Examination of Witnesses (Questions 200-219)
MR MARTIN
HARPER, MR
ROBERT CUNNINGHAM,
MR TOM
OLIVER AND
MR PAUL
HAMBLIN
18 JANUARY 2006
Q200 Mr Drew: Obviously as a natural
sequitur to that, in terms of what criticisms you made is there
not a resource issue, because you can have all the wonderful words,
you can have all the good intentions, but as a constituency MP
my one criticism is that sometimes they do not actually get translated
into action? So where is the beef here?
Mr Harper: I will kick off and
then pass it on to my colleague Rob, and then maybe the CPRE would
like to chip in. Essentially, on the question of resourcing I
think it is two-fold. Does the Environment Agency currently have
the necessary resources to do its job? I think more often than
not what it is trying to do is to actually come up with complex
solutions to increasingly complex problems and trying to learn
from those experiences. It may not always have the right tools
at its disposal, courtesy of central Government, to allow it to
do its job. In a sense, there is a whole plethora of little niggles
which we would probably wish to table at the door of Defra in
terms of improved guidance and clarification of responsibilities,
but I do not think that is necessarily the responsibility of the
Environment Agency to fix itself. Maybe Rob would like to come
in with a couple of examples.
Mr Cunningham: On the issue of
resourcing, it is quite important to think of the Agency because
it is such a complex beast. It comes from a background of many
different sets of legislation and a number of predecessor bodies
and the underpinning legislation of those quite often sets the
funding arrangements for that. So for water resources, abstraction,
for instance, the hydrology function of the Agency recovers its
costs through its abstraction licensing and it has very strict
rules on where it spends that money, which will be on water resource
related projects. Flood defence, probably the biggest element
of the Environment Agency budget, comes from a grant from Defra.
Again, there are very strict rules on where it spends that section
of money. When it comes to things like biodiversity, access and
recreation, on those very pure biodiversity schemes, recreation
schemes, there is a grant-in-aid from Defra. So although you might
see a monolithic body with a budget of £1 billion, or something
like that, actually the freedom to spend that money across those
underlying administrative boundaries is limited.
Q201 Mr Drew: Are you saying your
want less ring-fencing, that is a significant problem, or do you
welcome the fact that you have certainty in the knowledge that
what comes from central Government actually gets spent by the
Environment Agency on what it should be spent on?
Mr Cunningham: It is partly less
ring-fencing. If you look at the flood risk management budget,
for instance, there is quite a move within the policy development.
Making Space for Water is the new Government strategy for
flood risk and coastal management to actually look at multi-functional
approaches to flood risk management, so looking to get biodiversity
gains from flood risk management spend. There is less clarity
on exactly how you do that and there are schemes where the Agency
has achieved that, in particular some of the coastal retreat schemes
where there is multi-functional benefit from reducing flood risk,
but there are still internal barriers and difficulties in how
you do that. But under Making Space for Water the Agency
and Defra are actually working to identify where those problems
lie and adjust policy. So it is partly a problem of ring-fencing,
but it is also partly a problem of working around that and how
to be creative about how you spend your money.
Q202 Patrick Hall: Could I just pick
up on the relationship, Chairman, which you mentioned, which appears
to be between RSPB and the Environment Agency. I remember when
I visited Sandy a few years ago and had discussions there that
the impressions I gained were that the relationship was not a
very happy one. Therefore, I say now, what has changed? What are
the significant changes which have improved that relationship?
Mr Harper: Again, I will kick
off. I think one of the things we should say is that it is not
surprising, given the visions which are outlined in the Environment
Agency documents and the emerging visions from Natural England,
that we share a lot of those aspirations for the natural environment.
So in a sense I think over time we have probably found the Environment
Agency increasingly occupying territory which we are very comfortable
with. I think certainly at the national policy perspective we
have a very healthy constructive working relationship to try and
come up with these complex solutions to these complicated problems,
and they translate down into projects on the ground. I think,
possibly, as both organisations have matured over the years we
have invested more in that partnership relationship. So I would
hope if you came to Sandy now you would probably get a better
impression of the working relationship we have. I will not say
anything about the fact that we happen to have indirectly passed
on the Chief Executive of RSPB into the hands of the Environment
Agency. In a sense, I think it is a long-term investment in that
relationship to deliver shared objectives.
Q203 Lynne Jones: The RSPB operates
across the whole of the United Kingdom and there are different
arrangements in the devolved authorities. Are there any lessons
to be learned from how it operates in Scotland—Scotland
is obviously the most distinct—and also other authorities?
Mr Harper: Of course, we have
a relationship with SEPA in Scotland. We do not have an equivalent
body in Northern Ireland and that is why we are campaigning at
the moment to try and establish an equivalent body in Northern
Ireland, because there is no body responsible for some of these
regulatory functions. It is left in the hands of central Government,
and that is actually possibly quite informative because in an
area the size of Northern Ireland, where you would expect central
Government to be both the regulator and the incentivisor, it is
failing in so many of the deliveries of its environmental objectives.
So we are strong proponents of the need for a strong, independent
champion and regulator of the environment. I do not know whether
Rob can think of any specific examples.
Q204 Lynne Jones: Are there two bodies
in Scotland such as there are in England and Wales?
Mr Harper: Yes, there is SEPA
and there is Scottish Natural Heritage up in Scotland.
Q205 Lynne Jones: So there is a sort
of mirror image there?
Mr Harper: Indeed, yes.
Mr Cunningham: Yes, although SEPA
do not hold the responsibility for flood risk management; that
is dealt with by the local authorities. So it has slightly less
responsibility.
Q206 Lynne Jones: Which do you think
is the best model then?
Mr Cunningham: I think there is
a very strong argument for the Agency to have the flood risk management
control, because there is a very clear need for a national approach
to setting and identifying priorities. There is also such a huge
overlap between the adaptation and the modification of coasts
and rivers and the environmental outcomes for wetlands, for rivers
and for our coastal environment. So I think there is a very clear
need for the Agency to hold that role.
Q207 Chairman: Could I just ask you
on that point, in paragraph 30 of your evidence you comment on
the strategic planning and stakeholder engagement in this area
and you say: "Unfortunately, there are also examples where
strategic planning and stakeholder engagement has been less successful,
for a range of reasons." You go on to comment about the Broads
PFI and you conclude by saying, "We have fundamental concerns
about this approach, because contractual agreements cannot easily
respond to shifts in policy, legislative requirements and improved
understanding of future risk. As a result, we fear that the gap
between Government policy and PFI delivery will continue to grow
over the life of the contract." [17]Whose
fault is that? Where did the problem originate?
Mr Cunningham: There appears to
be some enthusiasm to use the PFI funding mechanism for flood
risk management and it is mentioned specifically in Making
Space for Water as a potential future way of funding large-scale
regional flood risk management options. I am not sure how you
would apportion blame in terms of the setting up of the original
PFI, but the concerns we have are that Making Space for Water,
for instance, has established a new Government aim and objective
for flood risk management which quite clearly states that flood
risk management, while it is primarily about reducing risk to
people and their property, is also about delivering sustainable
development on the environment, social outcomes, et cetera. The
PFI pre-dates that, so in relation to the standards and objectives
set in the PFI how are we going to align that to what we want
for Making Space for Water?
Q208 Chairman: Can I just stop you
before we get too discursive? Really I was interested to know,
just on that point, is it a Defra policy problem or is it an Environment
Agency problem? Who is the master and who is the servant?
Mr Cunningham: Certainly the policy
is very clearly that Defra had divorced themselves from the delivery
side of flood risk management, and that is quite clear. They abolished
their regional engineers and they have set themselves very clearly
as the policy-setters and the Agency is the delivery mechanism.
I was not involved at the time of the inception of the Broads
PFI—
Q209 Chairman: But you have written
it down here.
Mr Cunningham: Absolutely. I think
what we are concerned about is that Defra, in Making Space
for Water, highlight the PFI as a potential mechanism for
the future.
Q210 Chairman: Let me tell you why
I am asking the question. In terms of establishing the independence
and advocacy role of the Environment Agency, if this was a bad
policy, in your judgement, do you believe that a body like the
Environment Agency should have had the courage—because you
will have told it that it is a bad policy, I am sure—to
stand up and be counted, or is it in such a position that if Defra
has set the policy, that is it, it has got to do what it is told?
Mr Cunningham: I think there is
a very clear need for the Agency to make it clear where policy
is failing because they are the people who know at the delivery
end. I think there is clearly a healthy discussion between Defra
and the Agency.
Q211 Chairman: Okay. Let me move
to this next point on that then. If that is one of its key roles,
do you have any examples where you think it might have failed
in that duty?
Mr Cunningham: It is very difficult,
because flood risk management is something which I deal with quite
a lot in my day to day work and quite clearly the Agency has the
delivery role but also has the role of informing Government about
the technical issues and about what the outcomes of its policy
will be, but ultimately the Government has the clear role on setting
policy. It is a Government issue. So if PFI is a Government tool
for what it considers to be a more rational way of financing flood
risk management, ultimately that is a political decision. In essence,
the Agency can tell them it thinks it is a bad idea, but it is
a Government decision ultimately what the policy is.
Q212 Mrs Moon: I want to take up
this issue of the Environment Agency's close involvement with
policy-making, because a number of people who have submitted evidence
to us have felt that the Agency exceeds the purpose for which
it was established. There has been a lot of discussion around
the championship of the environment role for the Environment Agency.
How much of a conflict is there between the Agency's role as a
regulator and adviser and its involvement in the development of
policy, whether or not that is a vacuum, because the policy is
not going down to almost make it on the hoof? Again, taking up
the issue which Lynne Jones talked about, is there a difference
between the devolved administrations? Is there a difference in
terms of the involvement in policy of the Environment Agency in
Wales, in Scotland, in Northern Ireland and in England?
Mr Harper: I know my colleagues
are itching to get started, as it were, so maybe if I allow Paul
to kick off.
Mr Hamblin: I can give a CPRE
perspective. I think we attach great importance to the policy
advice role which the Environment Agency provides to Government,
but given our remit as CPRE perhaps I will keep my comments restricted
to England. I think we have seen a growing distance between government
departments and statutory bodies in particular, such as the Environment
Agency. I remember in 1998, when the Government was developing
the assessment of its roads review, where clearly the implications
of its roads programme on the water environment was a very important
consideration and the Agency was very much involved, as were other
agencies in the development of that assessment process. This was
done before decisions were being made. What I think we are witnessing
now is that increasingly a number of reports are being commissioned
by Government and announcements are being made where the Environment
Agency, if you like, is providing advice but post hoc,
after decisions have been made. Examples I would use for that
would be the Barker Report on the supply of housing, where there
was no strategic environmental assessment undertaken of that,
the Eddington review on transport and productivity, where Rod
Eddington has been asked by the Chancellor and the DfT to examine
this issue and quite explicitly has been told not to examine the
environmental considerations. That is being thrown back as, "This
is an issue which Government will need to consider but it is not
for him." I think our concern is that when these studies
are being undertaken, when announcements are being made, they
should be undertaken within the climate of, and the priority which
is being given to, sustainable development. The Government has
published its sustainable development strategy. It has said that
we must work within environmental limits, and that is something
which CPRE, and I am sure RSPB, would very much wish to support.
In my mind, this would mean that the pressure on the Agency to
provide advice, early advice to feed into policy is simply going
to grow. This comes back to the resourcing point about making
sure there are sufficient resources for the Agency to do that,
and equally that the Government is able and willing to listen
to the advice which it then receives.
Q213 Mr Rogerson: The RSPB has said
that the Agency is "hampered in its work by a lack of Government
support"[18]
in terms of powers, resources or guidance, a steer in some areas.
How do you think that should be addressed?
Mr Harper: I will kick off by
saying something which I wanted to raise when Natural England
were speaking. I think the Environment Agency, and indeed Natural
England, should be judged on the delivery of their environmental
objectives and environmental outcomes and increasingly I hope
that is the way in which Government wishes to take assessment
of environmental delivery. In a sense that should be the starting
point for determining whether the tools they have at their disposal
are fit for the job. I think one of the best examples of the way
in which the agencies of central Government have worked together
recently has been on the attempt to try and ensure that 95% of
SSSIs are in good condition by 2010, one of the public service
agreement targets. That is very much a shared Government agenda
with the Agency, whereby Defra plus major landowners, plus English
Nature are being challenged not only to come up with solutions
but also possible remedies to try and take forward action. That
sort of collaborative, very sensible approach is now being adopted,
as Rob alluded to in the Making Space for Water venture,
where there is a recognition that in a sense there are these major
obstacles out there but we need to actually discuss what are the
key remedies to actually fix them. I do not know whether Rob wanted
to elaborate particularly on Making Space for Water?
Mr Cunningham: On Making Space
for Water, for instance, one of the BAP targets and one of
the Government targets for flood defence is to create 140 hectares
of inter-tidal habitat a year. That is proving very, very difficult.
You would be able to manage the realignment sites, but there is
not a huge number of those in existence and if we are to get anywhere
near meeting that target then progress will have to accelerate.
There are a lot of barriers to the creation of managed realignment
sites. You have to acquire the site through purchase. There can
be a lot of local opposition and there are a lot of things which
will need to be tackled to accelerate that and Making Space
for Water has a range of projects, some led by Defra, some
led by the Agency, including a project to look at the barriers
to that delivery, whether it be financial, whether it is institutional
or whether it is a lack of appropriate legislation. Those will
be looked at, and it is also in collaboration with ourselves and
English Nature carrying out a public stakeholder kind of trial
up in the Humber to look at that. So there is no simple answer,
but in certain areas clearly there is a failure. For instance,
on diffuse pollution I think there is a very clear failure at
the moment to get a clear steer about what mix of advice, regulation
and incentive will be at the disposal of the Agency and Natural
England to deliver the Water Framework Directive objectives. That
is a large area of uncertainty because the Water Framework Directive
targets are meant to be achieved in 2015. We do not want to be
in the situation where we are looking back and thinking we should
have acted a lot earlier. So there is a whole range of issues.
Mr Oliver: Could I add to that?
I think there is a risk that we forget what is at stake in terms
of the effective management of the environment and the responsibility
of the Environment Agency. There are a number of people who are
at risk from flooding at the moment, about five million. The number
of businesses at risk is two million. The capital value of those
businesses is in the hundreds of billions. These are serious issues
which are not just about the numbers of dunlin or Redshank or
the numbers of pretty landscapes, though those are important,
and it is crucial to recognise the need for the Environment Agency
to harness wider society's input and capital investment and intelligent
decision making about strategic planning. I am mindful of the
evidence you heard yesterday where there was talk of difficulty
with mission-creep with the Environment Agency and I think the
expression was used, "What is the Agency doing being involved
with sustainable communities?" While that mentality prevails
in parts of the business community, we are in dire trouble unless
we are able to harness and lead wider society to recognise the
need to avoid flood plains, to take water management seriously
both in use and in conservation. So although these issues are
fundamentally important and are very technical, as you heard from
previous witnesses, it is important to raise our game and to realise
that the Environment Agency has a very significant role to play
for everybody.
Chairman: Jamie Reed, I think, wanted
to follow up on that.
Q214 Mr Reed: I am very interested
in the potential for duplication between yourselves and Defra
and potential conflict and overlap. Do you think there is any,
and if there is could you give any examples of where there have
been potentially duplicated efforts between the Environment Agency
and Defra?
Mr Harper: Just quickly on the
Environment Agency and Defra, we were talking about its role as
regulator and its role as advisor. One thing we did not talk about
is its role as technical support as well, particularly as regards
the Water Framework Directive. Those who know it well—and
this Committee knows it pretty well—will be aware of just
how complex it can be and it is absolutely vital that the specialists
who are employed by the Environment Agency are on hand to be able
to provide the technical support and advice to Defra colleagues
when they are in negotiations in Brussels. Our understanding is
that that relationship works well. I think, as a previous witness
suggested, it is important for policy to be informed by practice
and of course the Environment Agency has (as indeed do the RSPB
and Natural England) a lot of experience of practice and that
is why we, as the RSPB, contribute detailed submissions to policy
consultations and that is why I also fully endorse what Paul said
about the role of the Environment Agency to try and ensure that
what is essentially a cross-cutting issue is dealt with in a comprehensive
way.
Q215 Mr Reed: I am grateful for the
response. In that respect, though, do you think that there are
some functions which Defra perform, which perhaps you might deal
with, which we could strip away from Defra? This Committee, and
I believe all Members of the House are very interested in stripping
out unnecessary cost and barriers to speedy regulation and effective
government. Is there anything you think Defra currently does which,
frankly, you think you could do better?
Mr Hamblin: I think there are
a number of areas where the Environment Agency and Defra need
to work in partnership. There is policy advice, and there is information
which the Environment Agency can provide and which Defra requires.
Frankly, I think that sort of advice needs to be provided to other
government departments, which need to seek it from the Environment
Agency so that not all information is channelled through Defra.
That raises the question of whether there is duplication of effort.
I do not see duplication of effort but, having heard the previous
witnesses being questioned on this point, clearly a concern is
whether there are two champions of the environment. I suppose
what I would say in response to that is, how many champions of
the economy are there? How many champions are there for other
particular policy areas? The environment is broad, it is interconnected,
and it is important that we have the knowledge which the Environment
Agency can provide in terms of monitoring the state of the environment.
But we also need a very important strong department within government
which is able to integrate environmental concerns across government.
Q216 Mr Reed: With regard to planning
issues, do you have a sufficient relationship with other Whitehall
departments, in your opinion, as you do with Defra when it comes
to advice and expert advice?
Mr Hamblin: CPRE has a good liaison
with the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and other government
departments. I think the relationship which the Environment Agency
has with the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister is mixed and
certainly there are policies which the Office of the Deputy Prime
Minister has been at the forefront in pursuing, such as the Communities
Plan, which are raising very significant issues for the resources
which the Environment Agency is trying to monitor, not least water
consumption. Proposals for massive housebuilding in the east of
England, one of the driest regions in the country, I think highlight
that problem. Clearly, the Environment Agency needs to be feeding
into these discussions at a regional level—and I believe
it is, although the resources available to do that, I suspect,
are insufficient—but really the key issue is about making
sure that these challenges are addressed higher up the decision-making
tree, so before the Communities Plan was produced.
Q217 Mr Reed: That is the ODPM. How
about the Department of Health, the DTI and other departments?
Is there sufficient scope for their advice to be taken? Are the
relationships adequate, do you feel, in order for environmental
aspects of policy-making to be considered properly?
Mr Oliver: I am sorry to ask a
question, but when you say "you" do you mean CPRE or—
Q218 Mr Reed: My apologies. I meant
the Environment Agency.
Mr Oliver: There has been a Memorandum
of Understanding between the Environment Agency and the Department
of Health and that is a good step forward. One of the most significant
issues which arises in terms of overlap between the Environment
Agency and Natural England is the scale of operation, and I think
probably one of the most significant points is that, for example,
if you take the Water Framework Directive, at least 80% of the
surface area of England is implicated in needing significant change
to a catchment, whereas the total SSSI area of England is only
7%. So although Natural England has a remit in terms of improving
and enhancing the landscape and access to it on a wider basis,
it is dealing with, relatively speaking, smaller areas than the
Environment Agency. That difference in the scale of operation,
leaving aside all the questions of waste management and flood
prevention, means that it is actually quite helpful to have two
bodies because they do operate at different scales and there is,
if you like, a sort of binocular vision which actually also benefits
NGOs because there are two sources of authority. That is actually
quite helpful. It helps you get the range. That is my analogy.
For example, with the NERC Bill it has been very helpful to have
the Environment Agency giving advice on the process and not being
directly implicated in the legislative process. That has been
very helpful.
Q219 Mrs Moon: You have made it quite
clear that you feel perhaps the Environment Agency is not being
consulted sufficiently early enough and robustly enough in terms
of central Government planning. I think we have got that message.
What about in terms of planning within local authorities? Do you
think the role of the Environment Agency gives them sufficient
influence when they are consulted on local planning applications?
Are they robust enough and do their reports carry enough weight?
Mr Oliver: They are a statutory
consultee with LDFs, of course, as well as RSS, so technically
speaking that is a good situation. Part of the problem is, I think,
that they deal with tens of thousands of planning application
queries every year. CPRE itself looks at roughly 100,000. I think
we are probably quite unique amongst the NGO community in having
that sort of scale of operation, but I think there probably is
a question of resource allocation there because it depends on
how many applications are coming in. There is no rule which says
that the number of applications coming in will be more or less
controversial in any one year. I would have thought it is probably,
from CPRE's perspective—I am not sure whether RSPB would
agree with this—very helpful if there is greater attention
to planning applications where they are of great consequence because
of course otherwise the NGOs are left to do that job themselves,
as does sometimes happen. CPRE does not own land, of course, so
we do not have the particular question, but I remember when I
worked for National Trust I was quite concerned that planning
and development issues which affected the estate I ran were not
necessarily always receiving the degree of attention I wished
them to have from the EA.
Mr Hamblin: If I may just add
to that, the changes which have been brought about by the Planning
and Compulsory Purchase Act have meant that we are now in a situation
where rather than simply looking at land allocation in plans we
are looking at the management of land through spatial planning.
That provides lots of opportunity for the Environment Agency to
try and integrate messages about resource management right into
the heart of the planning process at the local level through local
development frameworks. Because the Planning and Compulsory Purchase
Act has generated significant changes through the planning system
all at the same time I think there is a phasing issue and a resourcing
issue in terms of the extent to which the Environment Agency is
able to respond to all of the proposals which are coming forward
and really ensure that its wider messages about managing water
are incorporated at the plan level, and not simply addressed through
individual planning applications.
17 Ev 89 Back
18
Ev 87, para 5 Back
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