Examination of Witnesses (Questions 48-59)
SIR IAN
ANDREWS, MS
HELEN GHOSH
AND MR
NIGEL SMITH
29 APRIL 2008
Q48 Joan Walley: Good morning and welcome.
I am not sure whether you heard the first session of our inquiry
into "greening" government but obviously it is a subject
very close to this Select Committee's heart. We very much welcome
all three of you coming here today. It would be really useful
for our Committee to have some sense of what your overall verdict
is on how well the Government is doing in meeting its sustainability
target. Is there anything you would like to add by way of introduction
to the way it is going at the moment?
Mr Smith: I am Nigel Smith. I
am the Chief Executive of OGC. Generally speaking I think the
SDC report was quite balanced. I think it gave credit where credit
was due. Against the eleven major SOGE targets, six are on track
or ahead of target. It was also a wake-up call in terms of certain
areas where we really do have to increase our pace. I think we
will have to get more coordination. Whilst there is an enormous
amount of best practice in Government, the key thing is there
is not consistency and we are not sharing best practice. I think
that really lead to some of the recommendations that came out
from SDC and the things that we have now announced we are going
to do.
Q49 Joan Walley: We are interested
in your own self-assessment of how Government is doing almost
irrespective of the recommendations of the actual report that
has been done. What are you most proud of? What are you most disappointed
about? What do you think you should really be addressing if we
are going to meet the target the Government is setting?
Mr Smith: It is doing certain
things well, on renewables in particular, in terms of space efficiency,
but the thing it is not doing well is on its carbon footprint,
that is the key issue which comes out of the report and I think
that is the key challenge that Government faces.
Q50 Joan Walley: On carbon?
Mr Smith: Yes.
Q51 Joan Walley: Do your colleagues
wish to add anything?
Ms Ghosh: From a Defra point of
view, we would absolutely agree with the point about the big challenge
being on carbon and obviously things like fuel prices have moved
against Government in the same way as they have other parts of
the economy. It will be challenging for us in terms of meeting
the UK's ambitious carbon targets. The other issue which our work
together will need to focus on over the coming months and years
is the issue of the overall impact of products. As you know, Defra
plays a big role in terms of sustainable products and innovation
in terms of giving government departments and the economy more
generally the tools to achieve overall carbon targets, from the
beginning to end of product production right through to waste
and I think that is still very much a developing area of policy
and that is something on which we will need to work very closely
with Nigel and his team over the coming period.
Q52 Jo Swinson: As part of the Government
Response to the report there is a new role for the OGC, there
is a new Chief Sustainability Officer and a Centre of Expertise
for Sustainable Procurement. It struck me when looking at the
report that there is an entire page dedicated to abbreviations.
There has been a lot of structural change. Even the SPOB was only
set up two years ago. To what extent do you think that the lack
of faster progress has been as a result of the Government's structures
not being right rather than a lack of political will and not having
it high enough up the priority list?
Mr Smith: One of the key things
is that I think the government structures were pretty good. I
think there has been a lot of good work done by SPOB in particular
over the last year, but a lot of what it did is not reflected
in this report because this report is looking at the year 2006-07.
Having said that, I think one of the important differences in
the approach going forward is actually that we are looking to
dedicate real resource, looking perhaps at the unsexy things of
data management, performance management and looking at the barriers
and the drivers. Rather than saying we are going to do a lot of
different things, what are the things that are going to make a
real difference? I think that has been the gap in the past. Certainly
as far as my department is concerned, we have an agreement to
put real resource into the centre of excellence. This is not a
virtual organisation, this is a real organisation with real horsepower
where we can actually get down and look at some of the real things
we are going to do to get improvement.
Ms Ghosh: The context over the
last 12 months really has supported collective government activity.
I think the impetus given by the Climate Change Bill and by the
Carbon Reduction Commitment element of that will impact on all
government departments by 2010 and in local government this means
there is enormous interest in, in particular, carbon reduction.
Something like 100 out of 150 Local Area Agreements that we are
currently negotiating will have a CO2 reduction target for the
whole local authority area in them. All of that will work to give
government departments and the wider public sector real incentives
to achieve these challenging targets.
Q53 Jo Swinson: A centre of excellence
sounds great, but there have been a lot of fine words from Government
in successive years. What practical difference will it make and
how soon will we start to see a difference?
Mr Smith: I think the jury is
out in terms of how soon because we have got to show it by performance.
I think the real difference it will make is hidden away in the
words there, which is that by the summer we are going to publish
plans on trajectories of achieving our targets by department and
we are going to coordinate those plans. The centre of excellence
is going to do certain things itself. It is going to enable departments
to do the work in a way where you can say, "Well, okay, these
are all the things we are doing. Is that plan going to achieve
the targets?" I think that is an important part of performance
management which has been lacking in the past. I think that is
a tremendously powerful thing to put in place. That is the single
thing I would bring out. Yes, there will be a lot of best practice
sharing, there will be training, there will be interest groups
and all those other things, but the real issue is looking at planned
trajectory, how you are going to achieve your output.
Q54 Jo Swinson: I suppose it seems
strange that that has not already been happening. Helen, as Permanent
Secretary of a Department, has there not been a plan in place
for how Defra was going to meet Defra targets?
Ms Ghosh: There has been. All
departments, as earlier reports by the SDC have shown, have had
plans in place. What this year's report from the SDC really made
us do—and Nigel was very, very helpful in taking the lead
on this—was to look at what the totality of this meant,
what did the data mean. As our response makes clear, there were
a number of consistent problems in various elements of the baseline
data and there still are. On things like waste, for example, we
know there are still problems of data. When we looked at it collectively
in response to this year's SDC report we realised that there were
identifiable problems that needed pooling together by a central
unit, such as Nigel's new team and that could make the whole Government
effort greater than the sum of its parts. This is why I think
this really is a step change, plus the political context and the
fact that Gus O'Donnell and I have a personal performance target
on this very clearly, Bill Jeffrey in MoD has it and Nigel has
it. We all have very clear targets now and this gives us a real
point for takeoff.
Sir Ian Andrews: Can I just take
up your earlier point? I think that is evidence of just how seriously
people are taking this because it is an evolutionary process.
We are responding to challenges as we understand them. The engagement
of the Sustainable Development Commission has been hugely helpful
as part of the Sustainable Procurement and Operations Board in
driving forward those initiatives. In terms of what am I most
proud of in answer to the earlier question? It is the momentum
that has built up, the traction that we have got since the period
covered by the SDC report in moving forward this agenda. I think
the level of engagement and the level of attention it is now getting
is really exciting. Helen talked about the Permanent Secretary
objectives. I think that is a huge change and a hugely important
initiative. Recognising the issues with the data, the OGC taking
a lead on that is hugely helpful. I would celebrate the evidence
of the dynamism of what is coming out of that.
Q55 Jo Swinson: How do you see SPOB
interacting with the new Chief Sustainability Officer and the
centre of excellence?[7]
Sir Ian Andrews: We are actually
looking at the moment at what the governance structure should
be for the centre of excellence[8]
and for the Chief Sustainability Officer, but I would see SPOB
having a significant role to play in that. Ultimately the Chief
Sustainability Officer is accountable through Nigel to the Cabinet
Secretary.
Q56 Jo Swinson: Accountability is an
interesting issue. The previous witnesses raised queries about
this. How exactly will that work accountability wise? Will it
be to Defra as the lead department of the Treasury or directly
to the Prime Minister? Where does the accountability run?
Mr Smith: I think that is still
under discussion. The important thing from my point of view is
that I have a very clear understanding of who I report into, who
the Sustainability Officer reports into, that is myself, I report
into Gus and the agenda reports in to the Commercial Delivery
Board, which is the collective of all of the Permanent Secretaries
of the largest departments. That goes straight into the agenda
I have on collaboration, on estate management. There is a very,
very clear focus of accountability now. That is certainly under
discussion as far as ministerial responsibility is concerned.
Q57 Jo Swinson: Will that be clarified
at some point? I am just thinking about us as MPs.
Ms Ghosh: Clearly you need to
be clear who is the minister you would summon down to sit here
to talk about it next time, SDC report. I think the key thing
is, as you were saying, we really have now pooled together a very
clear set of responsibilities within Government reporting, Permanent
Secretaries with their responsibilities, Nigel's responsibility
for pulling it together and reporting to Gus. I keep seeing flashing
on my screen letters from Gus to various Permanent Secretaries
saying, "I want a report by such-and-such a date on how you
are getting on with drinking water." He is taking this very
personally and holding it to account.
Q58 Joan Walley: Ministerial accountability
and responsibility you say is still not quite clear.
Ms Ghosh: In terms of the single
point in Government from whom you would seek assurances in a Committee
like this, I can assure you that Hilary Benn, Des Browne and all
ministers are now very, very focussed on this and delivering our
individual departmental contributions.
Q59 Jo Swinson: That rather suggests
it has been driven from the Civil Service rather than from government
ministers.
Ms Ghosh: No. If you had Hilary
Benn here, I can assure you, you would get plenty of passion.
He is determined that Defra should rise to the very top of the
league table. We have got a programme called "Defra as Sustainability
Leader" so keen is he to do that. He keeps asking me how
much electricity we are consuming on various floors in Nobel House!
Sir Ian Andrews: There might be
some competition between ministers!
7 Note by Witness: The Member meant to refer
to the centre of expertise, not the centre of excellence. Back
8
Note by Witness: The witness meant to refer to the centre
of expertise, not the centre of excellence. Back
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