The work of the Committee in 2007-08 - Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee Contents

3  Working methods

Setting priorities for our work

30.  Our programme has to take account of emergencies that can occur, such as animal disease outbreaks, or important policy developments. We try to remain light on our feet, and we will continue to aim to respond to significant new issues as they emerge.

Maximising our time-effectiveness

31.  Defra's responsibilities are very wide, and time does not always allow us to do all that we would wish. We have devised a number of ways of working to maximise the impact we can make within the time available to us. For example, we have once again used our short form of inquiry—where we seek written evidence and then hold a single evidence session. This time we used it for our inquiry into the Government's implementation of the Nitrates Directive.

32.  We have in the past set up a series of sub-committees, which generally met on Mondays while the main Committee met on Wednesdays, allowing us to pursue two matters simultaneously. However in order to give us the maximum flexibility, we have now created a general Sub-committee, which is empowered to take oral evidence on any matter before the main Committee. If desired, a Member other than the Chairman can take the chair in the Sub-committee.

33.  We have broadened our former avian influenza "Observatory" (consisting of volunteers from among our membership who can keep the matter under review and report back to other Members) into a "Notifiable Animal Disease Observatory". We received a private briefing from the then Acting Chief Veterinary Officer, Fred Landeg, and another from Sir Iain Anderson, who conducted a review of the handling of the 2007 Foot and Mouth Outbreak.

34.  As already mentioned, a group of Members of the Committee were given a briefing by Defra's Permanent Secretary and senior officials on the Department's priority setting and budgeting. Two Members also met the Chief Executive of the Rural Payments Agency to discuss the RPA's performance in distributing Single Farm Payments.

35.  We have continued to ask individual Committee Members to conduct initial research on a subject and to recommend to the Committee whether to inquire into a subject and, if so, how this should best be done. As part of this process in respect of Defra science, Lynne Jones met the Defra Chief Scientist for a very helpful briefing on the organisation and scope of Defra's science effort.

36.  For the evidence session on the Departmental Annual Report 2008, the Committee agreed that individual Members would be asked to examine a chapter each of the Annual Report, and lead the questioning on that chapter in the evidence session. This worked well in keeping questioning focused, and we intend to use the same mechanism again.

37.  Where time does not permit us to conduct an inquiry or hold evidence sessions, we fulfil our scrutiny responsibilities through correspondence with Defra and other public bodies. We aim to publish the replies we receive from ministers and others on our internet site so that others can benefit from the information we are able to obtain.

Government responses to our Reports

38.  Our work does not finish when we publish our Reports. The Government is required to reply to our Reports within two months. In three cases—on the Common Agricultural Policy, Climate Change: the "citizen's agenda" and on Badgers and cattle TB—we have seen the need to make substantive comments on the Government response. On the last of these subjects, we heard oral evidence from the Secretary of State on the response. We also intend to follow up our work on Flooding by taking up the suggestion by Sir Michael Pitt, who conducted a review of the lessons to be learned from the 2007 floods, to examine how Defra is responding to and implementing his recommendations.

39.  We attach as an Annex a table which builds on the one we published in our corresponding Report last year showing the Government responses to our Reports' various conclusions and recommendations.

Public involvement in the Committee's work

40.  We have continued to work in ways which make it as easy as possible for members of the general public to take part in our inquiries and give us their views. This year, we twice asked for help from the public in formulating the terms of reference of our inquiries: on Defra's scientific work and on Defra's performance in improving energy efficiency and reducing fuel poverty. The responses were extremely helpful, and helped direct and focus the terms of reference of our inquiries.

41.  We also took evidence away from Westminster on two occasions. In January, we visited Lincoln and heard from local people and organisations about the problems caused by flooding, and about possible solutions. In July, we travelled to North Yorkshire to visit rural businesses and to take evidence from representatives of business and economic development organisations on the potential of the rural economy. Both these occasions were very helpful to us in formulating our conclusions and our recommendations to Government. We repeat our thanks to the Environment Agency, The Lawn, Lincoln, the Commission for Rural Communities and the Wensleydale Creamery, Hawes, for their help with the organisation of these events, and to those who came to give evidence to us at these meetings.

42.  In our flooding inquiry, we asked anyone affected by the recent floods to contact us with their views and recommendations. As a result of this we received a very large number of pieces of written evidence from individuals. We also invited Members of Parliament for affected constituencies to write to us, and received very helpful comments from our colleagues. We took oral evidence from five of those Members in December.

Media coverage

43.  The Committee has continued to have a high media profile during the year, particularly with the launch of our Reports on Badgers and Cattle TB and on Flooding. Specialist agriculture and environment journals frequently carry stories about our Reports and evidence sessions. The daily BBC radio programme Farming Today often broadcasts extracts and reports of our evidence sessions and interviews our Members and witnesses, provoking further interest in our work from the public. The BBC's You and Yours programme has also run several phone-in programmes on the work of the Committee. Our visits outside London have interested local media, particularly when we have taken evidence away from Westminster. In addition Members have contributed to local and regional media outlets interested in our work. We are grateful for the continued interest from broadcast and print media in the Committee's work and providing the public with an opportunity to become involved in our inquiries.

Reducing our own environmental impact

44.  Our remit and our recent work on climate change has made us particularly conscious of the environmental impact of our own activities, especially travel. Our domestic visits are largely made by train, with local transport by bus or taxi. The Committee's visits abroad in 2007-08—to France and to Brussels—were also made by train, both because it was convenient and because it would minimise our carbon footprint.

45.  We very much regret, however, that the House of Commons has not yet abandoned its use of bottled water and plastic cups in meeting rooms. Although this is bad for the House's reputation generally, it is particularly unhelpful for the reputation of a Committee examining environmental and sustainability policy that the House persists with this wasteful practice. We urge the House to provide tap water and glasses in meeting rooms without delay.

Sources of information and assistance

46.  We record our gratitude to all those people and organisations who have taken the time and trouble to send us evidence, assist with our visits, or otherwise helped us during the Session.

47.  Within the House, we have continued to make use of the financial and legal expertise within the House of Commons Scrutiny Unit. This has been particularly important in connection with our work on Defra's budget and finances and in examining the Draft Marine Bill. We also received advice from members of staff of the House of Commons Library on the Draft Marine Bill and on agriculture matters and from the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology on biodiversity and disease matters.

48.  As last year, we have benefited from the assistance of the National Audit Office. We asked the NAO to examine the financial figures that were in dispute between Defra and British Waterways. We received its response in December 2007 and published it on the internet.

49.  The Committee has recorded its appreciation for the work of Chris Stanton, the former Clerk of the Committee, and we are grateful for the support provided by all of the Committee's staff. In particular, we have benefited from the Liaison Committee's decision to create the inquiry manager post. We have had the benefit of the assistance of Dr Jim Watson of the Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex as our special adviser on our climate change inquiries this year and on the inquiry to be undertaken in 2008-09 on energy efficiency and fuel poverty. We have also been advised on our flooding inquiry by Professor Colin Green of the Flood Hazard Research Centre at the University of Middlesex, and Frank Farquharson, Director of Water Resource Associates Ltd. We offer our thanks to them all.

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Prepared 15 January 2009