Appendix 1: Letter from the Chairman of
the Environmental Audit Committee
THE WORK OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL AUDIT COMMITTEE
IN 2007
1. In lieu of my Committee agreeing an Annual Report,
I am writing to you, as in previous years, to set out the key
components of the Environmental Audit Committee's work programme
during 2007. Our terms of reference are to consider to what extent
the policies and programmes of government departments and non-departmental
public bodies contribute to environmental protection and sustainable
development and to audits their performance against such targets
as may be set for them by Ministers. We are not a departmental
select committee and therefore do not address the core tasks.
Overview of work
2. Over the course of the year the Committee and
Sub-Committee took evidence from Ministers on a total of four
occasions, and on one occasion from a Member of the House, Elliot
Morley MP. Oral evidence was taken from officials from four different
Government departments on seven separate occasions. Although much
Committee activity has an inevitable focus on Defra, other departments
involved in the EAC work programme have included HM Treasury,
the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Department for Business,
Enterprise and Regulatory Reform.
3. At the start of this Parliament the Committee
decided that the threat presented by climate change should be
its main priority. Over the past year we have conducted a number
of inquiries linked to this theme. We have also continued to conduct
inquiries into other areas reflecting our cross-departmental remit,
notably environmental diplomacy and the role of regulatory impact
assessments. The nature of our work, and in particular the choice
of climate change as a theme for this Parliament, means that we
often return to issues or identify issues in one inquiry that
then form the basis for further inquiries. This allows us to track
progress and follow-up on our recommendations effectively.
Climate change
4. The Committee played a key role in scrutinising
the draft Climate Change Bill. In Beyond Stern: From the Climate
Change Programme Review to the Draft Climate Change Bill the
Committee made specific recommendations for strengthening the
Bill. At the same time we looked in detail, following reports
carried out for the Committee by the National Audit Office, at
the Government's entire systems for monitoring carbon emissions
and the effectiveness of carbon reduction policies. Several Members
of my Committee also served on the Joint Committee on the Draft
Climate Change Bill and EAC staff supported its work.
5. Emissions trading was one of the Committee's biggest
concerns in 2007. We issued a major Report, The EU Emissions
Trading Scheme: Lessons for the future, in March. The report
assessed the effectiveness of the first phase of the scheme, and
made recommendations for making future phases more robust and
effective. The Committee then followed this up with a second report
in October, containing the government response to the first plus
an important commentary on it, recommending improvements in the
transparency with which the Government reports the effects of
emissions trading. This was in turn followed by a debate on the
initial EAC report in Westminster Hall.[144]
6. In March the EAC also published its annual Report
on the Treasury's 2006 Pre-Budget Report. This year the Committee
focused on the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change,
published the previous October.[145]
We opened our inquiry with an evidence session with Sir Nick Stern,
his first appearance before a select committee since his review
was published. Our Report highlighted the urgency of the messages
in his report, as well as the gap that often exists between those
recommendations and implementation. The Committee has since taken
evidence on the 2007 Pre-Budget Report and will produce a Report
before the Budget in 2008.
7. The Committee looked at the Voluntary Carbon Offset
Market. We recognised that elements of the carbon offsetting market
were less than robust and that this had the potential to devalue
the entire concept. The attitude of the airlines was singled out
for particular criticism. We found that carbon offsets have a
role to play in cutting carbon emissions and raising awareness
of climate change. However, encouraging offsets must not inhibit
increased efforts to cut emissions and research is needed to find
out if buying offsets makes people more or less determined to
cut their own carbon footprint. We recommended that government
should compel the most carbon-intensive businesses to offer offset
services and individuals should be given a compulsory-choice option
for offsetting when procuring carbon intensive goods and services.
We insisted on the need for greater transparency in the offset
market.
8. There are a number of inquiries that we started
in 2007 but are yet to bring to a conclusion. In summer 2007 the
Committee undertook an inquiry into Personal Carbon Allowances.
This inquiry was a rare opportunity to look beyond existing policy
and examine the merits of a radical and still developing policy
idea. We also finished taking evidence on an inquiry looking at
how the Government is encouraging businesses to reduce their emissions
and the role that the Climate Change Levy and the associated Climate
Change Agreements play. We will produce Reports on both of these
topics early in 2008.
9. The Committee also kept up its tradition of regular
one-off evidence sessions with the Secretary of State for Environment,
Food and Rural Affairs, and the Chief Scientific Adviser, in both
cases concentrating largely on climate change and energy policy.
Environmental impact of trade and development
10. In 2006 the EAC created a Sub-Committee to conduct
a cross-government series of inquiries assessing the environmental
impacts of trade and development. The Sub-Committee concluded
its work in 2007 with two inquiries into the UN Millennium Ecosystem
Assessment and the FCO.
11. The UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) was
a unique study that showed how human activity is leading to species
extinction on a massive scale, climate change and worsening poverty,
and investigated how these challenges might be met. We found that
despite some progress the Government had more to do to ensure
that the MA findings were mainstreamed in Government policy. We
found that the impact of the MA had been mixed; many governments
around the world had been slow to grasp its importance. We recommended
that the Government do more in the UK to ensure that current measures
of growth properly valued the environment and that economic indicators
take human well-being into account.
12. In the last of its inquiries the Sub-Committee
looked at Trade, Development and Environment: The Role of the
FCO. Given increasing knowledge of the risks associated with
climate change and environmental degradation, we found that the
FCO has a more important role than ever to play in building international
support for, and helping to deliver, UK international environmental
objectives. In particular, the FCO has a pivotal role where diplomacy
is critical to achieving success, such as in international negotiations
on biodiversity and climate change. We acknowledged that the FCO
is doing some good work on a number of international environmental
issues. The appointment of a Special Representative on Climate
Change and the Foreign Secretary's robust argument for the consideration
of climate change at the UN Security Council is evidence of the
diplomatic effort that the FCO is putting behind this issue.
13. Nevertheless, we expressed major concerns that
the FCO was neglecting a number of key international challenges
including biodiversity loss and environmental degradation. We
felt that the structure of the FCO was not up to the task of dealing
with the challenges posed by international environmental degradation.
Structure of Government
14. Committee staff have developed a good working
relationship with the media office in order to maximise coverage
of Committee reports. Extensive coverage of our Report on the
Structure of Government and the challenge of climate change
may have resulted in part from this improved cooperation.
In that report our main conclusion was that a powerful new body
should be created within the Cabinet Office, headed by a senior
Minister, to drive forward the Government's climate change policy
and to diminish inter-departmental conflict. We welcomed the draft
Climate Change Bill and the creation of the Office of Climate
Change but felt that the current institutional and policy frameworks
for dealing with climate change were confused and did not promote
effective action on reducing emissions. We concluded that a review
of government action in the area of climate change was needed
to provide clarity of responsibility for developing and delivering
climate policies. We also recommended that long-term mitigation
and adaptation policy frameworks must be developed to ensure that
policy decisions taken today do not lock in long-term emissions,
and to prepare the UK for climate change impacts. We argued that
the UK must be equipped to meet both the challenge of a carbon
constrained world and the likely climate change impacts that will
occur. For example, it would be disastrous if bad planning policy
meant that today's new developments become tomorrow's climate
slums.
15. We also investigated whether the civil service
has the skills it needs to climate-proof the UK. We found that
there are skills shortages in the civil service and that failure
to address these will undermine attempts to move the UK to a low
carbon economy.
Regulatory Impact Assessments and Policy Appraisal
16. In November 2006 the Committee carried out an
inquiry into Regulatory Impact Assessments and Policy Appraisal.
The inquiry investigated the extent to which sustainable development
and environmental concerns were taken into account in RIAs, a
key component in policy development and decision making. Having
established that RIAs were generally lacking in this area, the
report concluded that this shortcoming derived from a lack of
awareness and specialist training among officials compiling RIAs;
a focus on monetising costs and benefits which made it difficult
to convey the extent and importance of environmental impacts;
and a restrictive template and layout for the summary page which
further marginalised environmental impacts. The Committee urged
all departments to consider the environmental impacts of their
policies in more depth, and for the RIA guidance and structures
to be altered to allow environmental concerns to be communicated
more fully.
17. The inquiry into RIAs was a good example of the
Committee's commitment to investigating the extent to which the
policies and programmes of all government departments contribute
to environmental protection and sustainable development. RIAs
were used to inform policy decisions across Government, and therefore
had the potential to operate as a crucial mechanism in ensuring
greater appreciation of the environmental impacts of policies
across all departments. The Committee's inquiry ran parallel to
the Better Regulation Executive's consultation on overhauling
impact assessments. We regret that the outcome of that consultation
was in many respects a backward step, meaning that RIAs remain
a tool that minimises environmental concerns, rather than giving
them due importance.
Biofuels
18. We completed an inquiry into the question of
whether biofuels are sustainable; our Report was published early
in 2008.
Adequacy of Government responses
19. Most of the responses to our reports have been
delivered on time and are of a satisfactory quality. While the
responsibility for replying to our reports is largely borne by
Defra, we have also received timely responses from other departments,
including the Treasury and FCO. In most cases we have been able
to publish the responses without comment. However, as I described
above, we felt it important on the EU ETS to provide a commentary
on the Government's response. For our Report on the draft Climate
Change Bill we felt the government response was inadequate in
a number of areas. However, the Committee felt that the best way
to deal with this was to seek to table amendments to the Bill
on report that would allow the issues to be debated on the floor
of the House.
Visits
20. In December 2006, the Committee travelled to
Brussels for a productive session of meetings with officials from
the European Commission, as well as representatives of pan-European
environmental NGOs. These meetings concentrated on emissions trading
(in particular the development of policies aimed at bringing aviation
into the EU ETS), transport policy, and water and pollution legislation.
21. The Committee has continued to monitor international
meetings on climate change. In February 2007 three members of
the Committee attended a meeting of the Legislators' Forum of
the Gleneagles Dialogue in Washington. In December one member
of the Committee spent a week at the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change Conference of Parties and Meeting
of Parties meetings in Bali.
Relationship with the NAO
22. The relationship with the National Audit Office
(NAO) is a key relationship for the Committee and one that we
value. Last year the Committee continued to build on its work
with the NAO. Several of the Committee's inquiries in 2007 were
influenced by a paper the Committee commissioned from the NAO
on options for scrutiny of policy on climate change. The NAO continues
to support the work of the Committee and has delivered several
useful briefs to inform inquiries and provide information on particular
policy instruments.
23. The inquiry into Regulatory Impact Assessments
and Policy Appraisal, in particular, demonstrated the benefits
of the Committee's close working relationship with the NAO. The
NAO produces an annual assessment of RIAs, and at the Committee's
request the Environmental Audit and Sustainable Development team
at the NAO undertook a further, more focused study into the consideration
of sustainable development issues in RIAs. The NAO were able to
use their resources and unique access to Government to provide
a thorough and insightful assessment of this aspect of impact
assessments. This briefing document proved invaluable in informing
the Committee and further, informal collaboration with the NAO
supported and informed the inquiry throughout its course.
Membership
24. Getting sufficient committee members to attend
a meeting is increasingly difficult; our overall attendance has
fallen from 58.2% in Session 2005-06 to 44.5% in the last Session.
We have a core of very assiduous and hardworking Committee members
but Members are busy and clashes with other business are increasingly
common. We have a number of specific problems with membership
that affect attendance:
- Shahid Malik MP became a DFID
Minister in the June 2007 reshuffle, and has not yet been replaced;
and
- by convention the Minister for the Environment
is a member of the Committee but Ian Pearson MP was moved to a
different portfolio in June 2007 and not replaced on the Committee
until January 2008; this was simply a matter of replacing Ian
Pearson with his successor and we cannot see why it took so long
for this change to happen.
25. My Committee supports the Liaison Committee's
position on the size of committees. Our active membership is much
lower than the sixteen members laid down in SO No. 152A. If our
Committee had twelve or fewer members we would not have the same
difficulties we face now with ensuring we have a quorum and the
size of the Committee would more accurately reflect its active
membership.
26. The Committee fulfils a unique and valuable role
looking across government, throwing a spotlight on how environmental
and sustainable development issues are addressed in a wide range
of different policies and examining what progress the government
is making towards the targets it has set in these areas. We could
still fulfil that role with a smaller membership.
Mr Tim Yeo MP
25 February 2008
144 HC Deb, 25 October 2007, col 164WH Back
145
HM Treasury, Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change,
October 2006 Back
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