Examination of Witnesses (Questions 320-339)
MR ELLIOT
MORLEY, MP, MR
BOB ANDREW,
MR ANDREW
SOPER AND
MR JOHN
HUDSON
8 NOVEMBER 2005
Q320 Mr Ainsworth: Will CPET have
any kind of role in improving the quality of the data about timber
procurement within central government? There is a desperate shortage
of good data at the moment.
Mr Andrew: There is some data,
as you are probably aware, from the sustainable development in
government report. It is quite basic but it is . . .
Q321 Mr Ainsworth: We are not impressed
by that. I should not go there, if I were you.
Mr Andrew: CPET will look at the
situation as it is now and make recommendations for improving
the quality of data, but there will obviously have to be some
sort of cost benefit analysis of what the repercussions for that
may be.
Mr Morley: Let us be blunt about
this: the provision of data depends on systems which are very
much in the hands of the Government, really, and I think that
there are some issues that we need to address in relation to how
individual departments collect a range of data, not just on timber,
and how it is made available both to the Government and indeed
to the EAC. I think we have some work to do on that.
Q322 Mr Ainsworth: We believe that
central government departments are responsible for about 20% of
al timber procured in the UK.
Mr Morley: Fourteen per cent.
That is the last figure I saw. It might have gone up actually.
Mr Andrew: I think it is 40% for
the public sector.
Q323 Mr Ainsworth: This brings me
on to the other point. There is no requirement on local authorities
or non-departmental public bodies to purchase sustainable timber
at all.
Mr Morley: As far as I am concerned,
the government agencies, the NDPs, should be aligning their policies
with the Government's sustainable policies.
Q324 Mr Ainsworth: Is that an opinion?
Mr Morley: No, no. We are working
with that in relation to the Government's strategies, and particularly
within the umbrella of the sustainable development strategy, which
is a government strategy but which the agencies come within. It
is true to say that we do not have that control over local authorities,
although we do encourage them to do this, and of course, CPET
is also at their disposal in relation to advice. But I think it
is fair to say, as in all things, there are some local authorities
which are better than others in this, really.
Q325 Mr Ainsworth: Foundation hospitals
are not in the loop either, are they?
Mr Morley: They will come under
the regional health authorities. This is an area which wants some
clarification but again, as Environment Minister, because they
are government-funded, I would expect them to come within this
system really.
Q326 Mr Ainsworth: You would extend
that presumably to projects being built under public-private partnership.
Mr Morley: That would have to
be a contract compliance issue, but I expect that to be built
into contracts in the future, and it is also something that our
task force on sustainable procurement is looking at, and the OGC.
Q327 Mr Ainsworth: What about projects
funded by the National Lottery?
Mr Morley: I do not think that
comes within our control.
Mr Andrew: It does to an extent.
We have already had a workshop with the Heritage Lottery Fund
and they are ensuring that grants given under the National Lottery
are compliant with the policy wherever possible. It has been extended
through the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to the agency
that looks after . . .
Q328 Mr Ainsworth: The basic message
that I am getting here, and I hope this is right, is that you
are keen to extend the high standards that you set central government
to other public bodies, and you are prepared to take action to
do that.
Mr Morley: Yes, we are. That is
correct.
Q329 Chairman: Of course, the question
that subsequently comes is how do you do that? It would be a major
disaster were we in a situation where, for example, the new Wembley
Stadium were being built out of illegally logged timber, which
we have been assured is not going to happen, but we have the new
Olympics building. We have so much construction going on that
it is neither fitting comfortably with national or local government's
expenditure, and it does fit in all these different categories.
It is fine to want to do it, but the question is, how can you
make sure that every single new hospital that is being built is
not undercutting all this wonderful policy?
Mr Morley: We make sure of that
by contract compliance. We have a very good sustainable development
strategy, Securing the Future. That is a government strategy.
Q330 Chairman: So have you discussed
this, for example, with the Secretary of State for Health in respect
of new PFI contracts?
Mr Morley: Yes. We discuss it,
and we also discuss it with what is now the EE(SD) Committee,
which has an SD Minister from every department, and one of the
things that we have discussed very recently is sustainable procurement
and how we can apply issues like sustainable timber procurement
to all our contracts: hospitals, schools, PFI contracts. Some
of these are issues of making sure we get the contract conditions
right, some of them are strategies that individual government
departments need to be aware of in what they do, but the Olympics,
I might say, is one of the easier ones, because in our bid for
the Olympics the sustainability of it was a very big feature,
and of the board that will be overseeing the Olympics, they will
have a duty to further sustainability. There is also a Cabinet
Committee which is overseeing the Olympics development. They will
also have a responsibility to ensure that the very high commitments
that we have given on the sustainability of the Olympics in terms
of its building, its management and its legacy are applied, and
I am very confident that they will.
Q331 Chairman: Finally, in respect
of CPET's role, one of the things that you mentioned was liaison
with other government departments, but I am particularly interested
in the learning and skills work that is being done. It is fine
to have all of this, but if we are not training people, it is
not clear to me how new construction skill workers or those people
who are going to be responsible for procurement on the ground,
all that management training that needs to go on, is going to
be passed on and what role CPET has in that.
Mr Andrew: At the moment CPET
does not have a remit to extend beyond public sector buyers and
their suppliers, but there is a new website for CPET that has
just been developed and is now available, and is available to
all, of course. As part of the promotion, CPET will be promoted
to architects and engineers and so forth, but in terms of training
construction workers, we have not actually formulated any proposals
or plans for that at the moment.
Q332 Chairman: Is that not an oversight?
Mr Morley: I think it is a capacity
issue, Chairman. We have had to finance CPET, get it up and running,
get it working.
Q333 Chairman: Is CPET short of money?
Mr Morley: It is not short of
money, no, but we do have to budget for it and find the money,
as you can understand. These are areas that we would like to develop,
but this is part of the development of the whole concept really.
Mr Andrew: The timber trade's
own responsible purchasing policy has a role to play too. They
are, through their policy, informing and training their supply
chains, so the two facilities together will have an effect on
the supply chain and the education of people involved in it.
Mr Morley: Just as an aside, Chairman,
you might like to know that Defra is just completing a major refurbishment
of its Noble House building. I very much hope the Committee has
a chance to come over and have a look at this, because we have
applied very high standards of sustainability in the way that
refurbishment is being carried out. Part of that is the timber
used in that refurbishment was FSC, as it happens, because that
is what got the contract but, as a spin-off, there has been so
much FSC timber construction going on just in Defra that my understanding
is that one of the joinery companies has sought FSC accreditation
and is the first joinery company that is FSC-accredited. That
is on the back of the volume of work that has been coming in because
of the government procurement policy, and I very much hope the
Committee has a chance to come and have a look at this.
Chairman: I am sure, if there is an opportunity
to take that invitation up, we will most definitely do that. The
reason I mentioned learning and skills is because of the urgent
need, I think, to train new construction workers in this whole
new sustainable agenda.
Q334 Mr Hurd: I have got some questions
about certification and the criteria for certification, but, before
I go into that, I am keen to draw you out a little bit more about
how the Department is going about widening the audience for CPET.
You mentioned the website and you mentioned there was an initiative
to try and get new eyeballs to that website, but what is the department
doing to widen the net for CPET beyond the public sector? How
much money is being spent?
Mr Andrew: The CPET service provider
is organising regional training workshops and we are in the process
of doing that now. In addition to that, we also will use the regional
centres of excellence that have been set up recently to improve
procurement across the board, not just in terms of timber. These
regional centres of excellence will eventually be able to feed
into that as well and get the CPET service advertised that way.
At the moment we are concentrating on the beginning of the process,
because CPET phase two has only just got underway, through training
workshops on a regional basis.
Q335 Chairman: I have to say at this
stage, I am unashamedly going to use the Chair to invite CPET
to come and do one of these training sessions in the new construction
skills college that is being opened as we speak, which I should
be present at but I am unable to be there because of this Committee.
We have got a new construction skills college in Stoke-on-Trent
North, a five million pound new college, and it would be wonderful
if we could have a training session there so that we can move
forward and understand this whole agenda. I shall look forward
to hearing from you on that.
Mr Morley: That is pretty unashamedly,
but I think it is very desirable, and I very much welcome that
investment in your constituency as well.
Q336 Mr Hurd: Certification. There
have been some concerns expressed to the Committee about the PEFC
(Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification) schemes,
particularly the fact that it is an umbrella scheme for a large
number of national schemes all of which operate at different standards.
Could you give us a bit more detail as to why you selected the
initial five schemes and, in particular, why, for example, CSA
and SFI, which are part of the PEFC umbrella, are being assessed
separately?
Mr Morley: Can I just say, Chairman—and
this might be helpful—I think when this was fixed up I had
an appointment to go to which has now been cancelled, so I do
not have to go, but I know you do want to speak to the officials,
so perhaps if you want to direct a few questions . . . .
Q337 Chairman: I think we are more
than happy for the officials to add as and when it is appropriate
for them to do so.
Mr Morley: That is fine. I will
ask Bob to respond to this and I will bring the officials in,
but there might be something I want to say on this myself.
Mr Andrew: We chose those five
schemes because they represented the majority of certification
evidence that we have received and so we were familiar with those,
we thought they were major schemes. I think it is fair to say
that the SFI scheme was not part of the PEFC scheme when the assessment
was done. They have since become endorsed by PEFC, or are in the
process of being endorsed, but they were not members when we carried
out the assessments.
Q338 Mr Hurd: In terms of the concerns
about different national schemes inside the PEFC, these are concerns
that were expressed in your January 2004 guidance on timber purchasing.
Have these concerns been resolved?
Mr Andrew: They have on paper.
The PEFC scheme, I think you heard evidence from them last week,
has changed its scheme requirements to improve the deficiencies
that we assessed they had in terms of meeting our particular requirements
for assuring government buyers, that their contract requirements
were being met,—they made changes to those—and so
on paper, if all of those national schemes implement those changes,
we will be quite satisfied with that, but we know that there are,
I think, 21 national bodies that need to do this, and so we made
it clear to PEFC that we would be checking to make sure that they
are, indeed, within a reasonable timescale, changing their systems.
They will not necessarily be able to make the changes on the ground
immediately because of the way the cycle of forest certification
audits and standards are set, et cetera, but provided their systems
are changed that would be sufficient.
Q339 Mr Hurd: If one of the 21 failed
to change their systems or gave you serious grounds for concern,
would you remove PEFC or just that national label?
Mr Andrew: We could not remove
the national label because the PEFC system is such that you cannot
distinguish between national bodies. So if one failed and that
meant, on a sample basis, it was indicative that others could
also be defective, we would have to relegate the PEFC scheme to
assurance of legal only, but it would be up to the PEFC council
to take action themselves if they thought it was appropriate,
and, if they did not want one scheme, to queer the pitch for the
rest of them.
| 
