Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20
- 35)
TUESDAY 19 JUNE 2007
DR DUNCAN
RUSSEL
Q20 Colin Challen: Do you have any
signals that these bodies themselves would like to see a merger,
or are they a little bit defensive of their roles?
Dr Russel: I could not answer
that question. I would not know.
Q21 Colin Challen: Is there a case
really that, rather than the Government creating the Office of
Climate Change, they should have done more to strengthen the SDU?
Dr Russel: Yes. That is what I
would argue. When you compare the SDU to something like the Better
Regulation Executive, the SDU is massively under-resourced. It
has to do so many things. It deals not only with estate issues,
government estates and green estates, it also deals with green
policy issues and yet it has a very small core staff. When we
were doing our research on environmental policy appraisal and
I was speaking to the head of that, she had three people, and
not only were they dealing with environmental policy appraisal,
giving best practice, supposed to be collecting a database but
they were also dealing with the Green Cabinet Committee and other
issues to do with integrating environmental concerns into policymaking.
If you compare that with the Better Regulation Executive, they
have team members who shadow the departments, so there is a centre
of expertise. They comment on regulatory impact assessments or
impact assessments, as they are now called, and they have a whole
host of people working on the guidance and that aspect, so it
is far better resourced and centrally located. I think the SDU
could be better resourced, centrally located and climate change
should, by its nature, be a major part of its work anyway.
Q22 Colin Challen: Do these bodies
try to coordinate their own activities, so that if they, say,
move into similar areas of research, they try to avoid duplicating
each other?
Dr Russel: I would not be able
to say. My fear is that there would be some duplication and that
there would also be some areas, possibly, where if they are not
communicating properly, one thinks the other is picking up an
issue and the other thinks the other is picking it up and it is
not being picked up at all. I do not have any evidence for that
but that is what has happened before in other areas that other
researchers have picked up on.
Q23 Mark Pritchard: The Green Cabinet
Committee, I wonder who sits on that.
Dr Russel: You have the main Green
Cabinet Committee, which is a Cabinet Committee for Environment
and Energy. The Prime Minister has just been confirmed about a
year ago as the Chairman of that Committee. Off the top of my
head, I cannot remember who else is on that. Then you have the
Sub-Committee Energy, which is comprised of sustainable development
ministers, who are mainly junior ministers within their departments
who, in addition to their junior ministerial profile, also have
a sustainable development profile and are supposed to help promote
sustainable development.
Q24 Mark Pritchard: Mr Challen was
talking about the different agencies in different government departments
dealing with climate change and environmental issues. I was thinking
back to the amount of intelligence agencies we have, the intelligence
gathering organisations across government, the MOD intelligence
agencies and one or two others. Of course the way they deal with
that is not to set up yet another body but to draw senior people
from each of those organisations into a single body that would
discuss strategic issues to try to have joined-up thinking wherever
possible. Seeing as the Office of Climate Change is a new body,
rather than drawing down expertise that already exists, do you
see the former model as something that might be more helpful?
Dr Russel: I can see that can
help with coordination. The one thing I would say is that coordination
needs to happen at the very beginning, so, if they are just coming
together to discuss what they are already doing and what they
have done, then you are going to get coordination far later on,
when it is harder trying to resolve some of the thorny issues.,
It is better if you start at the beginning. It tends to be a smoother
process. If you take that kind of structure, I would say that
it needs to be proactive, so they need to discuss future work
rather than the work they are already working on. The focus needs
to be there, and that, again, needs to come from the top. You
need a remit which says that.
Q25 Mr Chaytor: Your report talks
about the need for stronger leadership but for the last ten years
we have had a presidential style Prime Minister with an enormous
parliamentary majority who has taken an international lead on
climate change issues. How do you reconcile your criticism with
that reality?
Dr Russel: Tony Blair has made
something like seven major speeches on sustainable development
and related issues such as climate change. In terms of raising
the profile of these issues, he has been there, but I would say
that what has not been picked up on is that he makes a speech
and moves on. It is very interesting, when you go into departments
and talk to these people. They will say, "Tony Blair makes
a speech, there is a flurry of activity: `We need sustainable
development reports, blah, blah, blah,' the speech finishes and
then everything calms down again" and so it is not sustained
enough. I think Tony Blair's leadership has been good in raising
the profile but what has not been effective is ensuring, once
that speech has been made, that action is sustained. Again, that
comes down to bringing it down to the other parts of the higher
tiers of government to ensure that the leadership is sustained,
because the Prime Minister has other things to think about, other
than just sustainable development.
Q26 Mr Chaytor: I am consideration
that there is a contradiction in your argument. On the one hand
you are calling for greater centralisation, but then you are accepting
that if decisions and policy leadership are centralised it cannot
be sustained because of the sheer volume of work for which the
Prime Minister or the Cabinet Office have to take responsibility.
Where is the balance between the leadership the Prime Minister
needs to show and the leadership in delivery to follow it through?
Dr Russel: I would say the balance
is that the Prime Minister needs to do more than just make a speech.
He needs to go the Cabinet Office, he needs to put the Sustainable
Development Unit in there and say, "I expect action on this."
I get the feeling that that is not happening, that kind of setting
of targets. You have this whole coordination machinery, in the
centre of government and it is just not being utilised properly
so that when the Prime Minister moves on to other things that
machinery is working effectively and smoothly. I see that Tony
Blair makes a speech, but then I do not see any end result of
that—other than a speech is made and you get this flurry
of activity. It does not appear that he is saying to senior civil
servants or it is not coming down to senior civil servants, "This
is a core part of our government strategy. It is one of the key
things we think needs tackling and therefore your departments
have to tackle it."
Q27 Mr Chaytor: The weakness in the
current arrangements is at the level of permanent secretary in
not picking up the Prime Minister's lead.
Dr Russel: Permanent secretary
and maybe even ministers. It has to be sustained beyond the Prime
Minister's focus on that issue, and that comes from ministerial
lead, and leadership from key bodies like the Treasury and the
Cabinet Office and senior permanent secretaries.
Q28 Mr Chaytor: Do you think it is
fair to say that because we have had a presidential style Prime
Minister and between 1979 and 1990 we had a presidential style
Prime Minister, that weakens the capacity of other cabinet ministers
to lead and follow through and ensure that policies are developed
into action? Does it become more difficult for cabinet ministers
to establish their own authority in a presidential style system?
Dr Russel: I would say if we have
a very strong prime minister and they say, "We want action
on climate change," then it would make it easier for ministers
to say it.
Q29 Mr Chaytor: But your research
suggests that is not happening.
Dr Russel: There is a lot of commentary
on whether Tony Blair is in fact a presidential style Prime Minister
or just a different style of Prime Minister. Some people say in
fact he is less presidential that is often thought and others
say he is very presidential. I would say that the evidence appears
to be to the contrary, that Tony Blair makes these statements
of intent and that ministers still go about things in their own
way, beyond maybe a few mutterings of, "Yes, you have to
do an environmental appraisal on that" but never really following
it through once the demand for appraisal has been made. I do not
know the answer to that. I cannot say Blair is presidential or
not presidential but the implications are that ministers are not
picking this up, despite Blair having it as one of the key parts
of his Government.
Q30 Mr Chaytor: On balance, are you
calling for more of a command type government, an absolutely top-down
government where the line is established and at ministerial and
permanent secretary level it is followed through? If so, how does
that leave the question of entrepreneurialism and individual flair
within departments? Doest it not stifle innovation in individual
departments?
Dr Russel: I do not propose that
we would have a command and control style. I think it needs to
be a two-way process. I think there needs to be demand at the
very top, so ministers must be saying, "I want to see regulatory
impact assessments" or permanent secretaries or senior policy
advisors: "I want to see the regulatory impact assessment
and I want to make sure they have environmental appraisals or
that they cover environmental impact and climate change matters,
societal impacts and that kind of thing." They need to create
the demand for that but I do not think they should be telling
civil servants they should do it, in this way, this way or this
way. I think they should set targets, they should set goals, and
they should be interested in finding the results of the work that
has been done in these types of things, but it should be left
to ground-level expertise to work out the best way to deal with
these challenges and issues. No one at the bottom is going to
do anything unless there is a common interest, unless there is
some kind of reason to in terms of your boss making demands. However,
you do not want to stifle creativity, because then you get a rather
awkward and clunky response to the issue. These people have local-level
expertise and they are probably best placed to decide the best
way to respond to these challenges once they are prompted to.
Q31 David Howarth: I am going to
ask about regulatory impact assessments but, before I do that,
could I just follow up on what you said earlier about the Treasury
and what you have just said now about the Prime Minister. The
formal, top-down, cascade down the priorities to decide between
different priorities, is the system of a Comprehensive Spending
Review and of public service agreements. We have the formal system
run from the Treasury and then we have an informal system run
from Number 10 where the basic unit of decision-making is not
anything of a formal system at all, it is the speech; it does
not have any great constitutional status. Is that the problem,
that there seems to be no linkage between the formal and informal
systems of policy?
Dr Russel: I think that is probably
a very truthful observation. There is research to show that coordination
at the very centre of Government is as poor as it can be elsewhere.
Yes, I suspect it is the Treasury and Number 10 not communicating
with people and the Cabinet Office as well, and these formal mechanisms
not really picking up on these informal aspects of where the leadership
says we should be going.
Q32 David Howarth: On the regulatory
impact assessments, you gave evidence to our previous report on
this and we came to the conclusion that they were having no important
impact on policy outcomes. Your view, I think, was that has a
lot to do with lack of expertise. I suppose what we have been
trying to get at in other areas but now coming on to this specifically,
is that it could be lack of expertise but it is also a lack of
strong leadership or lack of engagement with the environmental
issues in general and climate change in particular. Is there any
evidence for those other two explanations?
Dr Russel: Yes. The evidence we
gave in your last hearing was based on some recent work we did
on regulatory impact assessments. Before that, I was looking at
specifically environmental policy appraisals, which was a separate
appraisal process before it was grouped together with regulatory
impact assessments. I wanted to find out why these things were
not being done and the factors that were restricting people. When
you went and spoke to people they said, "It has nothing to
do with our work. We're the Department of Health, why would we
do an environmental impact assessment?" Also, there was gross
ignorance and a lack of awareness as to even the existence of
an environmental policy appraisal: what to do, how to do it and
what was sustainable development. It is understandable. Sustainable
development is a very difficult concept to get your head around.
Part of it is a subconscious resistance: "What has this to
do with us?" and the other is a lack of awareness—not
necessarily, "I should consider this but I do not have the
expertise to do it" but a lack of awareness that they even
should consider such things.
Q33 David Howarth: If that is the
reason for their lack of effectiveness, is any of that going to
change with the new system and a greater emphasis on trying to
be more like a cost-benefit analysis?
Dr Russel: I should add that that
was another finding from the research we did on environmental
policy appraisal and regulatory impact assessments, that the cost-benefit
analysis type model of policy appraisal was very unsuited to what
policymakers did, and the fact that they would have a minister
saying, "I need a decision on this tomorrow" and they
would have a manifesto commitment, EU requirements, et cetera,
so therefore having this rational linear model, where you would
have lots of options and you would do a cost-benefit analysis
was difficult to follow. That was one aspect and there is another
aspect to do with quantifying environmental impacts. Environmental
economists will tell you that you can do this but there is still
a lot of scepticism amongst the public and officials that you
can do this accurately. Also, I was talking to an economist in
Defra who said that there is a lot of data missing, and you could
work it out but you would have to commission so much research
to get this missing data. The new impact assessment regime has
gone further down this technical, rational cost-benefit analysis,
so you are not giving policymakers, I would say, a tool with which
they feel comfortable to join up with. The whole point of doing
this appraisal is that they do the appraisal, they generate some
information, qualitative and quantitative, on the spill-overs
of the policy, so that other groups can look at it and say, "Hang
on, that is technically my turf. Can we talk about this and bring
it together?" I would say at the very beginning, by doing
that, you are more likely to stifle innovation because policymakers
do not feel comfortable, especially on these wider issues to do
with environmental sustainable development. Secondly, sustainable
development seems to have been dropped. I was looking at the guidance
the other day. I was trying to look for references to sustainable
development and the environment as something they should consider
and the only thing that is highlighted is carbon. On the one hand,
I do not think it is an appropriate tool and on the other hand
I do not think it deals with this issue of departments picking
up on what they want to pick up on. I think it was a good idea
for the Government to look initially at regulatory impact assessment
and where it is heading but, based on our research, I think they
have come out with the wrong model. Others may argue differently.
Q34 David Howarth: I suppose there
is the example of Defra's work on ecosystem services as a way
of trying to get a valuation of a wider range of environmental
benefits. Is that a way forward? You could argue it is a way forward
on both the problems you have just raised: on the one side, on
the problem of consultation and trying to get the two branches
reconciled, and, on the other—which is a point you made
earlier, and it is a very important point, and we found in our
investigation of the FCO as well—that if you put all the
emphasis on to climate change and you have a carbon line in the
impact assessment, you then tend to ignore everything else.
Dr Russel: Yes, it detracts from
the other aspects.
Q35 David Howarth: There is an argument
that Defra is trying to attempt to meet both those problems.
Dr Russel: It is attempting to
increase the evidence base and to come up with some good costings
to put into a regulatory impact assessment, but there is still
this issue of the fact that this type of appraisal system does
not necessarily fit neatly with the way policy is made. I think
that guidance writers and people in the Better Regulation Executive
need to sit down with the people who have to write the regulatory
impact assessments and say, "What do you need?" You
may not get the perfect instrument but you may get something which
is used and used more effectively than the impact assessment or
regulatory impact assessment. But I think Defra is going down
the right line and this should improve the generating of data.
Chairman: Thank you very much. That has
been very helpful
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