Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100-105)
MR PETER
HOUSDEN, MR
PETER UNWIN,
MR JOE
MONTGOMERY AND
MS CHRISTINA
BIENKOWSKA
27 NOVEMBER 2006
Q100 Chair: I have a couple of points.
I would like to ask a question on gender equality. I notice that
although the DCLG leads on gender equality for the Government,
it has a target for the number of women appointed to public bodies
which is lower than the targets of other Departments, and I do
have to say in this context that the ministerial statement on
7 November announcing the people who had been appointed as the
Chair and the Board of the National Housing and Planning Advice
Unit is scarcely a glowing example of gender equality since it
is entirely made up of men. Can you explain why your Department's
target is so low on gender equality in public bodies and what
you are doing to try and up the performance since you are the
lead Department?
Mr Housden: I am not sure that
we have material with us on public bodies, Chair.
Q101 Chair: I suggest we get an answer
before we have the Minister here next week otherwise she might
have a more unpleasant experience on this. What progress has been
made towards filling the post of Director General, Equalities,
as clearly is desperately required?
Mr Housden: The appointment panel,
which was chaired by the Civil Service Commissioner, has completed
its work and made a recommendation, which is on its way to the
Prime Minister.
Chair: Excellent!
Q102 Martin Horwood: Part of the
question is that it falls outside of the PSAs. Despite the fact
that your Department throws around the word "sustainability"
with quite a lot of abandon, none of the strategic priorities
actually seem to prioritise environmental sustainability in the
larger sense. You have things about safer, greener environment
and things like that, yet I keep on coming across more and more
examples of local authorities—Woking being the one that
everyone talks about but there are many others as well, Richmond
and so on—who are making enormous progress in contributing
to lower carbon emissions, to a more sustainable lifestyle, to
decentralised energy generation and so on, and yet none of your
targets seem to relate to that; none of your work streams seem
to identify that as the priority.
Mr Housden: I will ask Peter Unwin
to comment on this. We listened very hard to what you said last
year about your difficulty navigating our performance against
shifting categorisations and concluded that actually, the strategic
priorities that were set for our predecessor Department in the
Spending Review of 2004 were probably the most consistent and
easy to follow in that sense. Clearly, in the new context of the
Spending Review, there will be a new framework from government
but in terms of sustainable development and sustainable communities,
we have done a huge amount, particularly in the last year or two,
to improve our effectiveness and integration on that. Peter might
like to comment.
Mr Unwin: I would accept your
point that one or two of the priorities we have do not reflect
it as strongly as they might.
Q103 Martin Horwood: They do not
reflect it at all, do they?
Mr Unwin: Those priorities were
set in the 2004 spending review. I would be very surprised, frankly,
if the priorities set in the current Comprehensive Spending Review
do not reflect it significantly more but, as Peter Housden has
said, Ministers are very focused on this and see Communities and
Local Government as having a key role, probably one of the most
important roles across government, in terms of pursuing action
against climate change and in favour of sustainable development.
So on things that we will be announcing shortly on the sustainable
buildings code, on a planning policy statement for climate change
and a number of other issues which we are committed to taking
forward, we will be showing that we take this issue very seriously
and it is very high up our list of priorities.
Q104 Martin Horwood: I hope that
finally you will be making the code mandatory, as we have long
been calling for. If you really felt you have had a good story
to tell on your contribution to tackling climate change and so
on, why on earth is it not in your Annual Report, even if it is
not under a PSA?
Mr Unwin: I think we have had
a good story to tell. I think we will have an even better story
to tell in the future. You are right; maybe we have under-told
our story in the past. On the building regulations, new buildings
are now 40% more energy-efficient than they were in 2002, 70%
more than energy-efficient than they were in 1990, so there have
been significant changes there in the past, and what Ministers
want to do is to build on that and go forward across a broader
front, including local government, the planning system, operations
in the regions. All the instruments have been put at our disposal
to tackle this and I am sure if you question the Secretary of
State about it next week, she will make that very clear.
Q105 Mr Hands: Can I just make a
closing comment? I think you mentioned towards the beginning that
after each Select Committee meeting you always have a de-brief
meeting amongst yourselves. I am just wondering if you might reflect
on this at the de-brief meeting: I for one have found the four
of you, or at least those who have given evidence today, very
under-prepared for this session. I think that might be the kindest
way of putting it. We are, after all, asking you questions about
your own Annual Report. It was not as if this was something produced
by an outside organisation or a third party. I am a little surprised
that really, from the very first question to the questions towards
the end, you seem very under-briefed in terms of answering questions
on what is essentially your own document. I just wondered if you
wanted to reflect on that in the de-brief meeting.
Mr Housden: I hear what you say.
We will of course look in our de-brief processes and going forward
at the range of comments that you have made this afternoon.
Chair: Thank you very much and we look
forward to the additional information that we have asked for before
we meet the Minister on Monday. Thank you.
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