord Whitty: I do not know that senior civil servants and politicians are any more susceptible than the private sector to the blandishments of such people, and there are elements of inappropriate systems being proposed and failures of management in systems in the private sector as much as there are in the public sector, so I think it is a phenomenon of the age. But we do actually take a pretty systematic approach to how we change our IT. We have taken time over it in terms of the recent and still-being-delivered outsourcing of our basic IT requirements. We have a number of very complicated systems, including for example the RPA, which is a very difficult new system to bring in, which was originally planned before the CAP reform and it had to adapt to changes in the CAP, and there have been hairy points in that process and it is not fully delivered yet. I am reasonably confident that we have both the management and the risk management and the back-up mechanisms to ensure it is delivered and a reasonable relationship with the private sector deliverer in that respect. I cannot give a 100 per cent guarantee but I do think we are putting all the recommended positions in place and we are not rushing it so much that we are adopting a system before we have seen whether it can deliver and it can adapt to the degree of flexibility we require. So we have taken all the sensible professional steps in regard to that one, and are also in relation to Genesis and to the other IT systems which would impinge in part on the process we are talking about today. So there are risks, there are pitfalls, but I think we have been pretty professional about it.

Q327 David Taylor: One of the problems it seems to me, having worked a long time in the industry, is that those responsible for acquisitions of such systems often utterly fail to understand the potential limitations, the resource implications, of all of this, and they tend to diminish the role of their existing professional IT staff. Can you understand a submission we have received that the lack of detail for staff about future availability and location of jobs is causing insecurity and damaging morale? Does that ring a bell? Does that sound as if it could be true?

Lord Whitty: I do not know from what agency or part of the Department that came from ---

Q328 David Taylor: It was the joint submission of the PCS and Prospect.

Lord Whitty: The biggest area where there is a serious change and reduction in jobs is the RPA rather than any of the agencies involved in this process, and, yes, there has been serious concern about the implications.

Q329 David Taylor: Have you collected the staff together, or someone on your behalf, and told them what is happening to their jobs, how disruption is being minimised? Having gone through this process twice in my own career in local government ---

Lord Whitty: There have been frequent meetings with staff and with the unions there and not everybody is happy with the situation by any means but it is now clear what the intentions are in changing staffing levels in the RPA over time. In other areas, we would be going through the same process, although it is a considerably less large scale operation to that of the RPA, so anything which arises out of this or is underpinning some of this already in the pipeline is smaller scale than the RPA.

Q330 David Taylor: Are you happy?

Lord Whitty: Alun Michael actually dealt with both the RPA side and the outsourcing of IT generally, and he has also been to the Countryside Agency to meet staff on general future issues, not entirely IT related, because obviously they are faced with the biggest problem ---

Q331 David Taylor: Sorry to interrupt, but are you happy that your timetable, the departmental timetable for change, allows adequate time for those who are most seriously affected by some of the changes which are being mooted?

Lord Whitty: I think we are doing our best. As in all industrial relation situations, people really want to know what happens to their particular job and that tends to be down the line from where you have taken the overall decision and explained that and even got some acceptance of that. People are still inevitably anxious and say, "Yes, that is all very well, I recognise there are not going to be so many jobs but what about mine, what about my department, what about my location", because in this particular context of course there are some locational issues as well as the number of jobs. So I am not pretending it is not a difficult human resources/industrial relations issue.

Q332 David Taylor: So there is no risk then as the drum beat of change speeds up, this cool, planned approach will degenerate into some Gaderene rush blended with a coalescing of posts which are left?

Lord Whitty: I think it extremely unlikely. We have taken our time over this and we have involved people. I am not saying there will not be some hiccups on the way, but I do not think the catastrophe scenario is likely.

Q333 Mr Jack: I want to look at paragraphs 23 and 22 of the evidence you kindly sent to us on the subject of the new Countryside Agency and rural proofing. The reason I put paragraph 23 before 22 is that within that paragraph you tell us the new agency, "... will build on its strengths to report on the rural proofing performance of Government and those who deliver public policy", but in paragraph 22 we learn that in the context at a regional level, rural proofing appears now to have been the responsibility of the Government Office for the Regions. I quote, "Each Government Office for the Regions has been asked to take the lead in their region to develop arrangements to prioritise and co-ordinate activity, funding and delivery, leading to a plan that sets out the priorities for action to ensure these are targeted where needed at local level across the region ....". There is lots and lots more and it is all to do with rural proofing. I am not quite certain who therefore is in charge of reporting and dealing with rural proofing given there appear to be two separate streams of developing policy in this area.

Lord Whitty: Rural proofing is the responsibility of all government departments in their major areas of policy, so carrying out the rural proofing of a particular policy, whether Defra policy or anybody else's, is the responsibility of the national level of the government department. What the Countryside Agency now does, and will continue to do, is assess the effectiveness of that rural proofing; they are a quality control mechanism if you like. As you know, they have done reports on that already and will continue to do so and will strengthen that role. It has not operated in quite the same way at the regional level, partly because the regional bodies have not been drawn all that effectively together in the rural dimension, and partly because the Countryside Agency does not in that sense have a regional structure to do it, so the Government Office is taking the lead in making sure that within the rural delivery programme and in government at regional level generally rural proofing is carried out. The new Countryside Agency would have the ability to then check on those regional reports. Sorry, just correcting something I said just now, the old Countryside Agency did have some regional structure but the new Countryside Agency will not have the regional structure, and the regional structure of the existing Countryside Agency is primarily an executive delivery role and not a rural proofing role. But the new Countryside Agency would look at both the performance of the national government departments and at what the Government Offices have delivered in the rural delivery framework regionally, or they will have the ability to do so.

Q334 Mr Jack: We have had RDAs, we have had a session earlier with local authorities and now we have the Government Offices having a finger in this pie. The sentence I read out says, "Each Government Office for the Regions has been asked to take the lead in their region to develop arrangements to prioritise and co-ordinate activity, funding and delivery, leading to a plan that sets out the priorities for action to ensure these are targeted where needed at local level ..." and effectively are secured. Who is going to approve the plan? What will this plan contain?

Lord Whitty: On one of the diagrams I will be putting to you, the regional delivery framework includes all the bodies you have referred to but they are led by the Government Office, and the Government Office is responsible for the rural proofing of all their activities.

Q335 Mr Jack: When you say they lead, is that on the total rural package or just rural proofing?

Lord Whitty: It is the total rural delivery package which will involve both the Government Offices, which as you know are the regional arms of the national departments, the RDAs ---

Q336 Mr Jack: Okay, they produce the master plan. Who says it is a good plan or not?

Ms Muirhead: If I may, the Government Office will broker this and will provide leadership for this process.

Q337 Mr Jack: Who are the partners who are going to be part of this process of brokering?

Ms Muirhead: Many of the partners exist already but they do not come together in the way we want them to to look at rural issues on a regional basis. The RDAs clearly already exist ---

Q338 Mr Jack: Are they a partner in the Government Office?

Ms Muirhead: Exactly so.

Q339 Mr Jack: So the RDA sets its own rural regeneration framework, so the RDA at the moment is a free-standing body but it is plugged into the Government rural edifice in some way, is it?

Ms Muirhead: It is not quite that simple, would that it were. At the moment, the RDAs already deal with partners at the regional level and together they produce a set of strategies and plans. That does not really in our view cover the rural as much as it should do. So what we are doing here is saying, "You have your regional spatial strategy to which all the partners have signed up, go away and do your bit", and we really must have that on the rural side, and by bringing together the RDAs and others who are looking at the urban it means you are not looking at rural in isolation, which you clearly want to avoid as well. What the Government Office will be doing is looking right across the piece and making sure that happens and that the right people are there.

Q340 Mr Jack: Where are they going to acquire this expertise to do what will be quite a sophisticated job in looking at the juxtaposition between economic regeneration and development which the RDA will be pre-eminent in deciding, the kinds of programmes which the local authorities representatives were saying were crucial in terms of developing a sustainability agenda, and the Government Offices who have a rural proofing agenda, and somewhere in the wings the environmental agenda which sometimes goes a bit beyond sustainability? I am not clear who calls the shot. Who says, "I am sorry, you, oh partner, cannot do that"? Whom in the context of the Government Office in the new architecture do they report to? Does the Government Office person ring up the Secretary of State or the Minister and say, "I have looked over all in my area, my region, and I am now satisfied. Here is my report"? Who has the final sanction in this rather now complicated piece of wiring together which you have just described to me?

Ms Muirhead: I think that is a very good way of describing it, if I may say so, it is a complicated piece of wiring we are trying to mesh together. The wiring already exists now, we just do not think it is as joined-up as it should be at the regional level. We certainly do not think that the environmental voice is sufficiently strong in the partnership at the regional level, and you heard from your witnesses earlier this afternoon that they also felt that was the case. One of the real practical benefits we see of establishing the Integrated Agency is that it will be a much more powerful agency, it will have that strong voice at the regional level.

Q341 Mr Jack: Who is going to be the adjudicating partner? You have described what is already a very complicated situation and you missed out in your description the unelected but still existing regional assemblies. They have a role in the planning process, they deal with some of the spatial issues which you have just described, they have not been mentioned so far but they do have an influence over what the local authorities can do and certainly would have an input to what the RDAs might want to do. I am not quite certain how they are wired into the new Integrated Agency, and I certainly am not clear about what their relationship is with the Government Offices. This sort of collection, this cocktail, is currently in a big shaker being shaken up and down by your Department and out of this is supposed to flow clarity in terms of decision-making at a regional level integrating all of these many and various functions.

Lord Whitty: It is no different. The regions produce regional spatial plans, they produce regional transport plans, and the local authorities are all party to them, there has been business input, there have been various government agency inputs and the Government Office leads that operation, certainly on the transport side. This is no different for the rural dimension. The Government Office will be both the catalyst and the leader but you will have to have agreement and compromise and so forth on what is included in the rural plan. We are not talking about detailing where every word in every scheme will go, we are talking about having the broad strategic approach to rural affairs within the region signed up to by the major delivery bodies in that region.

Q342 Mr Jack: If there is something that jars - a big something - how does it come back to somebody, I presume, to make a decision yes or no on the plan? I come back to the question I ask, when it talks about "leading to a plan", who is going to agree the plan as far as the Government Office is concerned? Who is in charge of the plan?

Ms Muirhead: The plan will be agreed by the regional partners themselves. I think we have to take a step back and look at this in the context of devolution. Defra is not shaking this cocktail mixer up, actually what we are saying to the regional partners is, "You are the ones who have devolved authority". Government in general sets very strategic objectives - and we would be deeply criticised if we tried to run local schemes from Whitehall - so with our PSA targets we set over-arching objectives, we set the RDA tasking framework for example, and then we say, "You have the devolved authority at the regional level to decide what is best for your region within those overall outcomes which Government wants to achieve". Therefore it would be quite wrong for us here in central government to say, "We have to endorse your plan, it has to come back to us, we have to tell you how to do it and which particular partners you ought to be dealing with" because it will differ from region to region. That is the context.

Lord Whitty: There is also an iterative process here and there is a resource issue. The rural strategies will be communicated to Defra, and if we have any serious comments on them we will feed them back. But, as with the other kind of planning which goes on at regional level, if the South East Regional Transport Plan says they want five more motorways and two large railways, the Department for Transport goes back to them and says, "You will have to choose the first two of those and not the rest." We do have some resource control over what is delivered by the plan and what is not, albeit some of that resource will go via the RDAs and local delivery.

Q343 Chairman: Let us take a firm example. You were saying to us, Oona - it is certainly my view and I do not know whether it is your view - that the RDAs have been weak on sustainable development, on the environment, although some are better than others. It could be the case that the RDAs do not perform at a regional level and that the brokerage, the discussion, at a regional level does not bring about a satisfactory solution. What happens then?

Ms Muirhead: If I may, I was actually saying that there has not been a strong environmental voice at the regional level rather than making any judgment about the RDAs.

Q344 Chairman: I will say some of the RDAs, from my experience, have not performed satisfactorily in this respect, and that is not a minority view. So what are you going to do to sort it?

Ms Muirhead: One of the things we will certainly be doing is looking at the legislation to have a wider sustainable development duty for all bodies and to push that agenda in that way.

Lord Whitty: The other dimension is, as you know, the RDAs primarily report to the DTI and the DTI are leading the development of a new tasking framework for the RDAs. We, Defra, will ensure there is a strong rural and environmental dimension to that tasking framework which is in the process of being done now, so there will be both legislation and heavy guidance.

Q345 Chairman: But you are putting money into the RDAs.

Lord Whitty: Were they completely out of order I have no doubt we would have to consider that. It is easier to negotiate in a tasking framework than it is to wield a big stick.

Q346 Chairman: We are going to have to move on because I know people have other commitments. Can I thank you for this very lively discussion and I am sure our report will reflect some of these issues. You promised us, and I am not sure we wanted them, a set of diagrams. We asked you for a set of financial proposals, upfront costs versus savings, and as far as possible (and this will be difficult I accept) you will use your best endeavours to show the difference between the Haskins proposals and your own savings. Finally, can I ask you about the time frame. You did mention this at the beginning. The Bill around the end of January, it might slip a bit, you cannot be firm on that, and presumably there will then be an opportunity for some pre-legislative scrutiny. My own contacts - you have them better in the House of Lords than I do - suggest that the House of Lords would like to be involved in this, which seems to suggest perhaps a joint committee, always a very perilous approach to take, and I think you want to be on the ground and have all this sorted out by January 2007. Is that timetable achievable particularly because - we do not know when - in that period there is going to be a general election?

Lord Whitty: You know more about these things than I do, Chairman.

Q347 Chairman: This is how he gets away with it in the Lords!

Lord Whitty: We are proceeding on the basis that we can produce a Bill roughly, as you say, by the end of January, that we will then virtually immediately go into some form of pre-legislative scrutiny, and precisely what form that will take is up to the usual channels rather than me, whether it is joined or separate, and we would hope we would complete that process, assuming we meet that timetable with the Bill, by approximately Easter. In taking advantage of that and developing the Bill in the light of that, we still think it is possible to meet the timetable of having most of the legislation implementable by January 2007, but it is not absolutely dependent on that. The reason 2007 is there, and it was in Haskins and elsewhere, is that the new rural development regulation comes into effect then and it would be useful if they coincide but it is not absolutely crucial they coincide, so I am not too uptight about the end date because there are all sorts of shadow arrangements and expectations and ad hoc arrangements which can be made as long as everything is in the pipeline.

Q348 Chairman: As always, thank you very much. It is a big change agenda, the best of luck and to your officials too. Robin is going to leave us the diagrams which look terrifying from here. Thank you very much indeed.

Lord Whitty: Thank you very much.