Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-79)
MR WILLIAM
JORDAN, MR
BILL STOW
AND MR
TREVOR HUTCHINGS
5 MAY 2009
Q60 Colin Challen: Does this conflict
at all with the green ministers in each department?
Mr Jordan: No, I think it just
means that there is a kind of lead for this in government as well
as a Green Minister in each department. I think the second thing
that this enables us to do is to get the right linkages with the
Greening Government ICT programme which is led by the Cabinet
Office, by the CIO's office there, and reports to Tom Watson.
The third aspect is that we have a Minister who will lead the
advocacy of the agenda more broadly and will engage with external
bodies and speak at conferences and so on.
Q61 Joan Walley: Just following on
a moment from Mr Challen's questions, for you at the OGC the responsibility
remit is in respect of procurement of common goods and services
and I am wondering whether or not there is a conflict in respect
of when services become outsourced. You mentioned yourself that
you were the one and the same person that dealt with best value
and with green sustainable policies, as it were. I just wonder
whether or not there is a conflict and how much what you would
hope to be within a government departmental regime you can make
sure is there within any contracted-out, out-sourced service and
whether that has presented itself to you as a conflict of interest
in terms of government commitments in respect of its estate, but
if it is then all out-sourced, so it is DWP with whoever it is
who then runs the office, how can you make sure that that is now
with them?
Mr Jordan: I would like to make
two points. First of all, to explain what my role is in OGC: we
do support cross-government, pan-government strategies for common
goods and services but these are in categories such as energy,
fleet, travel, office solutions, ICT, professional services, and
we have recently had an Operational Efficiency Programme report
recommending us to do this also for food, for construction and
for facilities management, so it is only across a limited number
of categories that we support pan-government strategies or are
developing them at the moment.
Q62 Joan Walley: Who is looking after
the rest?
Mr Jordan: The rest is procured
by departments for their own needs. We do engage with departmental
procurement over and above what is done in common goods and services,
but that is what I am personally responsible for. That includes
many of the categories where sustainability is most relevant.
Q63 Joan Walley: To go back to Mr
Challen's questions in terms of the responsibilities that permanent
secretaries now have, would they be assessed on their ability
to include these sustainable development objectives and any contracts
that were secured in respect of oursourcing?
Mr Jordan: The assessment at the
moment would be done very largely, if not wholly, in the light
of the SDC assessment of departmental performance, which covers
both sustainable operations and sustainable procurement. On the
outsourcing question, just to come on to that, much of the government
estate which is covered by PFI contracts is fully included in
the SOGE framework and is reported on. HMRC and DWP have large
estates, long-term contracts, they are both 100% included in the
framework. The only area where I am aware of an outsourced estate
which is not fully included—and it is one which was raised
by this Committee last year in fact—is the prisons estate.
That is not part of the SOGE framework but is reported on voluntarily
by the Ministry of Justice. Largely in response to what the Committee
suggested to government last year, it will now be ensuring that
any future PFI deals are fully covered in its reporting and has
started discussions with its existing contractors to see what
can be done about existing PFI prisons.
Q64 Joan Walley: To move on to the
Delivery Plan and the updates, I think you said in the update
that was published in December that the Government was on track
to exceed the 2010-11 target for carbon emissions from offices.
Given that the Government was not on track to meet this target
for 2007-08, can you give us solid evidence to show that the Government
is on track for the next reporting period?
Mr Jordan: The delivery plan shows
the detailed plans of each department, about what it is going
to do and what impact that will have. We are on track on the basis
of the forward trajectory, which assumes that departments will
do what they say and that it will have the impacts that they say
it will have. If those two conditions are met, we will exceed
the target. We will exceed all the targets at a pan-government
level. It is my job to make sure that happens.
Q65 Joan Walley: Given that you say
what will be achieved will be delivered by carbon management,
could you explain to me what carbon management is?
Mr Jordan: It is a kind of activity
that departments undertake with the Carbon Trust when they engage
in a carbon management programme. It involves taking an audit
of what they are doing, looking at what the can do to improve
matters. It is very largely a behavioural change programme.
Q66 Joan Walley: Is it audited?
Mr Jordan: The figures are the
ones which are reported, which are normally taken from things
like departmental fuel budgets for the year. They are the reporting
figures.
Q67 Joan Walley: You have confidence
that what you understand to be carbon management is understood
as being that by everybody else who is undertaking it.
Mr Jordan: I think what I have
given you is the fairly standard definition of what carbon management
amounts to. The other thing I would say is that there is no one
silver bullet that achieves reductions in carbon. We need to do
quite a number of things. One of the things we certainly need
to do is to work at the level of estate management. It is necessary
for us to reduce the footprint of our estate, to get up to private
sector space benchmarks, so that we are using less space to house
more people and we can give up buildings that we do not need.
It is necessary for us to make sure that when we go into new buildings
they are of high environmental quality and we will need to do
something also to retrofit our existing buildings to improve their
energy efficiency. I will just say that we need to work on estates,
we need to work on procurement, and we need to work on behavioural
change.
Q68 Joan Walley: I have one last
question on the delivery plan. It states that OGC is working to
resolve the barriers that are preventing mandating from meaning
exactly what is supposed to mean. I just wonder what those barriers
are.
Mr Jordan: I think, having done
some work on this now, there is quite a lot of confusion around
quite a number of issues in relation to the mandates which I am
intending to clear up. One element is: What does the mandate mean?
Another question is: What are we supposed to be doing to meet
it and how? Perhaps I could say something about the procurement
of buildings that fall in the top quartile of energy efficiency,
which is a government policy that has been in place for four years.
To clarify that policy requirement on departments, we have been
able for the first time, now that we have Energy Performance Certificates,
to say what is it to procure a building that falls into the top
quartile of energy efficiency, and then to look at what are those
rare circumstances, which were always part of the policy, under
which you might procure a building that fell outside—whether
that is because we need a building in a certain location and there
are no buildings that fall within, or a more interesting question
that we are currently looking at where a department is saying,
"I can take out a bit more space in a building that I already
have. It is not a top quartile building but if I put my additional
staff with my existing staff in that building, I will do a lot
less travel, so this may be the most sustainable outcome."
To clarify what you are supposed to do to meet it and, sometimes,
where the mandate has been set essentially on a comply or explain
basis, to say what would be the case where explanation was appropriate.
Q69 Chairman: You have mentioned
carbon management and you said that was partly behaviour change.
Mr Jordan: Yes.
Q70 Chairman: In the update to the
delivery plan published last December there are two separate items.
Carbon management is quite a big chunk but you have separately
itemised behaviour change. How does that reconcile with what you
have just said?
Mr Jordan: Carbon management would
be more the kind of activity where you put in, for example, automatic
meter reading, do serious work around what are the anomalies in
my data and what can I do about that, whereas the behavioural
change item will be more general campaigns; for example, to switch
off equipment when you go home for the weekend. However, I have
to say that what we have done at the pan-government level in relation
to rationalising the detail at the departmental level, is very
much to take at face value what the department has said it is
doing. One of the things I am working on is to try to get a simpler
and more transparent set of high level descriptions, to make sure
that we are counting everything in different departments in the
same way.
Q71 Chairman: Switching off lights
is behaviour change rather than estate management and rationalisation.
Mr Jordan: Estate management and
rationalisation is what I have just described: "We had 10
buildings and we are moving down to four. We are giving each person
less of a space/footprint."
Q72 Chairman: Greening ICT is not
switching off computers?
Mr Jordan: It might be, if switching
off computers was part of your greening ICT programme but there
are 18 things that might form part of your greening ICT programme
and there is quite a wide range of them.
Q73 Jo Swinson: The plan is quite
specific that it is 121,478 tonnes of CO2 that are expected to
be delivered by carbon management. Are you saying that figure
has just been what the departments have said: "We think we
will be able to save 3,621 tonnes through this" and you add
up what all the departments say? Or is it done in a more rational
way, where you say, "The Carbon Trust has worked with these
departments and it has found that it has managed in the past to
cut their carbon by x per cent; therefore, if these departments
are going to work with the Carbon Trust that is what we will expect"?
Is it done in that rational, logical way, or is it just that they
give you a number and you add them all up?
Mr Jordan: At the moment they
give us a number and we add them up. The first stage in doing
this process was to get plans in place so that we could see whether
or not we were on track to meet the targets. The second stage
in December was to look at those plans again in the light of last
year's outturn. The third stage will be to rationalise the plans.
Q74 Jo Swinson: When is that rationalisation
expected to happen and who is responsible for making sure that
the next plan or update that is published is robust and based
on solid data?
Mr Jordan: It is my responsibility
to work with departments to make sure that plans are robust and
based on solid data. We will revise the plan, as we promised,
twice a year. I expect this to be an iterative process. I am not
expecting to leap from where we are today to a perfect plan. Certainly
we did not the second time round and we will not the third time
round. If you look below the high level detail at what individual
departments have done, I am sure it will not surprise you that
some departments have much more robust plans than others just
in terms of what meets the eye, and there are a number of departments
that I expect to improve their trajectory's robustness.
Q75 Jo Swinson: The next plan, this
summer, will hopefully be a bit more robust. Do you think at the
moment, therefore, the delivery plan and its update will need
to have a bit of a health warning in terms of whether or not that
will be achieved, given that it is not yet based on wholly robust
data?
Mr Jordan: We will know a lot
better as we get this year's data out and as we get more recent
data out whether we need to put a health warning on future plans.
I am feeling confident that we are going to deliver but that is
not confidence yet based on outturn data for the 12 months that
I have been in post.
Q76 Martin Horwood: All three of
your departments are involved in the review of the SOGE framework.
The Sustainable Development Commission in their report claimed
that the progress so far has been mixed. They said in their evidence
to us just now that they still think a step change is needed,
that leadership has to be shown, and that it is important that
government shows that leadership not only in its own operations
but for the economy as a whole. In the review of the framework,
what steps are you going to take to ensure that the level of ambition
is really as high as is needed for the whole economy and for government?
Mr Stow: We are in the lead on
the review, although obviously involving the two departments represented
here and other departments like Transport. I should say that the
review only started this year. I think someone said that it has
been going for two years, but it only started this year. We will
be going to ministers collectively in the autumn, so that we can
introduce the new structure from April next year. That is the
background timetable. Some of the existing targets expire anyway
in 2010-11, so we need to look at those. We have a significantly
changed policy landscape around carbon with the carbon reduction
commitment, the carbon budgets, the new Climate Change Act, but
also on water and waste, so we need to look at whether our current
targets are sufficiently ambitious against the background of those
major changes in policy that have happened since the framework
was introduced. Yes, the level of ambition will be one of the
really critical things that we will want to look at. The second—something
that also came up as the SDC were giving evidence—is scope.
That is in two senses, I think: first, the wider coverage you
have been arguing for, covering NDPB, all executive agencies,
and, second, what you might call deeper coverage. At the moment
some of the targets, at least, only apply to office emissions.
Should we have wider coverage beyond the office structure of departments?
I think there is also a question—and this came up earlier
too—as to whether you reward those departments that have
made most progress in some way, as to whether you differentiate.
That is quite a difficult problem but one which we are also looking
at. We will also be looking at—another point that came up
earlier—issues related to the supply chain. The work we
have done in Defra on our own carbon footprint, which was piloting
this across government, shows that it is not an easy thing to
do. The methodology is only just in place really and we are starting
to apply it, but that is something we will want to look at again,
as to whether the methodology, the capacity is adequate to be
able to tackle that now or whether that is something on which
we need further work.
Q77 Martin Horwood: Perhaps I could
come back on that. I do not find that answer completely reassuring,
if I am honest. I asked you whether or not the level of ambition
was going to be there and you are looking at whether the targets
need to go beyond office targets or whether the supply chain needs
to be incorporated. Surely the answer to all these questions is
blindingly obvious, that it does need to go beyond these limited
targets, that they do need to be more ambitious than you have
had before, and you should be pushing other government departments.
There is a very good example in your own department to this: the
Environment Agency said that their ambition is to reduce emissions
by 30% by 2012 and they think that all other government departments
and agencies should be able to set similar ambitious targets.
Would you back them in that?
Mr Stow: The fact that we are
looking at these issues is a recognition that we need to have
a higher level of ambition. I would be reluctant to pre-empt ministerial
discussion in the autumn over exactly what the level of ambition
is, but the fact is that we are looking at all of these areas
that you have raised, the SDC have raised, and we would not be
doing that if we did not think that some more could be done.
Q78 Martin Horwood: One of the examples
you gave was the supply chain. Would you like to see most (if
not all) of the supply chain brought within the scope of these
targets? Is that your starting position?
Mr Stow: I think the supply chain
is an area where, yes, we would. We want to be ambitious, but
the question is: Does the means of doing this really exist yet?
There is something called PAS-2050 that is a methodology for looking
at this but it is a very new area for all of us, including the
private sector. How we do it, how we can set targets for it, which
we really do need to look at very closely before we can reach
any conclusions.
Mr Jordan: One of the initiatives
the Government took last year was a pilot with the carbon disclosure
programme, which was pilots within OGC, within Defra and within
the SCO, sending out questionnaires to suppliers on a voluntary
basis which would enable us to determine their carbon footprint.
Take-up was 75-80%. We are now extending that pilot across 12
departments with 300 suppliers this year. I think it will be a
slow process, first of all to gather data on the carbon footprints
of suppliers, and then to think, "What is it sensible to
do about that?"
Q79 Martin Horwood: I will shamelessly
quote an example that has a constituency interest and so I will
declare it. There is a print management company in my constituency
that is working on carbon footprinting technology for the procurement
of print. That is something very simple that cuts across the whole
of government. The whole of government produces, as we know, enormous
quantities of paper. From OGC's point of view, is there a standard
approach to carbon footprinting across the whole of government
now? If there is not, should that be ambitious and in the new
SOGE framework?
Mr Jordan: From OGC's perspective,
we are focusing on the carbon disclosure programme to develop
carbon footprints from our major suppliers, and we will take it
on from there.
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