Examination of Witnesses (Questions 760-780)
MR CLIVE
BATES AND
MR ADRIAN
LONG
7 MARCH 2007
Q760 Mr Williams: The Environment
Agency has a range of regional and local offices that give advice
on climate change. In your evidence you reflect upon the work
that you have done with the black and ethnic minority communities
in Birmingham, but can you tell us to what extent your regional
and local offices work in conjunction with the Energy Saving Trust,
the efficiency advice centres and community groups and local government
to co-ordinate the provision of advice about climate change mitigation
and adaptation?
Mr Long: I guess the important
thing for us in that is, again, to work out who is best placed
to do what. The Energy Savings Trust are the ideal organisation
to provide that sort of advice, and I think another organisation
such as ourselves getting in the way of that or complicating it
makes it more difficult for clear messages to be sent to the people
that they are aimed at.
Q761 Chairman: Was it a good idea
to reduce the Energy Saving Trust's budget this year?
Mr Bates: We probably ought not
to comment.
Q762 Chairman: Oh, go on. I have
asked the question nicely, and it is between friends!
Mr Long: You may have other witnesses
this afternoon who may well be able to help you with that.
Mr Bates: We are all facing tight
financial circumstances.
Q763 Chairman: I think you have answered
the question.
Mr Bates: It is a bit like sailors
complaining about rough seas, to be honest. We are getting to
expect the financial position to be tight in the future.
Q764 Chairman: Very diplomatically
put.
Mr Long: If I can return to Mr
Williams, on a day-to-day level there are a wide range of operational
links between our regions and our areas. Many of those are around
regulatory duties and some of them, as we have heard earlier,
will obviously be about the discussion around building within
flood plains or flood risks at a local level. We are also in several
areas throughout England—I know less about Wales, I am afraid—involved
in a number of local strategic partnerships, the bodies that have
come out of Local Agenda 21. Where we are involved there, I think
we are part of that broader consortium or partnership that is
able to do some significant work. So we provide data for people
to make decisions at a local level; we provide a number of web-based
applications for people to get more information; we provide flood
warnings at a regional and local level. We do not do that much,
to be honest, in terms of the provision of information with local
governments. Again, for some of the reasons I have put forward
in my previous answers, I do not think it would be best value
for money. I think our linkage is really an operational one.
Q765 David Taylor: A decade and a
half ago, we had the Earth Summit and the massive interest and
surge of enthusiasm that flowed from that, particularly in the
area of Agenda 21; and, indeed, in your own evidence to us, which
is linked in with this engaging and involving people, on page
five, you still believe that local authorities have a key role
to help draw down so-called action on climate change from national
to local level.[35]
The Committee went to Germany a week or two ago, to Freiburg in
the Black Forest, close to the French border, in a state that
has got an excellent track record, Baden-Wu£rttemberg, in
terms of encouraging local action, a city of a quarter of a million
or something like that. Why are cities of that size in the south-west
of Germany able to still move fairly effectively along the Agenda
21 route and all enthusiasm, knowledge and commitment seems to
have died in the vast bulk of British local authorities? Why should
that be?
Mr Bates: I am not sure that is
actually the case. I do not think you see things labelled "Local
Agenda 21" any more—that is true—but I think
a lot has been done to assimilate the environmental agenda into
the way local government thinks and operates. As Adrian was saying,
we have been participating increasingly in local strategic partnerships,
a lot of the regeneration agenda has a strong environmental bent
to it, and, of course, local authorities have many duties to do
with waste management, traffic management and being the local
sort of public realm, so I do not think the will has gone. Perhaps
what is interesting, though, is the extent to which the Mayor
of London has taken on the environmental agenda and made climate
change a big issue for London. In some ways the Mayor has more
power, more autonomy, more responsibility than is typical in most
of local government, and that might be why he is able to make
a stronger run at it.
Q766 David Taylor: In your evidence,
when you use that phrase about local authorities and Agenda 21
"as they once did", implying that they are not doing
it now, you are seeking for ways to give incentives for them to
pick up again the Agenda 21?
Mr Bates: I think that is right.
I do not think we would want to compare how it is now with how
it was in the past, because circumstances have changed so much
and the environment has gone up the political agenda in many ways.
Q767 David Taylor: We are talking
about the local authority role, the leadership role that they
have in engaging their communities, whether they be 200,000 people
in Freiburg or 400 people in Mauenheim that we saw, not too far
away from there?
Mr Bates: That is right. I think
the will is there amongst local authorities do that, and perhaps
if we had more mayors, if we had more autonomy in local government,
they would be out doing more of it, which is why I drew the comparison
with London.
Q768 David Taylor: Is that what you
are saying to the DCLG—we need more Ken Livingstones scattered
throughout the country?
Mr Bates: I do not, in all honesty,
think that is a view that they would depart that much from. They
want strong local government and they are champions of strong
local government. Whether they want to replicate Ken Livingstone
is another matter, but there is a lot of interest in government
and having more mayors and more powers devolved to local government.
Q769 David Taylor: Are you putting
strongly to your colleagues in DCLG the point that local authorities
should be encouraged to seize the environmental agenda again,
as they once did, although things have moved on in a decade and
a half, you are saying?
Mr Bates: To be honest, I do not
think we need to do that. The CLG has moved. It is taking this
agenda quite seriously and taking it on quite strongly. It has
got the zero carbon homes commitment and a bunch of other things
that it has announced recently that it wants to do on the environmental
climate change agenda, so I do not think there is a problem there
that requires us to badger them into doing more. In many ways,
many of the government departments now are focused on what they
can do to actually get a better response to climate change, and
that includes CLG, it includes DTI, it includes the Department
for Transport and, of course, Defra.
Mr Long: Certainly the relationship
between the Environment Agency and the representative bodies within
local government has got stronger in the last two to three years—I
think that is fairly evident—and that is a sign, I think,
that things are beginning to move much more in the direction we
would wish. Sandy Bruce-Lockhart, for instance, from the LGA,
spoke at our conference this year, his deputy spoke the year before,
and a big section of our conference was about building and strengthening
regional and local relationships between us and partners and making
sure that the work that was happening at a local level was as
concrete and able to involve people as possible. Our Chairman,
Sir John Harman, had a distinguished career in local government
and is passionate about our relationship with local government.
I think things like the Nottingham Agreement and other issues
and initiatives are genuinely beginning to help work at a local
level.
Q770 Chairman: Do you think that
local authorities are sufficiently resourced in these straightened
times, to which you referred a moment ago, to get things off the
ground? I know from my own experience it has been a tough haul
to get the resources in place to employ one person to actually
turn these good intentions, with a huge list, into anything like
reality.
Mr Bates: I think there is more
that could be done there. I think the local area agreements could
have a greener component to them, and that would start to provide
that funding. Of course, that is, to some extent, under the control
of local authorities themselves, and one of the things that we
are trying to do through local strategic partnerships is encourage
a greener dimension to local area agreement.
Q771 Chairman: Let us move on to
fiscal instruments. In your evidence you say fiscal instruments
should be used to penalise behaviour that is environmentally damaging
and reward that which is environmentally beneficial by introducing
inefficiency charges for products that are the least energy efficient.
The price would more accurately reflect the true environmental
cost of the product. Would you be in favour of increasing the
price of incandescent light bulbs to achieve the same objective
that the Australians have in moving towards, for example, the
introduction of low-energy light bulbs?
Mr Bates: I think in that case
there is a question about what the most appropriate intervention
is. The Australians have gone, quite boldly, for a regulatory
approach on the basis that it involves much less complexity, it
requires much less information to be understood by the individual.
There may well be a case for doing something around lighting efficiency
from pure standards—what is actually allowed onto the market.
It might be a more efficient way of getting to the outcome. I
think our advice there probably should not be generalised to every
possible circumstance and every possible product, but done where
it is really appropriate, for instance for vehicles or for other
large energy users.
Q772 Chairman: Have you as an agency
done any evaluatory work on the effectiveness of green fiscal
measures?
Mr Bates: We tend—
Q773 Chairman: It is either yes or
no.
Mr Bates: I am trying to recall
what we have done. We, basically, survey the literature. We are
not out there looking at—. We are not basically doing what
academics do. We commission work through our science programme
and our economics programme that has a flavour there, but I am
not absolutely certain what we have done on particular fiscal
instruments.
Q774 Chairman: Perhaps you would
like to go and have a look, because I am intrigued to know why
in aviation emissions the five quid or the 10 quid on the air
passenger duty was chosen as the fiscal instrument to achieve
a reduction there?
Mr Bates: Obviously we did not
make that choice. We learnt about it at the same time everyone
else learnt about it.
Q775 Chairman: It would be useful
to have some commentary from about you about what works and what
does not in the green fiscal environment.
Mr Bates: In fairness, Chairman,
we did put in quite a heavy duty submission on those themes in
response to the supplementary question that the Committee asked.
We went through a lot of what is effective and what is not effective
in our second submission.
Q776 Chairman: In that case, I will
re-examine it and, if necessary, I will come back to you.
Mr Long: It came to you in January,
Chairman.
Chairman: We are in March now, I have
almost forgotten January, but I shall go back and have another
look at it.
Q777 Lynne Jones: I wanted to ask
you about personal carbon allowances, which the Secretary of State
has flirted with, and then there was the report produced by the
Centre for Sustainable Energy. The Environment Agency is the UK
registry administrator for the European Emissions Trading Scheme.
Based on that experience, what is your view about the practicality
of going down the road of personal carbon allowances?
Mr Bates: I think the first thing
to say is that the Secretary of State, in raising this idea, has
done us a service, because he is having what is quite an imaginative
and challenging idea widely discussed now and, as an approach
to communications, it is good because it makes the point that
people have a carbon footprint and that there is a basic entitlement
to carbon that most of us exceed and there would be the possibility
for trading. So, as a communications exercise and in engaging
people, he is doing the right thing by getting people to think
about it. However, there are (and he accepts this and Defra and
the Government accept this) quite formidable practical difficulties
to bringing in a full-scale compliance personal carbon trading
system in which everybody in the country would be a participant.
It would be at least as complicated as the ID card project and
it would have to have virtually 100% coverage. It would be almost
like introducing an entirely new currency. It is quite a subtle
idea. It would be difficult to communicate to the people, and
so on. There are, as I say, formidable practical difficulties
to doing this, but it is worth discussing. The other question
that ought to be asked about this is: is there another easier,
lower cost way of getting to the same result or getting 80% of
the way for 20% of the effort? I think doing more with the business
model that energy suppliers have might be a more promising route
to explore, at least in the medium term, so that they are operating
an energy services type business rather than rushing into personal
carbon trading. I would not want a debate about personal carbon
trading to distract us from doing things in the short to medium
term that will actually make a difference.
Q778 Lynne Jones: Do you think it
could possibly be tied in with an identity card system?
Mr Bates: I do not think anyone
has reached the point of actually designing it. It is very much
a "thought experiment" that the Secretary of State is
challenging us with, and that is good. It is good that we think
about these things. How would one do it? One would need some form
of identity and accounting regime. If you think about what it
takes to design a system like that, you would have to know who
is on the system, you would have to have some way of allocating
emissions to them and then some way of managing the trades that
they have. We can at present register individuals on the Emissions
Trading System Registry. If you pay £170 you can actually
become a member of the Emissions Trading System and start buying
and selling carbon allowances as an individual, if you are so
minded. Expanding that to 60 million people would be difficult.
Q779 Lynne Jones: What are the advantages
of doing that, if I wanted to do that? Is there any advantage?
Mr Bates: Judging by the number
of people that have done it, there is very little advantage, I
think. I think there are other interesting areas around off-setting
that are easier to get into than joining the Emissions Trading
System, to be honest. I think if you want to do that sort of thing,
looking for good quality off-setting might be a more promising
route for taking personal responsibility for carbon than joining
our Emissions Trading System as an individual member.
Q780 Chairman: I think I would feel
more convinced that they could manage personal carbon allowances
if they could pay 121,000 farmers on time, but there we are, that
is a personal point of view. Thank you very much indeed. I have
just refreshed my memory about your green tax submission, and
I think that is more than adequate, so there is no need to do
further work on that. Can I thank you both very much indeed for
coming. We have inevitably been constrained by time today. You
are obviously aware, by virtue of the written evidence, for which
I thank you, and the line that the Committee is taking, that we
are very much focused on thoughts about what engages the citizen
into action, and if as a result of hearing colleagues' inquiries
there are further points and recommendations that you would like
to make on how the citizen's involvement between, "I have
heard there is a problem, something should be done, but what can
I do?", can be strengthened, then your further thoughts would,
as always, be very much appreciated. Thank you very much.
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