Examination of Witnesses (Questions 316-319)
BARONESS YOUNG
OF OLD
SCONE AND
SIR JOHN
HARMAN
25 JANUARY 2006
Q316 Chairman: Can I welcome once again
for our final evidence session in our look at the Environment
Agency, Sir John Harman, the Chairman of the Agency, and Baroness
Young, its Chief Executive. May I thank you and, indeed, your
staff sincerely on behalf of the Committee for the very helpful
presentation which you laid on for Members of the Committee which
gave us all a very interesting insight into the many and varied
activities for which you have responsibility. May I also thank
you for your written evidence. I was intrigued that amongst the
many publications which the Environment Agency produce there was
one that arrived on my desk last year entitled A Better Place:
State of the Environment 2005. I thumbed my way through this
and you expressed views on an enormously wide range of environmental
subjects but some of them you do not have direct policy responsibility
for, particularly in the field of transport where there are a
lot of emissions which affect climate change but for which you
do not have a remit. Now here we are 10 years on since you started.
In the light of this comprehensive document, A Better Place,
are there things which you think your Agency ought to be doing
which currently, going back to what the Minister said when he
talked about your statutory remit, you are not able to do presently?
In other words, should we have a more comprehensive Environment
Agency than we have got at the moment?
Sir John Harman: Thank you for
the opportunity to present oral evidence to your Committee, Chairman.
I think that is a very good question. If you do not mind, I am
going to answer it by going back to where we started in 1996.
Of all the things that were expected of us, I suppose the two
that should stand out most for myself and my board were that the
Agency should firstly be an effective integrator of regulation
on the various emissions to land, air and water through the various
environmental media. That has been a key task for us, to understand
how the impact on all those media works and to bring the regulation
together. The other thing, and it is specifically mentioned in
the Act—it is odd that the top document in both our piles,
by the way, is the same one, Chairman, congratulations—is
the duty to contribute to sustainable development and we have
ministerial guidance to explain to us how that should be done.
I go back to those founding principles because the board and the
Agency have had to figure out what those duties mean. They must
mean judging success by what happens in the environment, by environmental
outcomes. None of the pages in this book is unrelated to a statutory
function. On the example which you gave—traffic emissions—clearly
we have no regulatory locus on traffic emissions but we have a
huge responsibility on air quality shared with local authorities.
It would not be possible for the Agency to take an intelligent
view of its duties to contribute to sustainable development and,
incidentally, to monitor and report on the environment, if we
were simply to report on air quality along the lines of what goes
up an industrial regulated chimney, it has to be placed in context.
Whatever statutory boundaries are defined, I think our general
purpose obliges us, not just gives us the opportunity but obliges
us, to form an opinion and report on a basis that is sufficiently
wide for the reader to understand the context. I do not think
you can talk about air quality unless you also mention traffic.
After all, it is the basis of almost all air quality zones that
local authorities have declared, and we advise them in those declarations.
It is a good example of where our wider role invites us to take
a stand on issues which are beyond the strict statutory limit,
but that also brings with it an obligation which is that because
we are therefore providing information which impinges on other
people's roles we should work in partnership with a wide range
of other organisations and, indeed, not just to see regulation
as the end but the means to an environmental end and that we ought
to use a range of approaches to solve any particular environmental
problem and that means a great deal of working with others. You
invited the Minister to think about what relationships the Agency
should have with other bodies, it would be a huge map that would
be drawn if you were really to try to describe the relationships
we need in order to undertake our central role, which is that
which is laid out in the Act and the guidance we have had since.
Q317 Chairman: Baroness Young, do
you want to comment?
Baroness Young of Old Scone: Two
things. One is we do always have a statutory duty to report on
the state of the environment which takes us into the wider range
of issues that are in the State of the Environment report.
You did ask whether there were things that we might like to do
that would make our portfolio, as it were, more comprehensive,
more rounded. I am slightly nervous of the comment that was made
early on that organisations always want to take stuff on rather
than give stuff up. This is not empire building but simply some
tidying that I think needs to be done. There has been mention
of the Marine Bill and I do think we need to have our proper place
as an organisation in whatever emerges from the Marine Bill so
that we can carry out our functions in terms of water, the Water
Framework Directive, and flood risk management, coastal protection.
I think we do need some spring cleaning of the responsibilities
for air quality. The recent Buncefield explosion has demonstrated
that managing air quality on a local authority by local authority
basis is not sufficient when we have a big incident that spans
a number of local authorities. I think there is a bit of tidying
of responsibilities needed there. There are issues to do with
chemicals regulation where there is a current discussion on who
will become the Chemicals Agency for the UK and there we would
want to put the very strong view that this fits well with our
regulatory role in the chemicals industry processes at the moment
and with our environmental responsibilities. Of course, we do
want to make sure that in future we have got a proper place working
with farmers alongside Natural England because the role of land
management is going to be very crucial in the implementation of
the Water Framework Directive. Last but not least on my little
shopping list, I think it would be useful to explore the exact
split between ourselves and government departments on policy,
not just our role in helping government departments think through
policy and negotiate policy in Europe but the reverse end of that,
which is when does policy stop being political policy and start
being the way we implement things, in which case it might be more
appropriate for a delivery body like the Agency to agree the policy
and the nuts and bolts of how overarching government policy will
be delivered rather than that being determined in the first stage
by the government department.
Chairman: That is certainly a point that
came up in other evidence.
Q318 Mr Reed: Bearing all of that
in mind, and it is all very, very useful, would the Agency have
a fixed view at this stage on what is probably the biggest issue
facing the country, which is energy policy?
Sir John Harman: That is an area
where our statutory role is the regulation of power generation,
large power generation, so we have a role but it is not a major
policy role. In that, we put evidence to and supported most of
the outcome of the discussion around the Energy White Paper two
years ago and were pleased to see the emphasis that gave both
to energy efficiency—we have a huge theme in our work on
the wise use of natural resources, so of course we are very much
in favour of enhanced energy efficiency—and on renewables
because of carbon policy. Both of those things follow from our
core role. Our view on this particular episode we are going through
now is we would not want to see those basic principles abandoned.
We think it is important both for the economy and the environment
of the United Kingdom that we should get better at the use of
resource, including energy, and obviously we have to get hold
of carbon. If your question was about do we have a view on the
nuclear argument, we do as well but I will stop there in case
I am answering one question too many.
Q319 Mr Reed: No, not at all. It
is interesting that you mention it. What would that be?
Sir John Harman: I should not
invite questions! Our view is based upon our statutory role. As
you know, we regulate the storage of nuclear materials and emissions
from nuclear processors, the safety aspects being the responsibility
of the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate. As a result of that
responsibility, of course, when material comes out of the nuclear
process as waste we have a regulatory stance and an interest and,
although it is a theological point as to when solid nuclear material
is discarded and becomes waste, let us put that to one side, we
would be very clear in saying that we want to see a clarity about
UK policy on radioactive waste management before we embarked on
creating any more of the stuff when there is plenty of it already.
There is also a connected issue to the remarks I made just now
and that is it may be the case in practice that if there was a
coherent and national drive for new nuclear there may not be room
in the investment markets both to afford that and to keep up the
pressure on investment for renewables. Whatever else happens in
the energy economy, I do not think that we can envisage a future
energy economy which does not have a substantially greater renewable
component than we have now. Anything that will take investor initiative,
investor incentive, away from that sector would be a pity in our
view. It is not an absolute rock solid certainty that nuclear
would do that but there is a danger which must be navigated.
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