Departmental responsibilities
53. While we were taking oral evidence for this inquiry,
it was reported that there might be a reorganisation of Departmental
responsibilities upon the appointment of Gordon Brown MPas the
new Prime Minister, including the movement of the energy brief
from the former Department for Trade and Industry (DTI) to DEFRA,
thereby creating a new energy and environment ministry.[78]
We asked witnesses whether they thought that this might enable
coordination better to be achieved between climate change and
energy objectives. Elliot Morley MP thought that energy should
be moved to DEFRA "[b]ecause I think it does not make sense
at the moment to have DEFRA responsible for climate change and
to have energy within the DTI because you cannot separate the
two, basically, in terms of objectives… [Giving DEFRA the
responsibility for energy] would be a very desirable thing".[79]
He went on:
I think it is fair to say that when you have
separate responsibilities within different Departments then it
is inevitable that where those issues are put in terms of priority
there will be differences in different Departments...
…there has to be a limit about what you
can put in any one Department to make it effective and manageable.
I think energy would lend itself very well to Defra because we
have to move towards sustainable energy, we have to move towards
a low carbon economy. That applies to the DTI as well, of course,
in relation to industry and the promotion of industry and the
development of our environmental sectors, but I think to have
a much more closely integrated approach between climate and energy
within one Department makes absolute sense.[80]
54. Dr Russel agreed that there might be some advantages
to moving energy into DEFRA as this would bring all activities
in this area under one roof, helping to provide strong leadership
and a unified approach. Nevertheless, he cautioned that extensive
departmental reorganisation can lead to detrimental policy delays
for up to five years, and that the resulting Department might
prove unwieldy if delegated too many policy areas.[81]
55. The very first Environmental Audit Committee's
second Report, published in 1998, gives an interesting historical
perspective on the impact of departmental responsibilities in
dealing with environmental issues. In 1997 the then new administration
took office committed to the pursuit of sustainable development,
reflected in the manifesto pledge that "concern for the environment
will be put at the heart of policy-making". The Prime Minister
also argued in a speech that "we must make the process of
Government green. Environmental considerations must be integrated
into all our decisions, regardless of sector. They must be at
the start, not bolted on later".[82]
As part of this process, in order to help alleviate departmental
conflict, the Government created the Department for the Environment,
Transport and the Regions (DETR). At the time the Committee concluded,
as did the then Deputy Prime Minister, that this would help to
achieve "policy integration at one of the crucial conflict
points for sustainable development", the environment/transport
interface. The Committee also noted that the merger of the environment
portfolio with the transport portfolio created a powerful Department
with "substantial political clout in Whitehall… reinforced
by the fact that the DETR's Secretary of State is also the Deputy
Prime Minister which gives him the scope and authority to give
a strong lead on sustainable development issues, both within his
own Department and throughout Government". The Committee
recommended that whenever the boundaries of Departments are changed,
due regard should be given to the impact that this would have
on the Government's ability to reinforce and integrate sustainable
development. It also recommended that high-level political leadership
for sustainable development be maintained by it being the explicit
responsibility of the Prime or Deputy Prime Minister.[83]
56. The DETR only survived from 1997 to 2001, with
environmental policy moving to DEFRA and land use planning and
transport moving to the Department for Transport, Local Government
and the Regions (DTLR). The most widely quoted explanation for
the break-up of DETR was that it was "so large and unwieldy
that effective policy formulation and delivery was not achieved.
The size and range of the DETR meant priorities had to be made
and this was reflected in its uneven record".[84]
However, attempts to reconcile environmental and transport aims
by their bringing together into a single Department might have
failed more as a result of the political difficulties created
by a public perception that the Government was anti-car, and by
the fuel protests of 2000. In an article, Dr Mark Beecroft of
the University of Southampton wrote that the creation of the DETR
indicated a recognition by the Government that integration on
these issues was required, but that the subsequent separation
of these issues demonstrated the difficulties of practically bringing
them together within the administrative and political complexities
of the time.[85] Ultimately
the focus on transport was intensified by the separation of DTLR
into the Department for Transport (DfT) and the Office of the
Deputy Prime Minister (subsequently Communities and Local Government).
57. Back to the present day, the difficulties associated
with integrating sustainable development objectives into decision
making, and the problem of Departmentalism in this area, continue
some 10 years after the Environmental Audit Committee first discussed
the issue. For example, our Report from earlier this year into
Regulatory Impact Assessments noted that the policy appraisal
process for integrating environmental and social impacts into
policy decisions continues to be unsatisfactory. Researchers from
the Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment
(CSERGE) argued that "predefined agendas, manifesto commitments,
tradeoffs with other Departments, pressure from outside groups,
etc" all continue to act to obfuscate the incorporation of
environmental considerations into policy decisions.[86]
58. The Departmental reorganisation occurred shortly
after we took oral evidence from Elliot Morley MP and Dr Russel,
although not in the manner that was anticipated. It was announced
that the energy brief would be moved to the new Department for
Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (DBERR), which is an
amalgamation of functions of the former DTI with the Better Regulation
Executive. Simon Retallack, IPPR, expressed disappointment to
us that the energy brief had not moved to DEFRA in the reorganisation,
primarily as "far too often DEFRA loses political battles
on key areas of policy because of opposition, most frequently
from the Treasury, but equally from the DTI. When we think about
how to improve the machinery of Government from an efficiency
perspective, it is valuable to think of it, too, from a political
perspective and look at and explore the options available to strengthen
DEFRA's position within Government and to bring together the key
areas clearly that need to be brought together to drive progress
on energy policy and transport policy".[87]
59. A Government official argued to us that simply
giving one Department responsibility for both energy and climate
change does not guarantee better coordination on policy in these
areas due to the complexity of the issues.[88]
Rather, it was argued that the wide cross-Departmental nature
of climate change makes it more important that structures are
put in place to allow Departments to co-ordinate with each other,
and that the changes that had been implemented have resulted in
this:[89]
The Prime Minister has explained the new machinery
of Government and the responsibilities are quite clear. We have
governance that brings us together, at the top of which sits the
Ministerial Committee on Environment and Energy. I think that
the White Paper on Energy Policy that we published recently demonstrates
that climate change is now right at the heart of our energy policy
in a way that when I talk to my European counterparts across the
Union they say is a model for the rest of Europe. The outcome
shows that the machine is working.[90]
60. DEFRA's Capability Review supported in part this
view. The review team found that "there are good examples
of cooperative work between DEFRA and other Government Departments,
for example the joint work that DEFRA carried out with the Department
of Trade and Industry on the Energy Review, and cross-Whitehall
work involving DEFRA to establish the Office of Climate Change".[91]
The team also observed that "although other Government Departments
have seen DEFRA as too much of a campaigning organisation, and
have had problems working well with it whilst developing strategy,
DEFRA is improving its engagement strategies with stakeholders
as part of its overall development of strategy".[92]
Sir Gus O'Donnell remarked that the five Departments scrutinised
in the third tranche of reports, which included DEFRA, FCO and
DFID, "powerfully expose the challenge and complexity of
working effectively across Departmental boundaries". He went
on that "we must do this better and more flexibly if we are
to achieve the Government's increasingly ambitious delivery goals.
This poses some significant challenges to the machinery of Government
but above all to the leaders of the Civil service".[93]
61. We congratulate DEFRA, DTI and other Departments
involved in those climate change projects in which successful
cross-Whitehall co-ordination has been achieved, such as the establishment
of the Office of Climate Change. Nevertheless, although we agree
that it is important to ensure that there are strong overarching
cross-Government coordinating structures, we argue that bringing
together climate change and energy into a single Department would
have helped to minimise the risk of inter-Departmental conflict
in these intricately linked policy areas and therefore it could
have enabled more coherent policy in both these areas. We believe
that the movement of the energy brief into DBERR rather than DEFRA
constitutes a missed opportunity to mould governance structures
into a shape more predisposed to coherent management of this complex
policy area.
32 
