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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 740-iii House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE ENVIRONMENTAL AUDIT committee
THE STRUCTURE AND OPERATION OF GOVERNMENT AND THE CHALLENGE OF CLIMATE CHANGE
Tuesday 3 July 2007 PROFESSOR TOM BURKE MR GUY LODGE and MR SIMON RETALLACK MR JONATHAN BREARLEY, MR WILLY RICKETT and MR MIKE ANDERSON Evidence heard in Public Questions 117 - 199
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Environmental Audit Committee on Tuesday 3 July 2007 Members present Mr Tim Yeo, in the Chair Mr Martin Caton David Howarth Dr Desmond Turner Joan Walley ________________ Memorandum submitted by Professor Burke
Examination of Witness
Witness: Professor Tom Burke CBE, Environmental Policy Adviser to Rio Tinto PLC, gave evidence Q117 Chairman: Professor Burke, you have been around the track inside government for quite a long time. I remember working with you when the people here were not old enough to remember there was a Conservative government and you and I were both working in the old DoE. Since 1997, the evidence we have is that the UK is well regarded internationally in the pursuit of sustainable policy making, but I think also it would be fair to say that the implementation of some of those policies, some of the changes, has not been quite so successful. There is fairly persistent evidence of the difficulty of getting all government departments to integrate environmental priorities into their policies. Is that fair? Is it true to say that despite talking of good going on, the government has not really succeeded in getting the environment and climate change at the heart of its whole policy-making process across the board in all the parts? Professor Burke: Yes, I do think it would be fair to say that. It is more a political than an institutional problem. Let me illustrate that with some numbers. If we are looking at the environment as a whole, governments on the whole demonstrate their priorities, by and large, predominantly by the amount of public expenditure they allocate to something but then by the amount of legislative time that an issue gets. If you look at the current level of public expenditure on maintaining what you might call the social conditions for development - in other words, health, education, social security - we spend about £400 billion a year, and I think that is approximately the number for 2006. We spend, quite properly, about £60 billion a year on internal and external security; in other words on the Armed Forces and on the police. We spend just over £9 billion a year on the environment. I think those numbers speak for themselves really. I am not making a party political point but those numbers will have been pretty much the same, scaled down, under a Conservative government as they are under a Labour government, but I think they reflect pretty clearly the failure to take the environment into the heart of government. If you look at legislative time, I have lost count of how many criminal justice bills we have had but you can count on one hand the number of environmental bills we have had in the current government and the same again would have been true in the previous government. The evidence that we have failed to put the environment at the heart of government is pretty conclusive. Q118 Chairman: What you say is interesting. You say it is not a failure and the problem is not institutional but more political. The fact is that Tony Blair was one of the heads of government who was the most consistent in this very strong rhetoric about climate change issues. Despite that, even with a Prime Minister like that, it does not seem to trickle down through Whitehall. Professor Burke: I think the previous Prime Minister undoubtedly had a significant effect on the way in which climate was treated as a global environmental issue. Without his interventions in a number of ways, we would not be paying the attention we currently are paying to the issue. I do not know that anybody would suggest that the previous Prime Minister was a master at the art of governance. I think that was clearly commented on by Lord Butler in his report. The way in which the machinery of government was often circumvented led to a failure of political intent when translated into outcomes in that case. My previous remarks were addressed to your first question, which was about the environment as a whole. On climate change, I think there were institutional failures but to some extent they were a consequence of the ad hoc approach to governance taken by the previous Prime Minister. Q119 Chairman: We now have the draft Climate Change Bill and so on. There is a bit of talk about the role that independent bodies can play both in policy making and monitoring whether this is effectively implemented. There is talk about perhaps the civil service training being improved. Do you have any strong feelings about that? We have some constitutional considerations now taking place about the role of Parliament and ministers and so on. Professor Burke: I think it is extremely difficult for government to pass off the responsibility for essential political decisions to others. The analogies that have been drawn between the proposed climate committee - and we do not yet know what is actually going to be put in place - and the Monetary Policy Committee are not very good parallels. First of all, the Monetary Policy Committee operates inside a clear policy framework and a clear, specific and deliverable target set by the government and the Monetary Policy Committee has the tools and capacity to determine whether that market is reachable or is being reached or not, and it is doing so in the context in which the particular, precise, very specific focus is broadly understood by all of the various stakeholders. I do not think we are anywhere near that point on climate change. I do not think people understand the urgency or the scale of the problem, the dynamics, the impacts it is going to have on our lives if we fail to tackle the problem and the impact it is going to have on our lives if we succeed in tackling the problem. The idea that you can somehow pass off political responsibility to an independent body of non‑politicians is illusory. It would be a very powerful idea to have a well-respected advisory body that had some real authority, and that would then depend, because of all the inevitable tensions between a government and its advisers, on the rules which you wrote and the way in which you selected the body, but if you created the right sort of body, it could play a very useful role. If you were looking, for instance, to monitor more effectively whether the government is reaching the targets it set itself or not, you would do far better, and maybe the opportunity will now arise given the new Prime Minister's approach, to strengthen the Environmental Audit Committee and actually give it some environmental auditors. I think that would be particularly useful because the Environmental Audit Committee has the cross‑government role that is necessary to address this problem. Having an Environmental Audit Committee without any audit capacity seems to me rather a failure. Chairman: I am sure we may want to pray your evidence in aid on that point. Q120 Dr Turner: Perhaps your comments on the previous Prime Minister's effectiveness on the international scene as opposed to governance in this country are a reflection of the fact that it is probably easier to move George Bush than it is to move the English Civil Service and its institutions. You have been reviewing environmental governance in Northern Ireland. Clearly, that is much smaller and more compact, but if you were to take the rather much more cohesive process that exists in Northern Ireland and impose it upon Westminster, what changes do you think you would make? Professor Burke: May I start with the premise that I think it is impossible to move George Bush, not least because Dick Cheney stands behind him and Dick Cheney is definitely immovable. Also, I think the British Civil Service, and I have experienced in a number of different ways, is phenomenally responsive to the wishes of ministers, sometimes if anything a bit too responsive, and particularly in recent times it is has been rather less willing than it was in the past to bring ministers unwelcome advice, even in private. So I would not say that. In Northern Ireland, there is a danger in having too close a community. What I found in Northern Ireland was to some extent rather the limitations of too small a scale of Civil Service whereby there were not, for instance, sufficient career opportunities for people to develop as it were functional specialisms while maintaining a progressive career through the Civil Service. That is quite important. You have heard previous evidence on the importance of training and skill development for people; I think that is true. I also think you need to have a broad enough base of opportunity for officials so that they can seek promotion but nevertheless not become totally generalist civil servants that only know broad theories and do not actually acquire specific expertise. That is a difficult balance to draw and you need to draw it in practice. I do not think there is a theoretical basis for it. On the whole, I found the Civil Service in Northern Ireland to be more introverted than I would like and I do not find that to be the case here. Some of that is structural, and I am not talking about the attitudes of civil servants. You have 1.7 million people in Northern Ireland. The opportunity that we have in Great Britain as a whole with a much larger pool to draw on is that you can draw on people from outside into the Civil Service. I think Nick Mabey made some suggestions to you about the importance of that. There is much more opportunity to do that here than there was in Northern Ireland. Q121 Dr Turner: We have heard a lot of evidence that suggests that you should not keep energy separate from the environment as the two are so closely related in function. It is slightly surprising that your review did not recommend that energy should become a responsibility of the Environment Department or that you should merge them together. Professor Burke: You really do have to separate the political level from the policy level. Quite often we blame political failure as policy failure and often it is unresolved political disputes. There is plenty of opportunity for political differences not to be resolved, and that does lead then to policy failures and policy excuses. I do not think it matters very much where individual functions sit. It matters that the political will to resolve disputes between parties exists. That is why I recommended a strong Cabinet Office secretariat; in other words, I think the underlying point in that suggestion that you have heard evidence on, that there needs to be terribly close co-ordination of climate change policy and energy policy, is absolutely correct but the right way to accomplish that is to have the kind of powerful Cabinet Office secretariat that can, at a policy level, resolve disputes or at least then create the options for political resolution and make sure that is a clear and transparent process inside government. I do not think we have that at the moment. You need to have the kind of Cabinet Office secretariat in the way that we have an EU Secretariat, because it is a cross‑cutting issue, or we have a Defence and Overseas Secretariat because it is a cross‑cutting issue, not one of the standard, issue-following Cabinet Office committees. Q122 Dr Turner: Does that not run the risk of creating yet another department and yet another opportunity for turf wars? Professor Burke: I do not think so. My experience from watching this in the formation of our original carbon dioxide climate change policy back when I was a special adviser under a Conservative government was that the Cabinet Office process was very good. I saw on three or four occasions how a large Cabinet Office process was a way of ensuring that the departments came together and made a coherent case. I have not seen very much of that of late. For instance, it would be quite sensible, if you did that, to take the current Office of Climate Change and have that as an analytical capacity for that secretariat. I am talking about a secretariat and not a department. Departments have multiple functions and they have an outward-facing function as well as, as it were, an inward-facing function across government. They have particular responsibilities to discharge. You do not eliminate those different responsibilities by lumping the departments together. Often what you do is then conceal inside the veil, as it were, of the policy making process and the political process the divisions rather than reveal them transparently. I have a big disposition for saying that these are real conflicts; they are genuinely difficult issues and they are much better resolved in a transparent when everybody can see what the conflict is and that allows other voices to join the debate than when you lock it up inside a single super-department and nobody actually sees anything other than the final resolution, which I think undermines a lot of confidence in the outcome. Q123 Dr Turner: Do you think that there is any sort of backwardness or friction induced in departmental cultures and baggage? Professor Burke: I watched the creation of Defra and the whole way in which the interaction between the MAFF culture and the former DoE culture led to something that remains pretty confused. On the whole, it is important to build up a departmental culture that has a clear mission focus. Part of the difficulty of lumping things together is that you tend to lose that mission focus. One of the best things you can do if you want to develop the right kind of culture is to stop changing the deckchairs all the time. Cultures take time to develop, as views take time to develop. You do not achieve that kind of thing quickly. The kinds of change processes that Nick Mabey was recommending and the idea that you really do need a lot more personal development and training for civil servants is right, but you need to do that inside a relatively stable context, or else everybody is thinking about the next set of changes that they have to cope with that are short-term and tactical. I would much rather see departments left where they are, the creation of a powerful secretariat that required the bringing together of all the voices inside government, but clear presentation of options to ministers. At the end of the day, on an issue like climate change, what matters is what the Prime Minister wants because it is a cross-cutting and cross-sectoral issue. Unless the political will is there for the Prime Minister to do the heavy lifting, on the difficult choices, they will not be made. Q124 David Howarth: Tom, we have heard the message about the balance between trying to divide up departments in different ways and central policy resolution. That was very clear. What is your view on the comparison of different ways of trying to centralise? We have had the PSAs. What is your view of how that worked or did not work and if it did not work, why did it not work? Professor Burke: I have not had a lot of direct experience with the actual PSA process. Like all of those management tools, an enormous amount depends on how you use them, not just on what they are. I cannot really comment on the PSA process directly because I have not had much experience of it. The real danger always is that you create tick-box exercises much as you do when you ask for impact assessments or action plans in a generalised way. I am rather sceptical about using management tools to substitute for leadership choice, but that is not to say that properly used they cannot play an extremely useful and helpful role. They need to be few in number. It would be quite interesting to have a reverse PSA; in other words, it would be quite interesting for other departments to be in a position where they could ask the Treasury to come up with a public service agreement. For instance, why has the Treasury not set itself a target for reducing the carbon intensity of public expenditure? Take out transfer payments because in a sense they are neutral, but leave in all the substantive investments we make: why is not the Treasury going to set a target to reduce the carbon intensity of the money it spends according to rules it generates? Q125 David Howarth: You have asked for a more dynamic process because we have a static process. Professor Burke: There are two things: one, more dynamic; and, two, do not imagine that institutional change and management techniques can substitute for political choice and political will. Q126 David Howarth: What do you think of this idea that a lot of us are interested in coming out of Finland? There are some things about Finland neither of us like much. The idea in Finland is that the government divides up into priority areas and a senior cabinet minister with a senior civil servant is given responsibility for a governmental political priority with the power to bring resources and departments together to drive that priority on? That is seen as a more senior political job than the job of what might be called maintenance, of keeping the departments ticking over. Do you think that might work, the building of it into the structure? Professor Burke: I do not know much about the Finnish process. I have read a couple of articles on it. I do not really know how it works in practice and I do not know the Finnish political policy culture, so I am not sure how translatable it is. The idea is exactly what I have in mind. We did not arrive at the idea of having these powerful central Cabinet Office secretariats because we were particularly clever. We did it because we had lots of brutal experience that required us to develop that mechanism as a result of policy failure, much as we eventually got to a General Staff because it turned out we were not very good at running wars. There is a tried and tested model which fits our culture very well, which achieves much of those objectives in which you would have a director general in the Cabinet Office with prime responsibility who is the Prime Minister's principal adviser. You do have that leading politician at least on climate change. I am not sure how many issues you would want to apply this model to but certainly for climate change, because of the scale and urgency of the problem, you would have that official as the Prime Minister's principal adviser. There is a clear mechanism for banging heads together at a policy level in the Cabinet Office process and at the political level in whatever cabinet committee or cabinet structure is used. All of that is visible and transparent and rather easy to understand. I have been doing this for a long time but I am getting lost in the fog of consultations and institutional mechanisms. I am getting a bit lost as to where accountability lies and where the clarity of focus lies. It is really important to retain mission focus, which is partly why I am reluctant on this idea, whether it is in the departmental way or whether it is Dieter Helm's idea, of bringing all the various extra‑governmental bodies together into a single agency; you will lose mission focus. There are reasons why you have different bits because there are different missions. As long as you have a mechanism for transparently reconciling those conflicts rather than burying them, I do not think that is a bad thing. I think you want a more informed public debate not a less informed public debate. Q127 Chairman: You make an intriguing suggesting about the Treasury having a specific target for cutting the carbon footprint of its own expenditure programmes. Given what you also said, and on which I entirely agree with you, about the crucial role of the Prime Minister in driving the priorities right across government, it could be argued that we have a uniquely favourable opportunity now to achieve a change in Treasury thinking, given that the longest ever serving Chancellor in modern times is now Prime Minister. Professor Burke: I think there is a very big opportunity. From the evidence we have seen so far, we have a Prime Minister now who has some interest in the mechanisms of governance and therefore in the ability to turn political intent into real outcomes. There are more problems in the Treasury than just machinery; there are also methodological issues. The Treasury is tremendously hide-bound on a particular theoretical conception of the problem which does not suit climate change. It may suit all kinds of other problems. It is very difficult, for instance, to think of climate change as just another welfare problem: here is a public good which we have to trade off against other public goods. If we have policy failure on climate change, we will not be able to have the other public goods. That is the realty. I think there needs to be quite a lot of methodological innovation in the Treasury because the methodology that simply says, "Let us do a cost-benefit analysis and reduce all these complex issues to numerical assessments of welfare and then see which gives us most of it" is probably a bit too primitive to address the real world complexities of this problem. Q128 Joan Walley: You have just said that there is a huge fog and it is very difficult even for you to know who is responsible for what, where there is transparency and how policy is actually made. Where do we go from here? What should the role of the Civil Service be in all of this? If we are on the brink of a new way constitutionally of decision-making that could put environmental concerns and climate change at the heart of how government takes existing policies further forward, what should the role of the Civil Service be in all of that and how constrained are they? Given the blur in which we are operating, how do we take it forward? Professor Burke: Let me separate climate change from the rest of the environmental agenda because they have different requirements. Climate change is a threat to the prosperity, security and wellbeing of 60 million Britons. It is not an immediate threat in the sense that the effects are immediate. It will not be that the Britons in this room will feel the consequences of a policy failure, but the nature of the dynamic of climate change is such that decisions that are taken by people in this room and people currently serving will determine the prosperity, security and wellbeing of those 60 odd million Britons in the sense that the effects of climate change express themselves about 40 years after the emission. That gives you a very difficult dynamic. I think that can only be dealt with at the very top of government. In a sense, I think the responsibility for climate change is a prime ministerial responsibility and nobody else's at the end of the day. That is not true of the other environmental issues which is why I wanted to make that distinction. Only the Prime Minister can deal with a threat on this scale and of this nature. Frankly, the civil servants will do within the limitations of their skills and training what ministers want them to do if ministers give a clear lead. Let us be really clear: ministers do not often give a clear lead. Ministers are quite often more interested in the headlines than they are in the outcomes. I do not have a fundamental feeling, at least from my experience, that the civil servants are the core part of the problem. We do become confused by current management speak that is badly imported into the public service that civil servants do delivery. They do not. Let me be more clear about that. The public servants who work in the health service or in the big spending agencies do delivery, but the policy making civil servants do not do delivery. What they deliver is policy. What they really do is build the governing coalitions amongst the various sectors - business or police or whatever - that have to do the delivery. So the civil servants are the mechanism by which governments translate their policy intent into the governing coalitions inside the various professions that actually do the delivery. On the whole, civil servants, if given clear guidance and in the case of complex issues like climate change rather more training than they are currently getting, do a reasonably good job of doing that, provided they are getting a good steer from politicians. I do not share the fear that somehow the civil servants are a big barrier. Always you can run into individual civil servants who get a lock on a particular set of knowledge and can become an obstacle to making progress but, as a whole, the culture is enormously responsive to the priorities set by ministers. Q129 Joan Walley: There has been a failure by civil servants in the past to operate in a holistic way, has there not? They have not understood the agenda, have they? Professor Burke: Departments reflect the aspirations and ambitions of their ministers. Yes, if a minister wants to fight a turf war, his officials will go out at policy level and fight that turf war for him. That is why I say for climate change you really do need a Cabinet Office process that forces at a policy level the banging together of heads on an evidential basis. Even that cannot substitute for the fact that, at the end of the day, ministers have to make choices and, frankly, ministers are not always willing to make choices, particularly strategic choices where the benefits fall somewhat in the future and the costs quite often fall right back. It is understandable that they do that but there is not much point blaming the Civil Service for that failure. Q130 Joan Walley: Is there not a step before the stage at which ministers come to take decisions? Does that not depend upon the quality of the strategic planning that civil servants are giving to ministers to enable them to put their policies into effect? Professor Burke: The Civil Service does the planning and the analysis and the preparation on the basis of where ministers say they want the plane of policy to land. In a sense, the democratic process puts the ministers in charge. It is their job to lead. To use an analogy, it is the job of the minister to say where he wants the plane of policy to land and why and to persuade, first of all, his colleagues, which is often quite difficult, and, secondly, the public that that is the right place to land. It is the job of a permanent secretary, if you like, to fly the plane and make sure that it arrives at that landing place with all of its wings and engines, passengers and cargo on board, or to tell the minister clearly an unequivocally that if he wants to land there, he cannot do it with the current plane. That is the theory as to how it should work. Q131 Joan Walley: But has not part of the problem in the past been that civil servants have been reluctant really to understand the serious time threat of climate change? Professor Burke: Again, I am much more inclined to blame the politicians than the civil servants. Could you find examples of civil servants in that mode? Yes, of course you could. Civil servants are human beings like all of us and they have different views on things. On the whole with very few exceptions, are they responsive to a clear lead from ministers? Yes, in all my experience, both inside and outside government, that is the case. It is very difficult for civil servants, for instance working in the Department of Energy in the last two years, to come and tell ministers that they do not think there is a good case for nuclear power if the Prime Minister has said he wants nuclear power. It is really hard for them to do that. There is not much point giving advice to people who have already told you that they have made their mind up on the outcome. There are real tensions in that relationship. Sometimes, but more rarely, I think the civil servants are to blame for that; more often than not, ministers are unwilling to take difficult choices. Q132 Mr Caton: This morning you have already mentioned Dieter Helm's suggestion that we turn to independent regulators to try to reduce political pressure and particularly the one that you mentioned, a single environment agency to look at energy security and climate change. Do you see no benefits in that approach? Professor Burke: As I understood the proposal, and I have not examined it in great detail, that Dieter was making, you would lump the Energy Savings Trust, the Carbon Trust and Ofgem into one body, so that you would have spending bodies and regulatory bodies. I could not see the logic in that. Promotional bodies have a job to do, which is to promote. A regulatory body has a very different job to do. I do think the terms on which you write the regulations are very important, and Dieter was right to point out that there is an enormous confusion. I often feel that on climate change the economists are much more interested in finding out how to make the market work perfectly than they are actually in solving the problem and that when it comes to a conflict between making a market work properly and solving a problem, they would rather make the market work properly. If you take, for instance, the issue of carbon sequestration and storage, we cannot solve this problem without the rapid deployment of carbon sequestration and storage. If your electricity market regulator allows for the passing through of the additional costs, and there will be initially in particular some considerable additional costs in doing that, to the whole of the rate base, it becomes a manageable cost to achieve. If you do not allow that to be passed through the rate base, then you have a really difficult problem inducing the utilities to make that necessary investment. The idea that you can do that with a carbon price which you are trying to drive up at the same time as you have an energy regulator trying to drive the price of electricity down seems to me to be completely incoherent as an option. The regulator's role is extremely important in this but I do not think you solve that problem by giving whoever is then running that entity promotional roles as well; you would just lose mission focus. Q133 Mr Caton: You are certainly right to identify what Dieter Helm said, and he talked about a myriad of different organisations functioning in the same policy area or areas. One of the advantages that he perceived is rationalisation. Do you think that there is not an issue there, that there are not perhaps too many bodies trying to work in the same area? Professor Burke: There may be but it is not a universal panacea and you would want to do it on a case-by-case basis rather than as a general theory. I think there are some considerable arguments for creating more one-stop shop approaches, but that is about how you make the different bodies work together effectively. I have some experience with that issue in English Nature. The same argument came up about the difficulty of land owners dealing with the Environment Agency, Defra itself and English Nature, and there was a perfectly good managerial solution to that, which created teams, as it were, that were united and had a common focus and had worked out rules for how they would work together. That is a management issue; it is not an institutional issue. I think we sometimes look for headline‑grabbing institutional solutions to what are rather boring, painstaking, managerial problems. The problem of creating the one-stop shop access for people to information or to funds is a real one but it is not easily solved by just lumping all the institutions together. Q134 Dr Turner: The Government has proposed a committee on climate change; it will report annually to Parliament on the carbon budgets. Given the information you have at the moment, do you feel that in the way the committee is proposed to be constructed and the appointment of its members that will mean it will be insulated from political and other pressures? Do you think it will be truly independent? Professor Burke: That answer is that I do not know. It very much depends on what the practice is of doing it. It will also need to be seen against the background of the creation of the independent planning commission, which is also proposed, in the sense that if you are creating these, as it were, extra-governmental bodies with big headline responsibility, one would be seen against the other and so it is important that they command public confidence. They will only do that if they are representative in their composition, if their functions are very clear - and I do not think that is the case yet with the climate change committee but, on the other hand, we are only in the pre-scrutiny phase so there is time to get that right - and if the chair commands broad respect from the constituencies. So the choice of chair is extremely important in doing this. If you pick the wrong chairman for it, a chairman who does not command across the board authority in the key external constituencies, then I think you cripple the idea right from the start. It is going to be a difficult task to find somebody who is sufficiently independent in the minds of all those people, not necessarily just in the mind of the selecting person. That is what is going to matter. Can that be done? Yes, in my own direct experience of looking, for instance, at the way in which John Harman has been able to chair quite independently the Environment Agency, that is a good example of how that can be done. There are examples going the other way. There is no general rule here; it is a question of whether you do it in the right way. As I said earlier, I think it needs clearly to be an advisory body, not an executive body. It is hard to imagine that you can pass on political responsibility for an issue this complex and this immature. Q135 Dr Turner: Do you think it will have adequate skills and an adequate research base? Professor Burke: I make the same point as I made about this committee: if you give it the resources, yes, it could do. That would be an important part of doing this, but why would you do that at a time when you have not built up the necessary concentration of capability in central government? You would then be creating a deeply unbalanced structure. Q136 Dr Turner: You say that you would not want the committee to have any executive power, but, on the other hand, would you expect the committee to make specific policy recommendations? Professor Burke: Yes, that is advice. One thing you do learn as a special adviser, and it is a famous quote from another rather more senior special adviser, is that advice is advice and ministers decide. That is the clear term of reference. At the end of the day, ministers must decide. Ministers that have an advisory body that makes recommendations to them that they consistently ignore ought to expect, and certainly should find, that they no longer have an advisory body. Again, that is up to the way in which the committee itself plays it cards. That is why I say it is very hard to find a general rule. It is a relationship; both sides of the relationship have to play their part. One should not start with an assumption of mistrust and bad faith. Q137 Dr Turner: You would not want it to get mixed up with regulation, except perhaps in giving advice? Professor Burke: No. It is extremely difficult. All executive action requires complex coalition-building and compromise to achieve outcomes that bring everybody with you. Advice needs to be clear and unambiguous and it is very difficult to combine those two cultures in the same entity. Q138 Chairman: Moving to energy for a moment, you have called for changes in energy investment. Do you think that the Energy White Paper is going to facilitate those sorts of changes? Professor Burke: No, and both for process and substance reasons, I do not think many people, other than government spokesmen, saw much difference in the energy circumstances between the 2003 review and the 2005 review. Nothing very much was changed in substance. Then the whole way in which that was turned into a White Paper, which was not a White Paper but became a review that then became a Green Paper/White Paper and then had a consultation separate from it on a key issue undermined investor confidence quite considerably and the Government's clarity of intent here. In process terms, it led to a chilling of investment and a chilling of people being unsure where government was going to go. When it comes to making these very large, long-term investments, the investors are probably more concerned about the political will of a government over the long term than they are about the price of carbon, for instance, as an influence on that decision. Secondly, in substance terms, and I think I said so in my note to you, the Energy White Paper is lethargic, and that is the best description, on carbon sequestration and storage. I have given you the numbers in my note. If we do not get others to adopt carbon-neutral coal technologies, we cannot protect the wellbeing, security and prosperity of 60 million Britons. If we are going to try to get others to do something that we are not doing, we are on a fool's errand. If we want people to do what we need them to do, we must do it ourselves first, and we are not doing that. The idea that in November there will be the announcement of a competition that will at some date in the future maybe lead to somebody building a demonstration process in Britain is, frankly, farcical. That is no way to proceed with an issue that you think is the greatest threat to mankind, as the previous Prime Minister said. Imagine if we approached the threat of terrorism, which is certainly a very big threat and will interfere with the lives of many Britons but not all 60 million of us, with that same sort of desultory approach. The government would rightly and roundly be condemned. Chairman: That is very helpful. Thank you for coming today. Witnesses: Mr Guy Lodge, Senior Research Fellow, and Mr Simon Retallack, Head of Climate Change at IPPR, gave evidence Q139 Chairman: Good morning and welcome to the Environmental Audit Committee. Given that climate change, as has just been said, a huge problem, perhaps the biggest and certainly an urgent one and clearly a very complex one, where the solutions will cut across the whole range of government policies, are you optimistic that the Civil Service is now in good shape to face up to this challenge? Mr Lodge: May I say at the outset that I have some background in civil service reform but not on climate change. Simon Retallack is the climate change expert. I can talk very generally about Whitehall. Just on that, it is fair to say that historically the Civil Service has struggled to do joined-up government, as it is now called. Over the last ten years, a number of efforts have been made to improve the way that governments do co-ordinate their activities. For instance, you have: joint public service agreement targets; pooled funding budgets; ministers will have portfolios and responsibilities that cross departments; and there are co-ordinating departments at the centre of government for strategy or delivery. Having said that, in Whitehall the cultural barriers, if you like, to effective joined-up government still remain in place. Certainly, whilst you have joint PSA targets, they are very much the exception to the rule. Whilst you have ministers with these cross-cutting briefs, they are the exception to the rule. The incentives within Whitehall are to think in a departmental way. We have very vertical lines of accountability. Ministers are responsible for health, education and the like. In essence, in terms of tackling something like climate change which cuts across the whole of Whitehall, it will struggle. That does not mean to say that it cannot address some of the weaknesses there but you are obviously as a committee looking into how that can be done. I cannot comment really on how you would deal with climate change, other than to say that there is a number of key things that you would do to strengthen the central co-ordination at the heart of government. Professor Burke earlier was recommending strong co-ordination and a strong vibe from the Prime Minister at a political level. That is absolutely key. You have to join both the political and the administrative level, the two have to talk to each other to drive the cohesion and co-ordination. Mr Retallack: I think we should welcome the innovation that the Office of Climate Change represents in terms of bringing greater co-ordination to policy and climate change and in helping to analyse and develop policy in this area. It seems to us that there are still gaps, both from an efficiency perspective of delivering joined-up policy but also a political perspective of driving through the sorts of policy changes we need in government. We know that 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. We know there was a huge debate within government two weeks ago on the possibility of bringing energy to Defra; it did not happen and it would be interesting to know why. It would be interesting to explore the success of the French government's approach to this issue. Their new Ministry for the Environment includes both the energy and transport portfolios. The minister responsible is the second most senior member of the French government. We would certainly urge you to explore that sort of option in your recommendations to government. Q140 Chairman: Do you agree with what Tom Burke was saying that in the end, even more important than the institutional framework and the architecture, is the political signal given from the very top and that it requires now the Prime Minister to be making clear right the way across all departments that this is an absolute top priority and that without that messing around with institutions does not have much effect; with that, the precise relationship between different departments does not matter quite so much? Mr Retallack: It is absolutely critical that the Prime Minister sends that signal but, even when he does, and to some extent to be fair Tony Blair did, you still have problems. The Prime Minister has so much on his plate. The institutional arrangements do matter. That can be about shared PSA targets and merging departments, but equally we should not be too preoccupied, you are absolutely right, with the issue of administration. In the end, what is the biggest obstacle to delivering much more rapid progress on this issue? Arguably, it is about political space, about both the public willingness to accept the right policies and certain aspects or quarters within industry accepting that the policy is necessary. That has to be one of the major areas of focus for a government that is intent on increasing the speed of transition to a low carbon economy. Mr Lodge: At the generic level, political drive is extremely important. The structures and the architecture of themselves are not so important but you need that in place. All the experience shows that you need to combine the political will with some clear machinery for driving change. One of the problems with Blair's attempt to drive change from the centre is that he did not pay particular attention to the machinery. He was not really interested in how you actually deliver policies. That was left to experts like Sir Michael Barber and the Delivery Unit who were more interested in the routine and how you do things in government. I would always say: yes, have the political drive but also do things about the machinery. The new Prime Minister is clearly thinking about how he can facilitate more co-ordination at the heart of government rather than by cabinet government and the like by using cabinet committees. A command and control model of just shouting to departments "deliver this" will not actually deliver on the ground. Whilst political will is very important, getting the mechanics in place also has a role. Q141 Joan Walley: Are we poised now today, if we are going to get some analysis about constitutional change, at a place where we can look at what the political imperative is and, at the same time, look at the institutional changes that will be needed within the Civil Service as well? I am interested in how you see the situation we have had up until now where, if you like, and you pointed this out in your evidence to us, the senior civil servants are responsible to a minister who is responsible for driving that forward. Maybe in the past there has not been a connection between that minister's key role and the political driver of the government has not been perhaps as seamless as it could have been or perhaps some others would have liked it to have been. How can you now make sure that whatever the political driver is, you can synchronise changes institutionally in the Civil Service so that you are dealing with things more on a horizontal level rather than just having to have civil servants responding to a minister in a vertical way? How does the new Prime Minister go about using this opportunity that is there as from today really? Mr Lodge: You could do a number of things in terms of the machinery. You could use the cabinet committee system. I am not sure exactly how that works with climate change. Q142 Joan Walley: We are trying to find out how it could work in measuring climate change. Mr Retallack: In relation to climate change, as far as I understand, the cabinet committee process has involved merging environment and energy. So they are willing to do that at cabinet committee level but not at departmental level. Mr Lodge: More generally, in the paper that we submitted, and you raise the issue of Finland, joined-up government is supposed to be the holy grail of 21st century public administration. The Finns have come closest to cracking it and they have done all sorts of things. As you have suggested, they have overhauled their government programme, which previously used set out all their government objectives within the departments of health and education and all the things they were going to do, and they set up their big key cross-cutting objectives for what they as a whole government wanted to achieve and then they built the infrastructure around that. You would have a lead cabinet minister but other cabinet ministers would also be involved. That would be structured with the officials who have the right delivery capabilities and the right skills to implement that. That is the approach that they have taken. The key, though, as I understand in Finland is not just the structures; the most important change that is taking place is a cultural change. The people within that machine want to work that way, they want to do joined-up cohesive government and that is what is making it work more than committees. Q143 Joan Walley: In terms of where we are in the UK now, we have a new cabinet appointed last week. How do you reconcile those individual responsibilities that have been given to individual cabinet members with the changes that have gone forward in Finland, where presumably they have reached some common consensus on how to go forward? How does that sit with the situation that we are in now as far as the UK government is concerned on climate change? Mr Lodge: The last part of your question threw me. Generally, I think what will happen is that with a new government, and the Prime Minister is obviously developing a series of policies, in those areas that do need joined-up government, I suspect he will be thinking about how he is going to put machinery in place to drive the cross-cutting issues. It is very difficult to comment on that at this stage because I am not sure what those agendas are going to be. In the Spending Review, which will be in the autumn now, we do have a sense that there is going to be shift away from the big excess arms of departmental PSA targets and moving to a number of joint PSA targets. We do not know the details at the moment. That would certainly be positive. Q144 David Howarth: Is this a correct description? The key to the Finnish method is that you identify what you want to do as a government first and then you design your ministerial hierarchy and your civil service hierarchy around it. So instead of just saying, "We have always had a department X and a minister running this department and that just carries on", you think first about what your priorities are. As soon as you make that change, then all the other things fall into place. Mr Lodge: That is what I was trying to say. Once the Brown government begins to set out the clear agenda for what they want to achieve, then you do the machinery bit afterwards. I should just say on Finland, the departments are still there. As I understand it, with the Finnish constitution, when governments come to power, they have to set a government programme: this is what we will do. The key change that they have made is to say, "Let us focus on the big cross-cutting issues", and that is around democratic renewal, information and the knowledge economy. Accept those as you would. Then you bring the key civil servants with the right skills and the key ministers with relevant responsibilities into play. Q145 Joan Walley: How much similarity do you think there is with the way in which local government is moving more towards local strategic partnerships and moving away from the model where local authorities are responsible for running specific services per se but are now joining with other agencies, et cetera, to implement key targets agreed between government offices and central Government? Mr Lodge: That is a key trend across all dimensions of public administration and it must be a key issue in climate change. It is not just the responsibility of the British Government to tackle climate change, there are going to be international governments, local governments and everything, so you have got a huge number of actors that are involved in delivering any sort of policies designed on climate change. The key thing there becomes how does central Government, a bit like with local government, co-ordinate and bring together these different networks, what skills you need to achieve that, how you get the right accountability framework. The analogy works quite well. All the academics talk about an era of distributed governance, that there are so many actors central Government has to share centre stage with all these other players, and that is a fact of life now. It poses a challenge for the Civil Service in the way it works and the sorts of capabilities it needs to deliver them. Q146 Dr Turner: It has been suggested to us that the Civil Service is failing to bring in enough external scientific or environmental expertise to deal with the challenges that we are facing. In addition to that, the Capability Reviews suggest that this lack of expertise goes much deeper and extends to a lack of leadership and management skills. Do you think that deficiencies in the skills base of the Civil Service are likely to undermine our efforts to mitigate climate change? Mr Lodge: Again, to be a bore, it is very difficult to comment on climate change specifically but I certainly believe lack of specialist skills across Whitehall is a big problem. That is certainly something that we found when we conducted our interviews and research. I should say it is also well acknowledged by the Civil Service itself, as you have mentioned the Capability Reviews. What they really found was a deficiency when it comes to delivery skills: have the Civil Service got experience of delivering things on the ground; do they have experience of the corporate services in terms of HR, financial management and the like. There is still a big gap there. In fairness to the Civil Service, to previous Cabinet Secretaries and Sir Gus O'Donnell, their ways of trying to address that skills deficit is through training, the creation of a National School of Government, but also through bringing in outsiders, sending civil servants on secondment, and also they have got this programme of Professional Skills for Government agenda. On some of those things it is a bit early to tell what impact they are likely to have. The one thing that we have found in doing research into Whitehall is that the skills deficiencies, particularly in specialist skills, have been known for a long time. The Fulton Report, which I think was published nearly 40 years ago, identified exactly the same problem, that there is still the gifted amateur, the generalist, running around the corridors of power, and that is what we found. In terms of the background, this is across the whole of the senior Civil Service, 60 per cent still have a background in policy, general policy work, 25 per cent in operational delivery and 15 per cent in corporate services. We would suggest that there is an imbalance there and the Civil Service could do with having greater operational delivery skills and corporate services skills. Just one other point on that, I know the previous person giving evidence mentioned the fact Whitehall did things, whether it is directly delivering things or indirectly delivering things, but what is absolutely crucial is that when it is designing policy it has a sense of what delivery actually means in the real world. There is a big gulf there, policy is often designed without delivery in mind. Q147 Dr Turner: I have heard it suggested that the generalist culture of the current Civil Service is so engrained that, for instance, specialist scientists, and there used to be a Scientific Civil Service, virtually hide their speciality if they want to get promotion. There clearly is an endemic problem. You say it is a bit early to say whether the practice of seconding people in and out to promote expertise is working, can you think of any additions to that? Mr Lodge: Sorry. I meant it is a bit early to make judgments on the National School of Government and in particular the Professional Skills for Government programme, the PSG as it is known, and the aim there is to try and ensure that civil servants build skills not just in policy but in operations and delivery. It is too early to tell exactly how well that is doing. Interestingly enough, the Capability Reviews did not really assess progress on that. Q148 Dr Turner: On another committee we have come across this problem as well, that there is not sufficient expertise within the Civil Service for it to act as an intelligent client to outside expertise. Mr Lodge: In parts of Whitehall we have come across that. Just on the point about whether the outsiders are working, what has to be said is the number of outsiders at senior levels has increased quite dramatically. I will have to double-check but I think in 2005 one in four of senior appointments were made to outsiders, so there are outsiders within the Whitehall system. The problem we found was that often outsiders get quite frustrated because they cannot integrate within the strong culture within the departments and some of them often leave quite frustrated early on that they have not been able to come in and do the sorts of things that they would like to do. On secondments, sending civil servants out to build their skills, one of the problems, as a permanent secretary put it to us, is there is still a colonial mentality whereby if you send a civil servant off to Kent for the day they come back thinking, "Right, we have cracked local authority". That is clearly not the way to do it. If you are going to implement these systems they have got to be done properly. If you send someone out on secondment it should be for a clear reason to build a key skill and when they come back you have got to make sure that you absorb the knowledge and expertise and things that they have learned, and that is lacking at the moment. Q149 Dr Turner: Is this a cultural or managerial problem, or both? Mr Lodge: I think it is both actually because the culture does not value the sort of management that would put an emphasis on doing those things I have mentioned. Mr Retallack: Can I add a point on climate change and specifically on the skills issue. I do not think there is a problem as far as civil servants' expertise on the science, the problem is in implementing the solutions. We have done a fair bit of work on the issue of behaviour change and it is clear that there is a problem both in terms of co-ordinating policy across Government to ensure that the 44 per cent of the UK's emissions that individuals are responsible for is reduced and happens strategically and consistently, but equally the skills are in place to deliver. The traditional tools that civil servants are comfortable with using, providing people with more information and putting the price signals in place, are well-known and they are well-used to deploying them, but they are far less used to understanding what we term the kind of psychosocial interventions that the literature suggests are essential to deliver the widespread changes in social norms that are needed if we are going to embed changes in behaviour in energy use and transport choices necessary to solve the problem. I think there is a gap there that needs to be filled. Q150 Mr Caton: Mr Lodge, you have called for a fundamental reform of the Civil Service with responsibilities reframed to make ministers responsible for policy decisions and civil servants responsible for operational ones. What difference would that make in practice? I think in answer to Dr Turner you suggested that you want to see less civil servants involved in policy making, one presumes there will still be some, and more in operational decisions, is that right? Mr Lodge: Certainly the Civil Service needs, as it would admit and does so in the Capability Reviews, to value people with backgrounds in operational delivery, corporate services and all of that more than it currently does. Those sorts of people with skills in managing complex organisational change and all of those sorts of things should be able to get to the top rather than those who just have backgrounds in traditional policy areas. What I would say on policy is that the whole policy-making process, and Whitehall has made some steps towards this, needs to be opened up more. We need to involve outside expertise more than we do. Historically the Civil Service has not been particularly good at that because it has always protected its privileged position in advising our ministers. I think it is quite clear now that you can improve decisions, you can improve policies through consultation and you have got to be clear about how you do that. It is not necessarily that civil servants should pay less attention to policy, they just need to value delivery more than they currently do. When it comes to policy, as we say in one of our papers, they need to play more of a role of co-ordination, bringing in of relevant experts and drawing on their knowledge and information and then advising ministers. They probably need to do that a bit better, but I am certainly not saying that civil servants should no longer play a role in policy, I just think it is a slightly different role that they are coming to play. On the accountability side of things, it is true that we did make a general argument that one of the problems we felt militated against effective Civil Service reform and change in the Civil Service was that there is a big issue around the accountability of senior civil servants who still have the constitutional doctrine of ministerial responsibility whereby ministers are responsible for everything. We raised the issue about whether that should now be recast, and this is at a general level, it would work differently in differently departments with different functions, so that civil servants become much more directly accountable for things like clearly defined delivery of operational matters for ensuring that departments are fit for purpose. We were talking earlier about the skills deficit and I think it is the responsibility of the permanent secretary to ensure that the right skills are in place for delivering a minister's objectives and the Civil Service should be held to account for that. It was in those sorts of areas where we argued that the Civil Service should be more directly accountable. Q151 Mr Caton: This might be, at least in part, for Mr Retallack. We have been told that the policy Impact Assessments that civil servants undertake are often substandard because they fail to take into account the environmental dimension. Do you think making civil servants more directly accountable for their work would drive up standards in this area? Mr Retallack: I cannot comment specifically but my assumption would be yes. Guy is probably better placed to talk about the accountability issue. Mr Lodge: I certainly believe that greater accountability drives up performance. Not on that specific issue because I do not know enough about it. It is indisputable if you look at any organisations that a strong culture of accountability is a key way of driving performance, both external and internal, but there need to be pressures and incentives for change. We think where the Civil Service is concerned those are lacking and you need more pressures there. Once you get those in place then we think the other changes would come on-stream quicker because there would be a pressure added to them. Q152 Mr Caton: You are talking about fairly fundamental change but you seem to have indicated that Government has begun down the road that you would want to see it go down. Do you think within a reasonable timeframe we are going to see the sort of approach that you are advocating across the Civil Service? Mr Lodge: I am not sure whether you will get the implementation, as you say, of a radical departure from the current accountability arrangements but you will get piecemeal change across departments. Already the Home Office, following the problems there, have introduced a new compact which is about clarifying the different responsibilities and accountabilities of ministers and officials. As Sir Gus O'Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary, has said, we are all watching that closely to see how it works, so there is an experiment live at the moment in place which is implementing the sort of things we are recommending. In terms of greater accountability of the Civil Service, I think it will be interesting to see how the new Prime Minister reacts to that. He has quite clearly said that he wants Parliament to hold the Executive to account. That must include civil servants and not just ministers. He has also said that maybe Parliament will have a role in overseeing senior appointments. There is certainly a growing debate about this and there is growing interest in how we hold senior civil servants to account. Q153 Mr Caton: You have written that the Civil Service requires a strong centre to enable it to think strategically, manage change and to drive standards up. What relationship would a strong Civil Service centre have with the centre of Government? Mr Lodge: There is a whole long historical debate about how you organise the centre of Government to drive change. What we think is interesting at the moment is the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Gus O'Donnell, who is the head of the Civil Service, the institution of the Cabinet Secretary, is actually quite weak in terms of driving reform across the Civil Service, thinking of the Civil Service as a sort of corporate entity. This goes back to why Whitehall struggles with joined-up government, if you like, because the departments, particularly the permanent secretaries there, have quite a lot of autonomy vis-à-vis the Cabinet Secretary. In terms of improving internal accountability we were suggesting that the head of the Civil Service should have stronger levers over the permanent secretaries to ensure they are delivering on their Capability Review reports and the like. How that would then fit with the political centre, that is the key thing. What you should never do is have the political wing and the administrative wing not talking to each other. We did say if you are giving the head of the Civil Service these additional responsibilities for driving Civil Service-wide change, for holding permanent secretaries to account, then it would be unlikely that he could do that job and also perform the traditional roles of the Cabinet Secretary, so we did say that those should be split. This is an age-old debate. Under our model the head of the Civil Service would still attend Cabinet, so he could be there to inform Cabinet about the delivery and operational implications of policy discussions. There are ways of bringing the two together. Q154 Chairman: Notwithstanding what you said, the model, even tweaked in various ways, still comes back to a situation where the Civil Service in an individual department reflects the priorities of their Cabinet Minister and, therefore, the extent to which a cross-cutting issue like climate change is dealt with effectively depends on something above that, it needs to come from the very top. Is that accurate? Mr Lodge: Yes. The danger is when it comes to joined-up government we are not recommending that what you need is a command and control centre whereby the centre is telling the departments what to do because the expertise rests in the departments. What we are saying is the role of the centre needs to be in terms of co-ordinating and facilitating the joined-up approach. That is certainly the case in Finland and other countries we have looked at. Sir Michael Barber in his recent book, Instruction Delivery, is quite clear about what the role of the centre should be, it is not just imposing its will - at times it will, of course - it is a case of building the right relationships across government and the centre is the obvious place for that to happen. Q155 Chairman: If you take a department like Transport for a long time its priorities were seen as reducing road congestion and improving road safety in the 1970s and early 1980s before there was any concern about climate change, there is an inbuilt culture there which does not put cutting carbon emissions very high up the agenda. Mr Lodge: Again, we come back to the Prime Minister and the Cabinet making the case collectively for that change of policy if that is where they want to go. Simon, I do not know whether you have got anything to say on this? Mr Retallack: With the Department for Transport I think it depends very much who is running it. We have seen that who the Cabinet Minister is makes a difference at DfT on PSA targets. Equally, I come back to the point of bringing the key areas that need to be focused on to reduce emissions - energy and transport - under one umbrella. If you want joined-up policy on climate change it is very hard to do it effectively and give the issue the clout it needs without doing that. It is worrying that it seems that certain vested interests, I understand, in maintaining the status quo, certainly with regard to keeping energy policy where it is, have won in the recent battle over where energy should go. Q156 Joan Walley: Could you just give an example of what you meant when you said about the role of Transport Ministers having a marked effect on how policy gets developed? Could you give us a specific example? Mr Retallack: I will get myself in trouble here! Joan Walley: No, no, we are just interested. Q157 Chairman: No-one outside this room will read it before tomorrow! Mr Retallack: Others have said and been concerned that, for example, when Alistair Darling was Secretary of State for Transport, who had personally less of a commitment to the issue of acting on climate change, it was harder to get the issue taken very seriously within the Department. I hope that has changed since he has moved on, first of all to DTI and now the Treasury. My understanding from people who worked closely on the issue at the time in the Department was that personal priorities certainly affected outcomes. Chairman: Thank you very much indeed. Memorandum submitted by Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Department for Trade and Industry and Office of Climate Change
Examination of Witnesses Witnesses: Mr Jonathan Brearley, Director, Office of Climate Change, Mr Willy Rickett, Director General, Energy, Department of Trade and Industry, and Mr Mike Anderson, Director General, Climate Change Group, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, gave evidence. Q158 Chairman: Good morning, and thank you for coming in to talk to us. We are trying to stick to a fairly tight timetable so I will not go into a lot of preliminaries. We have been getting evidence from a variety of people that the policies to cut greenhouse gas emissions may suffer from the fragmentation of responsibility between different government bodies for different aspects of the policy, there may be some duplication of effort, there may be some poorer outcomes as a result of that, and maybe that was one of the reasons for creating the Office of Climate Change. Do you think we are now getting to the stage where we have got a sufficiently co-ordinated approach which ensures that these very cross-cutting issues will be dealt with in an effective way? Mr Anderson: I am from Defra. I think we are moving very much towards that position. The key goal for us, certainly from Defra's perspective, is that climate change is actually a mainstream part of the cross-government agenda, therefore the key for us is for it to be an element of all the relevant departments' policies as they move forward. Perhaps in the past there may have been an element where my own Department was trying to sell climate change as an important issue of which other government departments have to take account. I think we are now well beyond that stage and the co-ordination is significantly better. We have a number of new governance structures as well which we can talk about, and Jonathan can perhaps explain. As far as Defra is concerned, we would say that the key relevant departments are very alive to the climate change agenda and, in fact, the co-ordination is significantly improved from where it was, for example the DTI on energy and DfT on transport. It has significantly changed and the governance structure has helped. Mr Brearley: The first thing to note is that climate change is a very big cross-cutting issue. Unlike other big cross-cutting issues, however we organise ourselves within government it is going to cut across a number of different departments. The most important thing, therefore, is the structure we put in place to allow those departments to co-ordinate with each other. What we have done is we have put in place our Energy and Environment Ministerial Committee which makes decisions on climate change policy. Supporting that we have the Energy and Climate Change Strategy Board which involves senior officials from all the departments that have a strong interest in climate change. Supporting those we then have an international programme looking at climate change and energy together, and similarly a domestic programme which looks at domestic climate change and energy issues. Through this, however we organise ourselves in terms of the departmental structure, we will have a structure through which we can facilitate discussions between departments about very, very different policy areas. It is through that that co-ordination has been significantly improved. Mr Rickett: 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. Q159 Chairman: No matter how good and sensitive the co-ordination processes, does it not come back in the end to what level of political priority the Government attaches to certain issues? I do not know whether any of you were here when Tom Burke was giving evidence but we heard that unless we have an effective, economically viable carbon capture and storage technology quite soon we are all going to be frazzled. That did not come across very strongly in the Energy White Paper and he described it as a lethargic approach. You can have the most wonderful co-ordinating machinery but unless there is absolute top political priority given to certain objectives they will not happen, will they? Mr Rickett: I do not think our position on carbon capture and storage is at all lethargic. Clearly it has got to be part of our future approach to tackling climate change, we made that quite clear in the White Paper and we have announced that we are putting in hand a competition to demonstrate carbon capture and storage on a commercial scale. This is not a trivial exercise, we are talking about construction of commercial scale power stations with essentially an associated chemical works and carbon storage infrastructure attached to them and clearly the associated works are an extra cost on top of an economic proposition in terms of building a power station, so it requires public support. We have got to make sure that we get value for money for the taxpayer in putting in support for a project over 20 or 30 years. This is not a trivial exercise. We are doing it as fast as we can. We want to get this technology demonstrated so that we know what its costs are and what part it can play in being the solution. Tom is absolutely right, it has got to be part of the solution. Q160 Chairman: So when the Spitfire fighter was being developed, was value for money the first consideration that Winston Churchill had to take into account? Mr Rickett: It was certainly a consideration to make sure that the plane was fit for purpose and designed to give a competitive edge, if I might put it that way. We want to make sure that the plant we subsidise at a cost of hundreds of millions of pounds is fit for purpose in demonstrating to the world that this is a technology that can be deployed on a massive scale. Mr Brearley: Can I just add to that on the point about prioritisation. The Government has just recently drafted a draft Climate Change Bill that will soon be coming through Parliament and essentially what we are doing there is tying our hands to our ambition. Government has made a clear statement about its level of ambition and is putting in place a framework that is much stronger than has ever previously been there that sets out exactly what we intend to achieve domestically. We may all debate whether we have the right long-term targets, et cetera, but that framework is going to make it very hard for us, for Government, not to be able to meet our domestic climate change goals. In terms of prioritisation, it is there. Mr Anderson: Can I take it to the international side of that because there is a deliberate international arms race on that which is to our advantage because while we are trying to build our Spitfire the Chinese, I hope, are trying to build their Messerschmitt. We want to try and provoke that pace of exchange so, Willy is absolutely right, that is what we are aiming to try and do here. For example, Defra has a project in China looking at a near zero carbon emissions plant precisely in order to push that agenda as fast as possible. Tom has picked on one particular part of the agenda and that has been focused on from a number of different strands, but certainly internationally is equally important. Mr Rickett: Unless we have an international framework for tackling climate change, hopefully based around carbon trading, we will not have the market demand for the technologies that we are trying to demonstrate. We need a framework that makes people demand the technologies of carbon capture and storage, not just that we support it endlessly with public subsidy. Q161 Chairman: So what are the policies that are going to achieve that? Mr Rickett: I think that the G8 have shown leadership in trying to establish the principles that should lie behind the post-Kyoto framework. Again, talking to my European colleagues, they say that the UK has been leading that debate. Certainly the European position at the G8 Summit in Heiligendamm reflected the UK's position. Q162 Chairman: So the urgency with which we are addressing the need for carbon capture and storage is summed up by the fact that we hope that in 2013 there may be a regime which creates market demand? Mr Rickett: If you can tell me a quicker way of getting global agreement on a framework for tackling climate change then we will certainly be very keen on the Committee's recommendations. Q163 Chairman: It would not be of advantage to have some commercial first move again by throwing a lot of effort into this? Mr Rickett: That is why we are putting a lot of effort behind the demonstration of carbon capture and storage and why we are keen, subject to the consultation, to re-establish the nuclear option. We clearly need to take public opinion on that. Q164 Chairman: The nuclear option is not going to solve emissions from Chinese coal-fired power stations. Mr Rickett: No, but establishing public acceptance that the nuclear option is part of the solution and will reduce the cost and risk of --- Q165 Chairman: It has got absolutely nothing to do with the needs for CCS technology. Mr Rickett: I was not saying that it was a replacement for CCS. I have already acknowledged that CCS is a key part of the solution and that is why we are putting the money behind it. Q166 Joan Walley: I cannot help but point out, representing the constituency where the late Reginald Mitchell was born, and having attended the 70th anniversary of his death a couple of weeks or so ago, the reason why the Spitfire got to the stage of development that it was at, whatever was going on internationally, was because of the drive and the innovation and entrepreneurial skills of somebody like Reginald Mitchell who was able to be totally, totally committed to actually developing the Spitfire with all the innovation there was there. I somehow feel as though that has been left out of your equation, that whatever else is done in the international setting it means we have got to have the drive of individuals to make things happen, and Reginald Mitchell offered that. Mr Rickett: You are absolutely right. Q167 Joan Walley: I know it is difficult for the three of you sitting there from the three different Departments but I am interested in the Office of Climate Change given the views that some people have about the Sustainable Development Unit. I think there is a view that maybe the Sustainable Development Unit has not succeeded as much as it could have done to get the whole of the cross-government agenda working on sustainable development. Some people feel that perhaps it should be located inside the Cabinet Office because that is where people see the natural seat, if you like, of a more important joined-up effort. Should the OCC not have been there? Mr Brearley: The OCC does three things essentially. We help programme manage the climate change programme across Government, we co-ordinate on analysis and work with departments to make sure we have all the analysis in one place and we carry out cross-cutting policy focused projects. My view is that the fundamental importance of the governance of the OCC is that we remain jointly owned in some form. We are jointly funded at the moment, and both Willy and Mike essentially sit on the board that governs the work that we do. More important than the department that we are located in is the fact that we have strong connections with departments. The job for us is supporting departments to do their jobs as effectively as possible, therefore I would not necessarily argue that the Cabinet Office is automatically the right place for us to go. Mr Rickett: Speaking as one of the sort of owners and clients for the Office of Climate Change, the idea that all co-ordination has to be from the Cabinet Office, and I used to work in the Cabinet Office, I can understand the organisational neatness of it but the good thing about having the Office of Climate Change where it is is that it brings home to departments that they each individually have a responsibility for joining up government and it is not just the responsibility of the Cabinet Office. If everybody looks for the Cabinet Office to join up Government then it is very easy for a department to say, "If there is a problem we will let the Cabinet Office step in and join up", whereas we have to see it as our role to join everything up. Mr Brearley: Absolutely. Q168 Joan Walley: Did what was the DTI make a bid for the OCC? Mr Rickett: DBERR, as we call ourselves now. We have certainly funded a lot of the work of the OCC. We have seconded quite a few of our staff into the OCC. Q169 Joan Walley: But would you not have liked the Office of Climate Change to have been located in what was the DTI and is now the new department? Mr Rickett: I am not sure that it matters which department it is located in as long as it is seen as jointly owned and as providing the strategic underpinning analytical work and raising the level of professionalism in terms of our approach. I am not sure whether sitting in Defra's building or in our building or in the Cabinet office really matters as long as everybody is working together. Q170 Joan Walley: You do not think it sends a message to the rest of the Civil Service that because it is not centrally based it is somehow less important and a bit further down the pecking order than some other departments? Mr Rickett: No, I do not think so. Having had experience of being in charge of the Social Exclusion Unit and what became the Strategy Unit, there is a danger that if the centre is seen to be pushing its views too hard on departments they will feel disempowered and they will become defensive and feel that they are being told what to do, and one of the great successes in the Office of Climate Change is we have managed to avoid that. Mr Brearley: Perhaps it would help if I gave you an example. As you know, we drafted the draft Climate Change Bill and that was a huge cross-Whitehall process and involved very, very strong interests from different departments. By structuring ourselves in a way that was about collaboration, co-operation and effective co-ordination we made quick process and we came up with a very, very high quality product. It is maintaining that essence of an organisation which is really important. Whether we as an organisation or Government as a whole needs to provide more support to Number 10 or not is a secondary question essentially to the primary issue which is about helping Government co-ordinate and helping departments perform better in tackling climate change. Mr Rickett: There is a central role which is quite important in this which is the Prime Minister's role in representing the UK in the G8 and representing the UK in the European Council. Given the importance of energy and climate change in international and European debate, it is important that he is properly supported in that role. We certainly see a very strong role for the centre in bringing together and leading this debate. Mr Anderson: I think what Willy is saying about leadership is the key point for the centre. Unless you are arguing with the functions of the OCC or its actual geographical location, which we do not think is particularly significant, the issue of leadership is critical, and that was referred to in the last evidence, and that is the Prime Minister's role. All of us were at a meeting a couple of weeks ago, a Climate Change Forum, which the then Prime Minister Designate attended and visibly demonstrated his leadership of the issue from the centre as precisely the sort of political impetus that we require as departments to get the business done, whichever governance methods we use. Q171 Joan Walley: Given the weight that should be given to the Office of Climate Change, should there not be a senior civil servant of Grade 2 in place there? No disrespect to Mr Brearley. Mr Anderson: I would not want to talk about Jonathan's grade. I have to say I am not remotely gradist and do not think we should look at that at all, we should look at whether the person is up to the job and, I have to say, sitting next to him, I think he is very much up to the job. Mr Brearley: Thank you. Q172 Joan Walley: Is it not the weight that other departments attach to, if you like, the pecking order within the Civil Service, that you need to have that level of grade? Mr Anderson: I hope that is not the case in the Civil Service, it would be rather depressing if we looked at it as purely, "Is he an HEO or a Grade 2?" Mr Rickett: That is Mike's and my role. Jonathan and his team have been doing a superb job in providing us with the analysis and the options and it is our role to provide the leadership in Whitehall, which is why we are the joint chairs of the Energy and Climate Change Strategy Board which is the senior official group that supports the Energy and Environment Ministerial Committee on these things. Mr Brearley: I think it is important to add, being the person who thought about a lot of this when we set up the Office of Climate Change, my experience to date has not been that not being a Grade 2 or having a DG heading up the Office of Climate Change has really made much difference. We have always positioned ourselves essentially as helping departments, as being a support for the Government to improve climate change policy-making. Given some of the things that we have done, arguing that somehow the grade of the leader of the organisation is going to make a big difference is not something that has been substantiated by what has happened. Q173 Joan Walley: Perhaps you could tell me how many full-time staff you have? Mr Brearley: I can tell you how many full-time staff we have. As a project-based organisation this does change month by month as people come in and out of the organisation. We have 32.2 staff at the moment. Q174 Joan Walley: That is working exclusively for the Office of Climate Change? Mr Brearley: Working exclusively for the Office of Climate Change. Q175 Joan Walley: Of those, how many have got expert knowledge in the field? Mr Brearley: That is more difficult to tell, particularly because we have very different sorts of expertise in the OCC. We have a very, very strong economic core, so we have a lot of well-qualified and very experienced economic analysts. I would have to give you a note to tell you the exact breakdown of that. Clearly we have a lot of experienced economists and we have a number of policy analysts from the field. In addition to that, part of our model is to bring other sorts of expertise within Government so, for example, we do have secondees from the private sector within the OCC. Q176 Joan Walley: Finally, can I just ask Mr Anderson - in respect of the reason for my last question, it is because we have had evidence before the Committee that suggests that the Sustainable Development Unit is not really achieving its potential because it has not had the resources in place - how does the staffing in the OCC compare with the staffing of the SDU? Mr Anderson: I do not know about SDU because it is not under my responsibility. I know what the Climate Change group in Defra is which nears in total somewhere in the region of 300 people on different bits of it because there is an international negotiating team, there is the team dealing with bio-energy crops, the team dealing with household personal carbon calculations, so we have a whole series of teams on different bits of it. Defra does have a large chunk of science economic expertise, policy experts. I would have to go to the rest of the Department for the Sustainable Development Unit and come back to you on what the exact numbers are. Q177 Mr Caton: You have said that the Office of Climate Change is about joining things up. We have received evidence which suggests that the creation of the Office of Climate Change was actually set in the wrong direction if you are looking at joining up environmental policy and - this follows on from what Ms Walley was saying - it would be much better to put resources into the SDU and then you would be far better able to dovetail the sustainable development policies, climate change and biodiversity than is possible at present. How do you answer that? Mr Brearley: I think I will leave it to Mike to talk about the SDU. What we wanted at the time was something that was very focused on climate change as an issue and therefore looked at joined-up across climate change and energy. Clearly the OCC does need to work within the sustainable development agenda and with the Sustainable Development Unit to do that, but it was felt that having something focused on the particular issue of climate change was more helpful in making sure that on this issue we were joined-up. Mr Anderson: The sustainable development strategy goes much wider than aspects of the climate change strategy that we are dealing with now. It deals with social issues, it deals with land use in a different way. There is only one real stream of the sustainable development strategy that directly relates to the climate change agenda within environmental limits. I would argue that it would have subsumed some of the critical parts of our agenda had it all tried to be stuffed into there. You can cut it many different ways. I prefer the direction we are going in terms of trying to work together towards a low carbon economy to deal with the issue that is causing anthropogenic climate change. From our perspective it does provide the right degree of focus the way it is currently split and that is where Jonathan's team comes in to be part of that co-ordinating mechanism to make sure that Willy's activity on energy and our activity on pushing forward the climate change agenda and the project-based approach of OCC are all joined-up. I look at it slightly differently. Q178 Mr Caton: As a consequence has that very correct focus on climate change been, as some of our witnesses seem to feel, a downgrading of tackling sustainable development and biodiversity issues? Mr Anderson: I do not think it has, but you are right to point out that we need to be careful of that all the time. If I may return to bio crops as well because that is a key area, a complex area, where the Americans are going down quite a large track of that but the amount of water required for bio crops and the implications for land use are quite complicated, so it is absolutely critical that we remain, certainly within Defra, very focused on this and very attached to the natural environment agenda and the whole sustainable development agenda. We are also trying to look at it in a different way. We are starting new activity on sustainable consumption and production and focusing in if you start from the premise that you are using products that are not going to create the problem in the first place and start with the end-to-end cycle of sustainable products we might make much more progress rather than leaving it to the end of the cycle. That work is in a relatively nascent stage in Government. We are at quite an early stage on some of these activities. Q179 Mr Caton: Referring me to Mr Anderson to talk about the Sustainable Development Unit suggests, Mr Brearley, that the OCC does not directly co-ordinate with the SDU at all, is that right? Mr Brearley: No, we do. Where we have issues that are joined together we do work together. For example, when we were planning to present two different departments on climate change we made sure that the SDU were involved in that process. I meet regularly with members of the SDU and, in fact, we are going to have a secondee from the SDU. At the moment the work that we have done has not overlapped in a big way in terms of what they are doing. Q180 Mr Caton: In your 32.2 members of staff you did not identify anybody with environmental expertise. Have you any? Mr Brearley: We do have staff with environmental expertise but I think you will have to specify exactly what you mean by that. For example, we have a secondee who has strong experience in the NGOs. Q181 Mr Caton: If you are going to be able to co-ordinate with the SDU then you need someone who can pick up on any specific environmental issues they want you to be aware of. Mr Brearley: Absolutely, but the point is the way our staffing works is most of our staff are based around time-limited policy-focused projects, about two-thirds of our staff essentially, and as part of that people come and go as issues change. If it so happens that within that team we think we need that expertise then we will bring that expertise in. Mr Anderson: Are you talking about the Sustainable Development Commission or the Unit? Mr Caton: The Unit. Q182 Dr Turner: Mr Rickett, I was pleased to hear you say that Britain now has an international reputation for developing policies in the area of energy and climate change, so clearly one thing we are doing well is leading on the talk, it is just a pity that we are not leading on the delivery. If you look at this country's record, which is quite lamentable, in transition to a low carbon economy and, in particular, in the deployment of renewable energy, it compares very badly with our European neighbours. It has been suggested to us, and many people have suggested this, including other select committee reports, that one of the contributory factors is the way in which work in the energy sector in this country is divided into all sorts of bodies, the Energy Savings Trust, the Carbon Trust, some of the energy function, the producer function is in the DTI, or DBERR, and energy efficiency is in Defra, so there has to be an awful lot of administrative replication, great opportunities for joining up and focusing. It has been suggested that it would be much better to set up a new agency called the Low Carbon Energy Agency, Energy Agency, call it what you will, that will subsume the functions of all these bodies and take the energy functions out of DTI and Defra. I would like you to comment. I know you are in a difficult position to comment on it because it is your turf, but I would like your views. Do you think this would be effective? Would we do better? Mr Rickett: It is quite easy to look at a list of all the bodies involved in delivering energy and climate change and conclude that it is all a mess. No doubt you could look at a list of government departments or select committees and conclude there are rather a lot of them too. I think where you have to start is with the policy that has got to be delivered and have a delivery mechanism that is tailored for delivering those policies. Just to give you a list of some of the key ingredients of our policy: competitive energy markets, a planning system that works, an effective carbon price, public support for research, development, demonstration and deployment of low carbon technologies, such as carbon capture and storage, measures to promote energy efficiency that are likely to include things like information, advice, incentive, subsidies and regulation. Is it realistic to suppose that all of those elements of a successful policy should be delivered by a single agency or does it make more sense to have economic regulators in the UK and the EU Member States to promote competition, a planning commission to take planning decisions, institutions that are tailored to delivering an effective emissions trading scheme, bodies to promote energy efficiency that understand the very different barriers that there are in the domestic, business and transport sectors, not to mention bodies that understand the R, D, D & D chain that is crucial in getting the innovation we need. I can perfectly understand why people like Dieter Helm say that there is an untidiness and a mess in the way we go about doing things but I think we have to have a delivery mechanism that is tailored to the policies. Trying to simply say that one agency would solve everything is beguiling but I am not sure it is the right answer, although obviously we will listen to your conclusions on that one. The only other point I would make is that a lot of the big issues we are dealing with at the moment are issues of policy rather than delivery and those are not really suitable for agencies. Negotiating the international framework where you called for leadership, negotiating the EU legislation that has got to deliver the Strategic Energy Review - and you have got at least three directives to be negotiated, probably more - setting the UK targets under the Climate Change Bill and reforming the planning regime for infrastructure, I could go on and on, those are big policy issues. These are not issues on which agencies could take decisions because they have to be taken by politically, democratically accountable representatives because they are policy issues. I think Dieter would recognise that, I am sure he would say to you that setting carbon targets is not a matter for anybody other than elected representatives. I am not saying that everything is perfect, nothing should change, we will be genuinely interested in your recommendations on this. I am just saying leaping to the conclusion that a single agency is the solution to delivery, or leaping to the conclusion that a single government department responsible for everything is the solution to the fragmentation of government or whatever, it is not quite as simple as that. There are some important thoughts in what Dieter has said, he has been an extremely useful adviser to us, but it is not quite as simple, I think, sometimes. Q183 Dr Turner: No, but we do seem to have a way in this country of making things as complicated and as ineffective as possible. I would personally say the way in which we run the ROC mechanism is a good example because it has been much less effective both in quantity of delivery and probably in cost-effectiveness than the energy price mechanism which continental countries use, for instance. It has resulted in a much, lamentably, slower rate of deployment of renewable energy than in other countries which, you are quite right, has cost us a great deal. Likewise, the DTI function in supporting R, D, D & D in renewable energy, this - I know for a fact - has not been anything like as effective as it could because there is simply not enough money, not enough focus and not enough push, and I could go on. I do not care one way or the other on the question of an energy agency, but we have to sharpen the delivery. Policies are fine, we talk fine policies, but we are not getting delivery. Mr Rickett: I could dispute some of the things that you have said about the ineffectiveness of our policy, but I am not sure that will help the Committee particularly, I will leave that to my ministers. Certainly we sign up to the proposition that delivery is crucial, writing a White Paper is not going to help unless we deliver on it, and we are in no doubt about the scale of the task in turning that into effective delivery and working with the energy industry to deliver on it. To pick up one example you gave, which is renewables, and how the Renewables Obligation has been less effective than feed-in tariffs in Germany, for instance, I think there are at least three ingredients in delivering renewables. One is the very large subsidies that we are giving them under the Renewables Obligation, two is an effective planning regime to get planning permission for these developments and three is adequate connection to the transmission system. It might be tempting to say, "Well, we should set up a renewables agency that is responsible for not only promoting and subsidising renewables projects but also for giving them all planning permission", whatever anybody might think about that, and also telling the National Grid where it should direct its investment on the transmission system, irrespective of the other demands on the transmission system, ensuring security of supply and so on. That might be a tempting solution, but planning decisions have to be rooted in the planning system and getting democratic support for these things. The transmission system is not just about renewables, so there are always going to be dividing lines and saying, "Well, let's bring it all together into some mega-organisation", or, "Let's bring it into a renewables organisation, an energy efficiency organisation", I am not sure that gets to the root of the problem. I am raising the considerations you need to take into account in coming to conclusions. Dr Turner: We could continue this for a long time, but I think we have not got time. I hope you will not hide behind the planning system for all our failings. Q184 Joan Walley: In a way I am sorry that you were not here for the oral session we had earlier with Professor Tom Burke. He sat there and said he found it quite difficult to fathom out who was responsible for what and how aspects of policy were developing at the moment and linking the objective to the delivery. What I am trying to do is see, given the mechanism that we need, how that mechanism then needs to have an acquired skill released into this, how you are going to go about ensuring that those skills are there. One of the things we heard this morning was you have a lack of expertise inside the Civil Service on environmental issues. I wonder, Mr Brearley, given that most of your work is going to be done through the rest of the Civil Service, not only those 32 posts that you have under you, what is your assessment of the expertise that there is inside the Civil Service in all those different departments which you seem to co‑ordinate? Mr Brearley: Could I ask a question about the evidence you received. Have they been specific about the kind of expertise that they have questioned at all or is it simply expertise on climate change? Q185 Joan Walley: No, I think it was just general concerns that have been flagged up in the course of this inquiry as to how much expertise there is. For example - and this is not related to the inquiry - in my constituency we had a new construction college that was built, but it is only now that we are starting to look at the climate change imperatives which we need to assimilate into the way in which we teach construction skills. That means, for example, the Qualification Agency has not necessarily as yet agreed what goes into the curriculum. It is about, in a way, the ripple‑out effect of the policy imperative in terms of how that then gets taken up and how the Civil Service goes about addressing all these concerns which come about as a result of this policy that you are seeking to get going because what we do will be how we deliver it on the ground. Mr Brearley: I think there are two parts to that. The first part is thinking about us within the Civil Service, within Whitehall, do we have the right sort of expertise and I will comment on that. Then there is a separate question there about what happens in our delivery bodies, how we configure organisations like local authorities, et cetera, on the ground to make sure they have the right expertise to deliver there. Q186 Joan Walley: And government departments. Mr Brearley: Absolutely. Coming back to that first question about the departments, I have quite a lot of experience of working in a lot of different departments across Government prior to this. Prior to this I worked in the Cabinet Office and worked with a number of different government departments. I have to say, a very personal view is that the level of expertise, particularly the science, both in terms of the science and economics across Government in climate change I think is extremely impressive. If you look at the process that Government went through in terms of developing and generating the analysis that underpinned the White Paper, that is very rigorously peer‑reviewed both within Government and outside of Government. We also have a process for consulting on the assumptions that we make before we get to our conclusions in terms of our analysis, so my personal view is that we do have a good suite of skills. Q187 Joan Walley: Have you audited what is there? Do you know what expertise is there on these issues? Mr Brearley: In terms of have we audited exactly what sort of skills we have across Government, certainly the OCC has not done that. Have we looked in detail at the process for both understanding our existing emissions and looking at our emissions going forward, yes, we have. Our conclusion was that across the board we think we have a high standard of analytical support. Of course, we can always improve on that and climate change is a huge priority and I will never argue against Government continually trying to build its capacity but, certainly, my experience and the experience of my team which looked at this very question was that Government was performing very well in this area. Mr Rickett: Looking across the delivery landscape, referring back to the previous questions, we have asked the Sector Skills Councils to report on skills gaps within the energy and, inevitably, climate change sector so that we have a better view about what they are and what can be done about it. Q188 Joan Walley: One last question. Earlier on I think you said in passing that question should have been left to the minister and there was a sort of implication that ministers take on board responsibility for policies. Do you go along with the idea that it should be made explicit that the role of civil servants is to create effective and coherent policy? Mr Rickett: I certainly see it as my job to create coherent and effective policy. I would expect not to remain in the Civil Service if ministers felt I was not doing that and I would expect select committees to give me a hard time if we were not doing that. You can have theological debates about respective accountability of ministers and civil servants, and there are differences, but the idea that civil servants hide behind ministers and say, "Well, you know, we don't have to bother because he'll take all the flak", seems to me to be completely misplaced. What I was saying was I did not think it would help your deliberations this morning if I got into a long argument about whether our climate change policies were as ineffective as Dr Turner was suggesting. I thought maybe you could debate that with my ministers. Q189 Joan Walley: You do not think civil servants should be making policy independent of political considerations? Mr Rickett: Clearly ministers are responsible for taking the final decisions in leading the policy development and taking decisions about important trade‑offs. There are some very important trade‑offs between our energy objectives and our climate change objectives, and there are some very important intersections where they are absolutely at one. You will be aware that part of the public debate about whether energy should be put together with the environment or it should remain separate was does it help ministers to make those trade‑offs to have separate advice that highlights the differences and the trade-offs they have to make, or does it help them to put these things together so they get a single set of advice from civil servants. I think we just need to work across the boundaries and give them the best advice we can. Q190 Joan Walley: On something as important as climate change, should we really be having these trade-offs? Should the imperative of climate change not just be the one over-riding factor? Mr Rickett: To give you one example, it is absolutely essential that we deliver on our climate change objectives at least cost, because I do not think people then try to frame policies that do that so we do not place unnecessary costs on people. Q191 Joan Walley: Could I interrupt you there and say if we do not deliver on our 20 per cent target, even though we might not have had these costs, is that important? Surely, we have to meet our targets in terms of what the cost? Mr Anderson: There will always be trade-offs. If you take a specific example, a very controversial one and I raise it here, the Severn Barrage, that some people say might be a five per cent contribution to renewable energy if you put it in, let me tell you the NGOs, the environment agencies and other bodies will come up to us and say that you will be killing off the biodiversity in the Severn Estuary, there will be a trade-off. We may say, "Actually it is more important to tackle climate change at this point", but let us not pretend that it is simply able to say that climate change decides everything because there will be some very difficult decisions as we try and balance those policies. If we are not totally honest about the difficulties of nuclear energy, we really would not be doing our job. Q192 Chairman: In the Government's response to our report on the EU Emissions Trading Scheme there was a reference to something called the "Climate Change Simplification Project". We have had difficulty finding out much about this. Can you tell us what it is? Mr Brearley: It is my understanding that is a piece of work which has been carried out by the economics part of Defra, but I think I would need to come back to you on that. Joan Walley: It does not join up? Q193 Chairman: We have someone from Defra here, could you tell us about it? Mr Anderson: I do not know the exact details of the framework. Q194 Chairman: You do not know anything about it at all? Mr Anderson: I would have to come back to you on that. It is in the Emissions Trading Scheme response, is it? Q195 Chairman: It is something which the Government told us about. Can any of you tell us anything about the Climate Change Simplification Project at all? Mr Anderson: I will come back to you on that. Q196 Chairman: The answer is none of you knows anything about it at all? Mr Anderson: Not enough to tell you. Q197 Chairman: Can you tell us anything? Mr Anderson: I think it is run by our economist team in order to work out some of the ---- I do not know anything about it. Q198 Chairman: You think it is run by some of your economists to work out what? Mr Anderson: I do not know. Q199 Chairman: Let us be clear, none of you knows anything about this, although it was in the answer that the Government gave to one of our previous reports. Mr Anderson: No. Chairman: Fine. Thank you very much for coming along. |