Select Committee on Environmental Audit Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-89)

MR ELLIOT MORLEY, MR DAVID RABEY AND MS JILL RUTTER

30 NOVEMBER 2005

  Q80 Mr Ellwood: Could we turn to the National Audit Office review? First, may I ask your reaction to the review? Will there be any formal or indeed informal response by yourselves?

  Mr Morley: We very much welcome the review by the National Audit Office. It is useful to have this kind of analysis in relation to the performance of Government, where we have had some successes and where there are still some weaknesses. In any kind of approach towards sustainable procurement, you do need some form of auditing. You do need some kind of assessment about how well you are doing. In fact, your own committee, Chairman, has a very important role in this and that is why I very much welcome the interest that you have in this. We do need to benchmark our own progress towards these targets. The NAO report is very helpful in this. I am not sure we will do a formal response to the NAO report; it is more for guidance.

  Ms Rutter: As for what we are actually doing about this, obviously this is an input into departments producing their sustainable procurement strategies, taking into account the way departments are approaching that. We are very good consumers of the NAO report because it has gone to every member of the Sustainable Procurement Task Force with the statement that these are the questions that people in the know are asking about the Government and these are the issues that the task force needs to address in its work. We see it as very much driving the agenda. There are some areas where we have already taken account of some of the comments. I know you have picked up the point made earlier about the greening of government report and the rather duff nature of some of the questions that we asked in the SDiG report like, "Do you have a commitment to do something?" and not, "Are you actually doing any of that?" This year, hopefully the questionnaire has picked up some of those points and will yield up more meaningful answers than the "yes" and "no", which did not tell anyone about how much you are doing it. We have already put into action some of those things. We very much see the response to this coming through both the task force action plan and then the way in which ministers and Government respond to the action plan.

  Mr Rabey: The NAO and Defra recently held a workshop for 20 government departments on sustainable procurement policy. The departments were invited to reflect on the fact that the sustainable procurement agenda is here and visible and that they will be held accountable.

  Q81 Mr Ellwood: That is very helpful. Could I suggest that it might be helpful to have a formal response? You mentioned the SDiG questionnaire. Comparing that with some information that was gleaned from the National Audit Office review on the number of departments that were claiming that they were undertaking environmental risk assessments, according to your study four were not; in fact, 11 were not. If we look at what was actually being done about the data itself, it seems also that there is a discrepancy there and one department said they were not doing anything, whereas in fact 14 departments had no real commitment to do anything more than collect the data. These seem to be huge discrepancies between the information that you are collecting and what the NAO is suggesting. Would you like to comment on that?

  Ms Rutter: This is the 2004 report. We have just been through the process of collecting the data for the 2005 report. As I said to the committee earlier, those results are being analysed by PriceWaterhouse, the consultants we used last time to do that. Then those are going to be commented on as to what this means in terms of performance by the Sustainable Development Commission. Hopefully, we have taken on board some of these points about the discrepancies and some of the meaningless questions that we asked—perhaps not meaningless but not very useful ones. The other thing that is going on in parallel is that we are reviewing the framework on the Government estate to ask how useful it is and whether it actually driving up government performance. I think this goes to some of the points made earlier. How do we actually make this something? We have set up, in order to do that, a sub-committee chaired by the Minister, who is overseeing the process at ministerial level. I think I can mention that. We also have, and this is a deliberate and new innovation to oversee the framework review, the rather unfortunately named SOB (Sustainable Operations Board) chaired by the Second Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Defence, that has all of what you might regard as the big footprint departments on it: the Department of Health, DFAS, the Home Office and so on. They are overseeing the framework and asking how we make this into something that does not just set lots of little micro targets that may be focusing in some cases on things such as cars, mentioned by one of you earlier, focusing maybe on the wrong things, but genuinely stretches and drives government performance in the future. That review is going on at the moment. We hope that, as we roll forward the framework, it will become a much more powerful tool to drive up government performance across the Government estate.

  Mr Morley: Recently I had a meeting with EE(SD), which has ministers on it from every government department. I did draw their attention to the report of the NAO and the issue of data collection and data capture, which has not developed as well as it ought to have done in every government department. In fact, we did it ourselves with such things as the Government's policy on carbon offset for all government travel. We need the data on travel in government departments, the number of kilometres travelled, so that we can do a carbon equation and therefore do a cost for the department to put into the pot for the carbon offset.

  Q82 Mr Ellwood: To stretch that point, if there is such a discrepancy between what you are saying through the results of your own questionnaire and what the NAO is saying, it is very difficult for us, even though you have spoken with a lot of passion today about initiatives that are going on, when we see that departments are either doing very little at all beyond data collection or they are confused about the definitions themselves that you put forward to them. If we are to have faith in the sustainable project that you are pioneering, the departments must first understand what is expected of them and make a huge improvement in how the data is collected, and then what is done with that data once it has been analysed.

  Mr Morley: I do not disagree with that at all. I think it is true and I am very proud of aspects of what we have achieved in terms of sustainable procurements. I am totally committed to driving this issue forward. I would be the first to accept that we have not got this system up and running in the way that I would want to see it across the whole of the Government estate. That is the challenge for me; it is a challenge for us in Defra and working with my colleagues in other departments. I think we can respond to that challenge. In relation to the formal response, you do have your own report on the greening of government in 2004. We will, of course, be making a formal response to that because we do respond in a different way to select committees than we would to the NAO, for example. You will get a detailed response in relation to the points you have raised on this report.

  Chairman: I am sure most people would say the data is out of date. That is, unfortunately, a fact of life.

  Q83 Joan Walley: In respect of the challenge you have just spoken about, we, you, no-one can rise to that challenge without trained people to make it happen. I would be interested to know how many people there are right the way across the various departments you are dealing with on this in terms of people you are training. Are you satisfied that the training is in place? Do you know about how much training is being done? Do you have targets there, even if they are not official targets? Does that mean enough action quickly enough? Is that making the whole policy deliverable?

  Mr Morley: It has certainly upped the agenda of every department. We have engaged the OGC. You have mentioned the joint Defra/OGC conference, which is all about sustainable procurement. That is an awareness-raising issue in itself. There is certainly an issue of capacity-building in relation to our approach. We have to ensure that there is adequate training and experience for staff in all government departments. We look to the OGC to provide support for that and to the Sustainable Development Commission.

  Q84 Joan Walley: How would you know that enough was being done in a concerted way? Are you just leaving it to the OGC and hoping that they are doing it?

  Mr Morley: The OGC does a lot of work on this area. Clearly, we do need to take an overview on this.

  Mr Rabey: We have been working with NHS PASA (Purchasing and Supply Agency for the NHS) in terms of sustainable procurement training for the NHS. We have met our Part F target for training and we have already trained staff within Defra. That training is ongoing. The process is ongoing. Part of the training involves helping people on how to do sustainable things within that procurement process as opposed to issuing some guidance. Picking up the previous point about the figures on energy efficiency, taking the lessons from timber and food over the past few years, departmental failure to show commitment to sustainable procurement will become increasingly visible. Government departments will suffer that reputational issue if they are not seen to be doing something. A lot of effort is going into training, into education skills, both with the University of Bath and the National School for Government. We have to carry on rolling this process out over the next few years to ensure we meet the 2009 target. It just has to touch a lot of people on the ground who do procurement.

  Q85 Joan Walley: I would be interested to know how much that has been done with Treasury. Certainly my own experience has been that where, for example, PFI proposals have gone forward which have involved procurement, their interest in this green sustainable agenda has not necessarily been matched by the people in the Treasury who will determine whether or not the package is allowed under Treasury rules?

  Mr Morley: We do need to green-up PFI contracts. The Treasury is not necessarily against this; it is partly about making sure that, in relation to criteria of the PFI, sustainability is built into that. In relation to capacity-building, the National School of Government has held a session on sustainable development, which includes procurement, for ministers, including Treasury ministers; right across the board.

  Q86 Mr Chaytor: The impression our committee has, and this is the second time we have looked at the subject, is of a massive task force, action plans, strategic plans in departments, sustainable procurement plans, toolkits. It is seven years since Kyoto. During this time, the Government Chief Scientist simply goes to Number 10 and lobbies directly for a levy on electricity bills to finance the expansion of nuclear power. Does that not highlight the problem we have? Is it not down to this division of responsibility between Defra and the OGC and the distinction between procurement and sustainable procurement? Seven years have been lost and other actors, particularly in the energy scene, are developing their agenda in a much sharper and more focused way.

  Mr Morley: I start by cautioning you about not believing everything you read in newspapers as to what the Chief Scientist has or has not allegedly done on these things. There is an enormous amount of activity going on. You are trying to change a culture here, I would say, and you do not change a culture overnight. You have to do a great deal of work and have strategies, training and capacity-building. We have a whole range of targets on the Government Estate, which have been in for some time in relation to purchasing recycled paper, renewable energy, all for efficiency. These efforts are relatively successful, but we want more than that. The idea of using government procurement as a sustainable tool is a comparatively recent concept. Of course, it is rather a new concept whereby you are trying to put in place an overall strategy as to how you use that enormous purchasing power than can really influence contracts, business, and even whole industries. It has not been done before, nor is it simple. You have to do the background preparatory work. Like many things, it is frustratingly slow but you cannot short-circuit it; it has to be put in place if you want to make this policy work.

  Q87 Mr Chaytor: What are the three things that you would most like to see appear in the Sustainable Procurement Action Plan?

  Mr Morley: One, I would like to address the whole chain of supply; two, I would want to see very good standards applied in relation to things like building, energy, water supply, local procurement and equality; and, three, I would want to see a strategy that people understand across the Government estate, and in fact beyond the Government estate and into other public sector areas and into our agency areas as well. Those are the top three I would like to see.

  Q88 Mr Chaytor: But not CPA (Comprehensive Performance Assessment) indicators for local authorities?

  Mr Morley: You do need to incorporate those within indicators as well.

  Q89 Mr Chaytor: I am sure you have looked at the Early Day Motion 1065 in my name that deals with standby power. Given that the OGC earlier made it absolutely clear that whole life costs can be included in value-for-money definitions and given that the waste of energy through electrical appliances on standby power is such an obvious saving to be made, why have not we done more to specify the purchase of low standby electrical appliances throughout the public sector?

  Mr Morley: We do specify purchases of low energy appliances but the issue you raise goes much wider than that. The whole issue of standby power consumption is really so poorly developed that it is very difficult to know what appliances you can buy in relation to their power consumption and their standby power consumption. What we need on this issue is labelling and eco labels in relation to standby power and better design in relation to electrical equipment. We are trying to address that through the EU because, of course, it is an EU issue in relation to that. In order to be effective about this, and this is an important issue because huge quantities of power are consumed on standby, we also address it by strategies within departments. I can only speak for my own in that we do have policies to ensure that people power down computers in the evening so they are not left on all night within the department. We need that information and better labelling. That is not just important for the Government's purchasing policy; it is important for consumers as well.

  Chairman: Thank you all very much indeed.




 
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