Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
MR NICHOLAS
CLIFFE AND
MR RICHARD
ROBERTSON
25 OCTOBER 2005
Q20 Mr Ainsworth: It does not sound
too optimistic that we are going to make early progress.
Mr Cliffe: No. It is also fair
to say that there may be barriers as well in the fact that if
a company has gone down a particular route, they may have invested
a degree of time and money in setting up a supply chain with a
particular scheme; so that is one barrier that they might not
want to necessarily back down from those costs.
Q21 Mr Ainsworth: But if there were
a basic agreed minimum standard, that would not be a problem,
would it, necessarily?
Mr Cliffe: It would not be a problem
for the company in question, I guess.
Q22 Mr Ainsworth: Do you have views
on the other schemes in terms of the lesser emphasis that they
place on social aspects?
Mr Cliffe: No. As a general rule,
FSC would not comment on other systems or standards.
Q23 Mr Ainsworth: I noticed that!
Mr Robertson: That is the general
agreement we seem to have with the other schemes and systems as
well.
Q24 Mr Ainsworth: Can I quickly change
tack and ask you, hopefully with better prospects of eliciting
information: what is your view of the UK Government's interpretation
of the EU legislation which prohibits the inclusion of social
considerations in the procurement contracts?
Mr Cliffe: It is their point of
view. We are aware that the Danish Government took a different
view and decided that you could include social—
Q25 Mr Ainsworth: I am asking for
your view. We know what the Government's point of view is. That
is not what we are asking about.
Mr Robertson: Our view in the
FSC is that social criteria should be involved if you are looking
at true sustainability. We believe that we should—
Q26 Mr Ainsworth: So you think the
Government should reconsider its interpretation of the EU position?
Mr Robertson: For FSC it is not
a barrier that you have not included social. Clearly, as a system
we believe that you should have social in there; but if the Government
does not want to include that in the system, it will not cause
any problems for FSC. We have got the systems in place to meet
environmental and economic, and we are confident that—we
are widely regarded as the best system in the world, and that
has been recognised by ISO now as well; that FSC is the
system.
Q27 Mr Ainsworth: Do you have any
dialogue with the European Commission about the current legal
situation?
Mr Cliffe: We, FSC UK, do not.
I cannot speak for FSC International, but I can find out and let
you know.
Mr Ainsworth: That would be helpful.
Thank you.
Q28 Colin Challen: I must admit that
I am rather confused after that part of the session, and the confusion
and multiplicity of schemes might tend towards the cynical response
that people are creating things to suit their own circumstances.
The FSC is recognised by many groups as being a bit of a gold
standard, a very comprehensive gold standard. In that context,
how do you differ from all these other schemes, or the major schemes
that exist?
Mr Cliffe: We differ in terms
of process, in terms of how we operate and in terms of how we
are structured. One of the fundamental differences—
Colin Challen: More stringent, more rigorous.
Q29 Chairman: Your accreditation.
Mr Cliffe: I see what you mean!
Generally speaking, yes, I would say.
Mr Robertson: We would like to
think so. We have certainly been building up our standards over
the years. We have had criticisms in the past. Every system has
its criticisms, and we have been building systems that are more
ISO and ISEAL compliant; and they have been recognised by those
bodies—
Q30 Colin Challen: In relation to
ISO certification, you come close to that, or you would represent
the best form of that, would you? Would other major schemes fall
beneath that kind of standard, or is this still too indeterminate?
Mr Robertson: An ISO is not performance-based,
it is a systems-based standard, so it is a slightly different
way of looking at accrediting and ensuring the ways that people
are working on the ground. WSSN, which is a subsidiary of ISO,
has recognised FSC, and—
Q31 Chairman: There are so many acronyms
and we are not as familiar with them on a day-to-day basis as
you are. It would be really helpful to know what you are referring.
What does the last one stand for?
Mr Robertson: World Standards—
Q32 Chairman: We are not meaning to catch
you out, I can assure you.
Mr Robertson: All these acronyms
are confusing for us. It is the World Standards-Services, Network,
which is a subsidiary of ISO, which is the International Standards-Setting
Organisation. They now have a listing which confers status on
FSC as being the independent standard for forestry world-wide.
Q33 Colin Challen: The ISO accreditation,
or the way in which people use it on their letterheads, as they
often do, suggests that that covers all aspects of the products'
worth, if you like; and that is why people use it. As you say,
it is a systems approach, which means that you have produced something
on a Gerald Ratner scale; as long as it has a system approval
under ISO, then it does not really matter how C-R-A-P it is, really,
does it? How is that going to benefit this debate?
Mr Robertson: The fact that we
have got an ISO listing? Is that what you are asking? You are
asking how that would benefit—
Q34 Colin Challen: If you turn out
rubbish from your factory, as long as you have got evidence everything
covered by an ISO standard, it does not really matter how bad
it is as long as you produce it to that system.
Mr Cliffe: The FSC system has
never been a standard that has anything to do with timber quality;
it is entirely to do with provenance, the quality of the forest
management from where the timber has come from. We believe that
the FSC forest management standard represents the highest available
standard to assess how forest is operated and managed; so the
timber that comes from that forest FSC certified is then tracked
through the supply chain. Our chain-of-custody system is basically
an audit trail that simply tracks that volume of timber through
each processing stage.
Q35 Mark Pritchard: The ISO standard
is not a recognition of the FSC standard; it is a recognition
of the process of your own standards, so it is internal rather
than external; is that correct?
Mr Robertson: The recognition
is internal, as you said.
Q36 Mark Pritchard: So it is a standard
recognition of your internal process rather than a recognition
of the FSC external standard; is that correct?
Mr Robertson: Yes.
Mr Cliffe: Yes.
Q37 Mark Pritchard: In a sense, it
may not have that much relevance apart from the fact that you
have good internal systems to the actual standard of the FSC to
the external procurement market.
Mr Cliffe: Yes, that is what ISO
does, yes.
Q38 Mark Pritchard: So you could
have somebody that has non-ISO recognition or standard, but actually
has a better external standard than the FSC.
Mr Cliffe: We are not aware of
one, but it would not be impossible.
Q39 Colin Challen: Is the demand
for FSC timber currently met from FSC sources, or is there a bit
of a price premium for people who want to do the decent thing?
Mr Cliffe: I believe it varies
from product group to product group. In some cases there is not
enough supply to meet current demand, and in some cases there
is enough supply to meet current demand. Where there is currently
insufficient supply we are aware that timber traders will charge
a premium. It is a market reality, unfortunately.
Mr Robertson: It is also why we
have our controlled wood system, so that we can have a proportion
of FSC-certified timber in a product, and whoever has produced
that can get rewarded for that and get markets for that timber,
when there is not a huge proportion of the timber market that
is FSC-certified—so it is getting FSC into the market—and
then the rest of that product is from FSC-controlled sources.
We are the only system to implement second-party and proceeding
to a third-party audit on controlled wood, so we are excluding
the worst of the worst that I was talking about. We are excluding
that through our audit system, which is going further than any
other system has gone so far.
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