Examination of Witnesses (Questions 120
- 139)
WEDNESDAY 13 JANUARY 2010 (morning)
MS JAYNE
ASHLEY AND
MR JAMES
GREENLEAF
Q120 Anne Main:
That is what I am saying, so you would say for any major infrastructure,
not just these?
Ms Ashley: Yes.
Mr Greenleaf: Maybe that would
link to the sort of spatial and zoning element. At the moment,
I think there is a requirement to look at CHP, but obviously,
if it is not practicable, the IPC cannot reject it because you
have not implemented CHP, but defining what that really means
because of the difficulty—
Q121 Anne Main:
But actively considered it, not just not done it.
Mr Greenleaf: Yes, of course,
so then, if you link that to zoning where you would actually be
locating it closer to sources of heat demand, then you might get
some useful co-benefits there.
Q122 Dr Whitehead:
Do you think any of these issues might be further clarified by
being more specific in terms of both the overarching document
and other documents about the aim for energy mix that the Government
may wish to pursue, and is it perhaps not the case that the failure
to provide such an aim could have implications for more specific
elements as far as NPSs are concerned?
Mr Greenleaf: I think so. I think
that is one of the central points. Obviously, we are not saying
specifically you go down to X per cent of this and Y per cent
of that, but actually to provide greater guidance and boundaries
on perhaps the mix you are expecting. You are not going to have
100 per cent gas or 100 per cent coal, but there will be certain
boundaries where you try for 10 per cent in each of them, an energy
mix which would be more appropriate and allow you to meet your
various targets and provide sufficient diversity in supply, rather
than at the moment just leaving it to the other end which is that
the market will deliver once we have some overarching targets
for renewables, but that is renewable energy across the board,
transport, heat, electricity and, even within that, we do not
specify what we are expecting the electricity sector to deliver
and, specifically, the Government has a lead scenario, but that
should not be considered in what we are aiming for, but actually
perhaps look at that and be a bit more specific about following
that scenario with some boundaries, saying, "This is what
might happen if we go either side of this", and give a certainty
to it.
Ms Ashley: That is what we were
expecting from the NPS, much more strategic guidance on the energy
mix, which would help us and developers as well.
Q123 Dr Whitehead:
Would you, on the other hand, think that perhaps fairly prescriptive
guidance on energy mix could produce problems in terms of how
individual applications then might be progressed?
Ms Ashley: It is always a difficult
balance, but, as it currently stands, the NPS just does not provide
any guidance at all on the mix, and we think that is again a missed
opportunity.
Dr Whitehead: Well, we have mentioned
the question of the relationship of guidance and consultation
and the extent to which the two sit well together. Perhaps we
could turn to that.
Q124 Judy Mallaber:
You have acknowledged in your evidence to the Committee, and you
have said that you have pointed this out before, the difficulties
of engaging the wider community, particularly because I think
you have used the phrase, "with what may seem to many to
be fairly abstract policy documents", but, given that, do
you feel that there has been as good an effort as possible to
engage people through the consultation process? Has it been a
genuine attempt to engage the public, given the difficulties that
you have pointed out?
Ms Ashley: I think there has been
a very traditional approach to community engagement, which we
think is a disappointment. I am not aware of the details of how
many people have attended various events and I know there has
been a series of workshops across the country, but certainly I
have been told that they have not been particularly well-attended.
I just think it is perhaps not even the function of, say, a government
department to go out and try and engage a community in a particular
policy area such as this, but there are other organisations who
are much more effective at doing that, and government departments
have perhaps missed an opportunity in using those and mobilising
them in order to engage with wider communities.
Mr Greenleaf: I think it is highlighted
in the TCPA's evidence that it effectively created one of the
strongest planning regimes since the Second World War and the
level of consultation and engagement to discuss that and approve
it should be appropriate, but the difficulty at the moment is
the level of documentation and the timescales and the limited
amount of engagement that is planned by Government. I think they
have got ten half-day workshops and a specific sustainable workshop,
so it is very difficult, given the timescales, to effectively
assess what is a very significant change.
Q125 Judy Mallaber:
Do you think though that, if there were a broader, longer timetable,
more people would have turned up? You have just said that maybe
the traditional way of doing it is not the right way and maybe
Government is not the best way of doing it. Does that mean they
should have engaged some of these consultants and spent a fortune
on people who know how to engage the community? How would you
suggest they should have gone about it and, if there had been
a longer timescale and not the overlapping problems that you have
talked about, do you think it would have made a blind bit of difference
in terms of how many people turned up and got engaged?
Ms Ashley: Potentially, I think,
it could have done. We have a very strong focus, as an organisation,
on this idea of a participatory approach to engagement, very open
and transparent. National Policy Statements have been in a drafting
stage or have been thought of as a concept for around two years,
so there has been a long time, whereas what we have done is a
very traditional approach where departments have drafted documents,
there have been iterations of those documents and it is only now
that we are having a 12-week public consultation, whereas, if
we had engaged with wider communities over that entire two-year
period, we could have had much stronger and more robust documents
which people would have bought into.
Q126 Judy Mallaber:
And, in practical terms, what would that have meant doing because
government departments are traditionally operating in certain
ways? What would your process have involved, and do you think
that the failure to do that means that they are not complying
with the Aarhus Convention?
Ms Ashley: I think there is a
genuine risk that they are not compliant with that. This is not
something we have tested out and we are not in a position to say
whether they are compliant or not, but we think there are risks
around that particular Convention. It is not necessary to pay
a lot of money to a big consultancy to do a huge national campaign,
but they could even have just picked out little pockets of people
and used some of the NGOs, who are very passionate and active
in this area and have very passionate and active membership and,
I am sure, would have been very happy to engage in some discussion
on these topics which could have been incredibly low-cost.
Mr Greenleaf: I think the RTPI
suggested in their evidence that they could have engaged directly
and indirectly by their networks of 35,000 around the country
to start with to actually stimulate the conversation and engagement
on this issue, if they had been given enough time to be able to
do that.
Q127 Judy Mallaber:
Those organisations themselves have known that these have taken
place and, given that they themselves are actively engaged, could
they not themselves anyway have started that process within their
own organisations?
Ms Ashley: I do not think it is
fair to say they have been actively engaged in what the NPSs were
going to say. The NPSs themselves, the actual contents of those
NPSs, most of these organisations have been excluded from that
process until they have been produced for the 12-week public consultation,
so it has been too late for that, whereas, if some of the concepts
had been discussed at a much earlier stage, that is where they
could have engaged and you would have had some useful input from
them.
Q128 Judy Mallaber:
What do you think are going to be the consequences of that?
Ms Ashley: Potentially, you are
not going to get the public engaged until specific applications
come forward. If the IPC are constrained where they have to approve
the application because it meets the National Policy Statement
as it currently stands, I think again you are going to have a
direct action impact and you could have a public backlash on that.
That is where not just your judicial review, but, as I say, the
direct action would come in which would delay the whole process,
whereas, if we had engaged all the way along, we could have overcome
that. I think that is a genuine concern on some of these applications.
Q129 Sir Robert Smith:
Earlier you said that obviously, if there had been a more spatial
aspect to this, then they might have woken communities to the
need to get engaged, but, in the absence of the spatial side,
could the consultation try and come up with examples of the kinds
of things that might be getting permission to try and stimulate
people?
Ms Ashley: I think something like
that would be useful because it is very hard unless you are really,
really into this. Not many people are going to sit down and read
the whole of the paperwork of the National Policy Statements;
it is a massive amount of documentation. People need practical
examples that they can understand, and it would help all of us,
I think, to work through an application so that we can all understand
how the IPC will work and what issues they will take on board,
and none of that currently exists, as far as I am aware, so that
is where you get into this abstract concept where people do not
really understand what this process is going to bring about.
Q130 Sir Robert Smith:
Also, is the timing a bit disastrous at the very tail end of a
Parliament with its committees having to compress their own scrutiny
because of the knowledge that Parliament is about to face an election
and then with the whole hiatus of the new Parliament not being
up and running?
Ms Ashley: It is another difficulty
in that you are taking this evidence when the public consultation
has not completed, so you have not got the full information from
what might come forward, so that is another issue that you are
going to have to grapple with.
Q131 Mr Anderson:
Can I go back to the point which was raised earlier about the
Aarhus Convention. What specifically do you think the NPSs may
be in breach of?
Ms Ashley: Sorry?
Q132 Mr Anderson:
Are there any specifics on what, you think, they may be in breach
of?
Ms Ashley: The Convention requires
active participation and access to environmental information.
I am not convinced, and this is a very personal response, but
I am not convinced that you could stand up and say that the correct
environmental information has been made available to people and
that people have had an ability to participate in the development
of this policy.
Mr Greenleaf: I think the main
basis where you have the comparison is with the nuclear consultations
where Greenpeace brought forward a judicial review and then DTI
approached the SDC about an engagement process which would actually
meet the Aarhus Convention requirements, but that was not imposed
or was not taken forward or the full recommendations were not
taken forward and the second judicial review was brought forward
again by Greenpeace. I think that is probably something we would
have to provide you with a bit more information on to understand
exactly where it fell down the first time and the second time
and how far DTI would have had to implement the SDC's recommendations
on engagement to not have reached that second judicial review.
Q133 Mr Anderson:
On a similar line, the Government also has a cross-government
code of practice on consultation. Do you think that this process
fits in with that?
Mr Greenleaf: In one of the other
pieces of evidence submitted by, I think it is, the Town &
Country Planning Agency, they highlighted, is it, DCLG's or then
ODPM's consultation documents or guidance that should be followed
as part of this process, but it raised the fact that it was completely
ignored, just did not come into play.
Ms Ashley: It was highlighted
as a key issue in, I am not sure if it was the White Paper or
the Climate Act, but it has not been followed through as the National
Policy Statement, so there could be risks there.
Q134 Dr Whitehead:
We would welcome a note, if you wished to send us one, on the
question of the previous discussions and arguments about consultation
on the nuclear White Paper, which it was precisely.
Ms Ashley: Yes, we set out a process
which would have taken six months and the DTI said there was not
time.
Dr Whitehead: Perhaps we could return
briefly to the considerations in the nuclear NPS and particularly
the question of nuclear waste.
Q135 Mr Anderson:
In the White Paper, the Government said that, before development
consents could happen, the Government would need to be satisfied
that effective arrangements existed, and then in the NPS it says,
"Having considered this issue, the Government is satisfied
that effective arrangements will exist and, therefore, the IPC
need not consider this question". What do you feel about
that?
Mr Greenleaf: I think we are very
sceptical about that. In 2006, the SDC published quite a detailed
review on the role of nuclear and the two biggest barriers with
regards to that were the question of economics and also the nuclear
waste question. We have not been able to look at that again in
more detail since the waste White Paper, but we are not really
aware of any substantial additional information to that. I think
the issue at the moment is about what you would consider is tangible
progress in terms of having a waste repository in place. At the
moment, we have the Managing Radioactive Waste Safely White
Paper and that is quoted within the nuclear NPS itself. It says
the Government does not have a fixed delivery timetable. We could
have a waste repository operational by 2040 and various other
timescales with final disposal of legacy waste by 2130, but the
report itself we do not think is sufficient tangible progress
if you compare that to countries, such as Finland, where they
have identified the sites, started the construction of a research
laboratory, got three years' worth of testing and they expect
to be operational by 2020. Of course, there may be delays and
that may not occur, but, taking a precautionary principle, you
would want to be sure you are starting your way practically on
the process that a repository would be in place, and we do not
think that just having documentation in a White Paper at the moment
really cuts the mustard on that. We would perhaps prefer that
the Government had actually identified the sites. I know they
are exploring the possibilities with local communities at the
moment, but they have not actually identified a site and started
some degree of geological testing because there is still a question
about whether the sites that are selected would actually be suitable
for the waste. I think, for us, at the moment we do not seem to
be far enough down the road in terms of tangible progress to make
the assumption that the waste repositories will be in place.
Q136 Mr Anderson:
Do you think that the IPC should have a role in this?
Mr Greenleaf: I think so; it is
another centrally important issue. If they do not take it into
account at the moment, then where else would it be considered
in terms of approving or not new nuclear plants?
Q137 Mr Anderson:
So is there a doubt between what the Government said in 2008 and
what the NPS is now saying that no real work is being done, or
is it that there is no evidence that the work is being done?
Mr Greenleaf: I think it is more
the evidence. The nuclear NPS almost quotes verbatim the White
Paper, and the Managing Radioactive Waste Safely White
Paper set out that there is not a fixed delivery timetable. We
may have something operational by 2040, but there is just a question
of whether that represents tangible enough progress to actually
have a repository operating in a suitable timescale and, in comparison
to other countries, we do not think that is necessarily the case.
Q138 John Robertson:
You talked about the dates and such, and it would appear that
you have some problem with the interim storage. Would that be
correct?
Mr Greenleaf: With the?
Q139 John Robertson:
The interim storage of nuclear waste at the moment.
Mr Greenleaf: I think the issue
of interim storage, as it always has been, is a temporary solution.
We are looking for a long-term, permanent solution and that has
to happen at some point.
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