Background
4. Our predecessor Committee's report of April 2005
described the sorry history of environmental assessment over the
last decade. Following a failure to ensure departments carried
out their own separate environmental appraisals, and a move towards
Integrated Policy Appraisal (IPA) which was both ill-conceived
and poorly supported, environmental appraisal was finally subsumed
into the Regulatory Impact Assessment in April 2004. The RIA process
became the sole mechanism for assessing and comparing environmental
impacts alongside social and economic considerations, and therefore
represented a critical opportunity for the effective implementation
of sustainable development principles.
5. The 2005 EAC report examined several key aspects
of the RIA process, notably the adequacy of the guidance provided
and the accuracy of the environmental costs and benefits included
in RIAs. Several key factors were identified preventing the RIA
process from adequately taking account of environmental impacts:
a lack of emphasis on environmental concerns; guidance which was
ill-suited to the complexities of balancing environmental factors
with economic and social impacts; and a fundamental conflict arising
from the origins of the process in seeking to minimise the impact
of regulation.
6. The report made several recommendations for how
the RIA process could be improved, including:
- the restructuring of the RIA
system by inserting a higher strategic tier, which would be named
the Strategic Impact Assessment (SIA), separately identifying
economic, environmental and social impacts, and setting these
out on a single page summary;
- shifting the emphasis for categorising impacts
away from monetisation, using instead a plus/minus 7 point scale
to present environmental impacts;
- ensuring that the policy's impact on greenhouse
gas emissions is clearly highlighted and prioritised, and
- reassessing the appraisal process so that it
takes greater account of strategic objectives and targets on environmental
issues, including recognising the need to encourage the development
of environmental industries.
7. The report also recommended that the NAO carry
out an analysis of sustainable development in RIAs on the Committee's
behalf. The NAO published its briefing document on the topic on
22 May 2006. The review was based on an analysis of 10 RIAs relating
to policies with likely important social and environmental impacts,
and reached the following main conclusions:
- RIAs do have a number of potential
strengths for informing and influencing policy, in particular
the fact that it is now a well-established process, with high
levels of departmental compliance.
- The process suffers from a number of limitations:
some RIAs do not consider all aspects of a policy, and often RIAs
are used to justify policy rather than inform a decision.
- In its review of particular RIAs, the NAO found
that coverage of environmental impacts was frequently limited
both in terms of scope and in terms of the depth of analysis:
assessment of how successfully sustainable development issues
had been considered was also complicated by variable presentation
of RIAs.
- The briefing document recommended certain aspects
which could lead to improved consideration of sustainable development
in RIAs, namely better guidance and training, a strengthened scrutiny
process, and a more consistent style and standard of presentation.
8. On the same day as we launched our inquiry, the
BRE also launched its consultation into revising the RIA process.[4]
In the consultation document the BRE agreed with a number of
the NAO's conclusions, in particular that the current guidance
was inadequate, and that RIAs are often completed too late in
the policy-making process to inform key decisions. The consultation
document proposed a number of changes intended to address these
issues and others, such as transparency. However, environmental
issues received only minimal and ambiguous coverage, something
commented on by several of the memoranda submitted to us, notably
that of Friends of the Earth.[5]
The consultation closed on 16 October 2006.
9. It is against this background that we have conducted
this short inquiry. The NAO briefing document produced for us
has been invaluable in highlighting crucial issues in this area,
and has confirmed many of the concerns expressed in the report
of our predecessor Committee. The very fact that a consultation
has been carried out by the BRE demonstrates that the Cabinet
Office is also aware that the RIA process suffers from a number
of limitations, yet the lack of any sustained focus on environmental
concerns within that process is disheartening and the consultation
consequently fails to address many of the issues raised in the
2005 report.
4 Better Regulation Executive, The Tools to Deliver
Better Regulation - A Consultation Document, The document
can be found at http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/regulation/documents/ria/pdf/consultation.pdf
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5
The memorandum from Friends of the Earth is printed at Ev 27-30. Back
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