Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-75)
MR POUL
CHRISTENSEN
25 NOVEMBER 2009
Q60 Patrick Hall: Not because there
was any actual conflict of interest but because you conceded that
equally important is a possible perceived conflict of interest,
so you understand that very well. I still do not follow why it
is that with regard to your directorship of the Agricultural Central
Trading Limited, the point that Mr Williams made, even if there
is not an actual or material conflict, and I do not know whether
there is or could not be, surely there is a good chance that there
is a perceived conflict of interest. Could I invite you again
to tell us why do you resist? Is that a remunerated position?
Mr Christensen: It is, yes.
Q61 Patrick Hall: What is the remuneration?
Mr Christensen: Currently it is
just under £10,000 a year.
Q62 Patrick Hall: Okay. You have
answered the question before, I just lay it on the table. I do
not understand why you think there may not be a perceived conflict
of interest.
Mr Christensen: At the time I
said if that became an issue then I would resign, but I do resist
it for the reasons I gave to Mr Williams. I think it is very important
to do something else, and I am currently doing that. You get a
feel for how an industry is performing because the first thing
you see when you are trading with them is the trading patterns,
and that is important I think. I have also said, and leave it
on the table, if anyone raises it as a real problem then I will
do so because Natural England is where my main interest will lie.
Q63 Chairman: Can I just move on.
Let us assume that this process goes as you would like, everything
is in order, you are confirmed as the official Chair of Natural
England, what is going to happen on day one when you arrive in
the office, stamp of approval from the Select Committee if it
were to be given, stamp of approval from the Secretary of State,
and you think, "Right, this is it, I am in post"? What
is going to be different from acting as the Acting Chair where
you just keep the wheel ticking over until the new Chairman, possibly
you, gets into post?
Mr Christensen: I hope the wheel
continues to turn, yes, if it did not the wheels would fall off.
It is a very interesting role to be Acting, particularly for a
long period of time, because although you are Acting, and I have
given it my all, and personally I have behaved as a Chair would,
you still do not have the authority that goes with a Chair, and
neither does the organisation. The organisation is not led by
a Chair; it is led by an Acting Chair. That may be rather pedantic,
it may be rather semantic, but it does make a difference. I look
forward to the day when Natural England has a Chair for those
reasons, whoever it is. Now, if it is going to be me, on day one
is there going to be a revolution, no; can there be a revolution
given that I have been Acting Chair for ten months, no, but it
will give me the authority to continue where I think I have made
changes since I have come in. This is no criticism of what has
gone before, Natural England was at a natural point when it was
going to need to look at itself and maybe change some of the way
it performed.
Q64 Chairman: What are the priority
issues you are going to be looking at now you have got the authority?
You are there and you have got the stamp of approval.
Mr Christensen: For me, the main
priority for Natural England, and I think I said this at the beginning
and I will say it again, Chairman, is to increase people's awareness
of how important the natural environment is to them. We are here
to conserve and enhance our natural environment and we have other
purposes lying underneath that, which are to promote the natural
environment, get people to access it and to enjoy it, to get people
to earn their living from it, you know them as well as I do, and
that is where I am going to be. The priority to me is to ensure
that people value the natural environment, or understand the natural
environment and then they would value it, and then we can go on
improving it for everybody's benefit long-term. That is number
one priority. Following on from that, and this is a word I do
not like particularly because it is not very well understood,
I think our biodiversity, the species that exist in our natural
environment, we do need to ensure that we keep on maintaining
them at something like where they are now. If we go on seeing
species declining across the globe and across England, and many
people have responsibility for it at the moment, we will be short-changing
future generations. I see that as a major, major priority.
Q65 Chairman: One of the things you
have not mentioned is addressing some of the problems which you
outlined. You sent me, very kindly, a copy of your publication
Agri-Environment Schemes in England 2009, a Review of Results
and Effectiveness. I read the review and, for example, it
talks about "the entry level scheme has not yet delivered
the scale of intervention required to address the declines of
widespread species of farmland birds". We have debated that
on many occasions in the Committee. It goes on in the helpful
summary on page six, which you will be abundantly familiar with,
in putting forward some quite critical performance appraisal of
some of the agri-environment schemes. You did not say improve
the performance as one of your top three priorities, you ended
up with two things that you would do. Do you not think that improving
the performance of these schemes ought to be one of your top priorities?
Mr Christensen: I talked about
biodiversity and that is very much part of that process. That
is precisely where it is, that is a delivery mechanism for delivering
the priority I talked about and I think agri-environment schemes
will continue to evolve and they will need to evolve. They will
need to evolve in the face of climate change but they will need
to evolve anyway as we learn more about them and their effectiveness.
In terms of where I think it is important, there is a whole raft
of actions in terms of delivering better biodiversity, and agri-environment
schemes are but one, others go into the marine environment, others
go into urban areas, all of which are designed to increase biodiversity
and maintain it.
Q66 Chairman: Are you going to review
this area? Here is another one, it says, "evidence is emerging
that the popular hedgerow option in ELS may not be delivering
the full benefits anticipated". It sounds like there is a
bit of sorting out to be done, is there not?
Mr Christensen: Yes, there is,
absolutely there is, yes indeed.
Q67 Chairman: Are you going to have
an action plan sorted out with your Chief Executive to get this
stuff right?
Mr Christensen: Yes, and that
is what we are doing. One of the areas that we are looking at
is around the Campaign for the Farmed Environment, which is another
part of that process. It is to get more people involved in developing
agri-environment schemes on their farms that will deliver real
benefit, and they will change over time. That is precisely what
we will be doing. That will be part of the Campaign for the Farmed
Environment.
Q68 Mr Williams: The ethos of some
of these agri-environment schemes is that a prescription is devised
between Natural England and the farmer and the farmer gets paid
for delivering the prescription. Do you think there would be some
benefit, if there were a slightly different ethos, if at least
some of the payment was only to be paid on delivery of a result,
for instance, lapwing, curlew or whatever? We can do the preparatory
work but still the lapwing does not come there. Would it not really
focus the farmer's attention on getting a success if some of it
was paid on outcomes rather than just delivering the prescription?
Mr Christensen: It sure would.
It has been one of the big challenges for me to try and encourage
our people to look at how we can better shape some of our agri-environment
schemes. Paying on outcomes of course would be a huge step forward
in terms of getting results because there is nothing like being
paid for results to do it. However, if you look at the mechanisms
that you would need to put that in place and to monitor it and
to agree it, and then to pay for it, the mind boggles. That was
my first reaction, "For goodness' sake, how many skylarks
do you want? 50? Well, let's pay for 50 skylarks". Who counts
them? You are going to have an army of people—there are
enough people now running around the countryside—going out
counting skylarks and deciding whose land are they on. Are they
on this bit of land or the next door? It would be an absolute
nightmare. I do not see that as an easy solution, Mr Williams,
but I do think that we need to look at how we shape our agri-environment
and a lot of what we do, including our agri-environment schemes,
to measure it in different ways. The cost of some of our schemes
is higher than I would like it to be, so I think we need to look
at the cost of them as well.
Q69 David Lepper: Coming on from
that point, Chairman, over the next three years, whatever your
priorities might be, whether they are the same as they are at
the moment or whether you are going to go forward with different
strategies, are you confident that Natural England will have the
resources to do its work properly?
Mr Christensen: I do not think
anyone can be confident about any resources. Anyone who says to
me, "We are not going to be impacted by what is going on
in the wider world" is living in a different world from me.
Clearly that is going to be a main driver in terms of what we
do. We are already anticipating that. We have, for example, put
the entry level scheme—I presume you know a little bit about
the basic scheme we have for farmers—on-line to make it
easier for farmers to access and cheaper for us to administer.
I think that is the sort of thing that we are going to have to
do an awful lot more. No, I am not confident that we are going
to have as much money as I would like to deliver our core purpose
but, having said that, as I said earlier on, it is a contractual
arrangement, you then have to decide what your priorities are
with reduced resource and how effective they are, and that may
mean some fundamental changes in some of the things that we do
and how we do them, but we have to face up to that. That is what
a board is for, that is why we exist.
Mr Drew: So much of the delivery of Natural
England is actually commissioned through wildlife trusts and similar
local bodies now working in partnership, I am not pretending you
just pass the money over. One of the difficult birth pains that
Natural England had in the changeover from English Nature was
that was when there were budget cuts. The point I would make is
for wildlife trusts to have the sort of impact you would want
them to have they need security of funding and they need long-term
funding. What arguments are you going to have up the line with
Treasury to actually make the point that in all the areas the
natural environment is not one where you can turn budgets on and
off, even over a three year period? This takes decades sometimes
to really have the impact you want. What is your preparation for
that?
Q70 Chairman: As witnessed by the
problems with Sites of Special Scientific Interest which always
seem to be edging towards being in good condition right across
the piece but never, ever seemingly getting there.
Mr Christensen: Thank you for
that! I think, to answer Mr Drew's question as best I can, and
you mentioned the Treasury, we have just produced a report called
No Charge—it is a play on words—which demonstrates
the actual value of the natural environment and large parts of
it to society. I think in the past we have rather relied on the
fact that governments will put money into sustaining the natural
environment because it is a nice thing to do, it is a bit cuddly,
whatever, and there has not been a hard edge to it, which the
Treasury always look for. If you are a guy in the Treasury you
are going to say, "What is in it? What is the pay off?"
That report is one of the first attempts to put a value on what
the natural environment brings to society as a whole. We have
done other work around that and one of our purposes is to get
people to access and enjoy and benefit from the natural environment
and there is our Walk your Way to Health initiative. We have got
a lot of people now, every week, going out and walking in the
natural environment. We have now got evidence to show that every
pound we spend on that initiative saves the Treasury £7 in
terms of healthy people. At Natural England we are very proud
of that because we are working across Government. This silo mentality
has got to go. This silo mentality in terms of Government cannot
actually survive long-term when you are talking about a natural
environment because it impacts on everything. We are beginning
to demonstrate to Treasury that there is a real value in looking
after our natural environment. Will that bring in sufficient funds,
going back to Mr Lepper's question, that remains to be seen but
it is very important indeed that we go on making that point, and
we are doing that right now.
Q71 Mr Drew: Do you now understand
the Environmental Liability Directive and how it relates to Natura
2000 and, if you do, can you explain it to me?
Mr Christensen: I do not, Mr Drew.
I will find out and I will explain it to you when I know.
Q72 Mr Drew: If you do then you are
a better man than most civil servants who have tried.
Mr Christensen: There is a whole
raft of things. Someone asked me earlier on areas of weakness
and some of this legislation is another area of weakness.
Q73 Chairman: Let me just bring you
back to how much independence you think Natural England should
have. You alluded earlier to the pressures on resources in Government.
Let us say hypothetically somebody said, "Let's bring all
of Defra's family of bodies that deal with environmental issues
under one roof within the overall control of the Environment Agency"
and you were one of them, what are you going to do if somebody
comes up with a revolutionary idea like, "Let's make you,
if you like, a subordinate part of the Environment Agency, they
do the environment, you do the environment, let us bang the Rural
Payments Agency in as well because you hand out money to farmers,
they do as well, rationalise to save back office money, maintain
the veneer of respectability at the front of the office"?
Do you see that as a matter of principle upon which as a Chair
you would say, "No, I am not having any of this, it is either
independence or bust" or are you going to say, "Okay,
fine, thank you very much, jolly good idea"?
Mr Christensen: Neither. Clearly
there is scope for rationalisation of activities across not just
Defra family but across Government and this is why I mentioned
health, for example. I think there is an opportunity to rationalise
across the piece. If I was presented with that as a sort of area
that needed consideration I would be duty bound to look at delivering
for the natural environment, that is what Natural England's purpose
is. In any discussion of that sort that would be what drives me.
Now, Natural England may not exist in 10, 20, 30 years' time,
I do not know, I have no idea, there may be better ways of delivering
it. I am open to those ideas and anyone who closes their mind
to it is not living in a real world, frankly. I would need to
be absolutely sure that the core purposes for which we were established
were reflected properly in a structure that delivered for the
Natural Environment. I think you are asking me where I would fight
the corner and that would be the corner I would fight in. To say
that Natural England is sacrosanct and we have got to fight forever,
there may well be other ways of doing it that deliver better value
for money and we would be stupid to turn our backs on anything
like that.
Q74 Chairman: You are quite happy
to have an element of what I call creative tension in what you
are doing because I see from the Farmer's Guardian that
you have managed to upset the tenant farmers who say that Natural
England's misguided policy on dramatically reducing upland stocking
is something you have upset them about. You seem to have also
managed to upset people in the uplands by your Upland Vision which
seems to have caused some criticism. You believe in a bit of creative
tension to try and stimulate the debate in sometimes controversial
areas?
Mr Christensen: Not for its own
sake, no. I do not believe in creating tension just for the sake
of it or to stimulate debate. I went up to the launch of the Upland
Vision at Malham at which the NFU, the TFA, the CLA and the Moorland
Association all had an opportunity to speak. The press reports
to which I think you are alluding were not reflective of what
was said on that day, I have to say. That Uplands Vision is the
first real attempt to overcome the problems that bedevil farmers
and land managers in policy terms because most of them are short-term,
three years, five years, and if you take the natural environment
how long is five years, it is not the blink of an eye. We have
taken what some people think is a pretty bold step to say, "Well,
what would we like it to look like in 50 years' time?" We
had a series of montages showing what it could look like and that
was part of the beginning of a process. That was our vision and
from that will stem a lot of the actions that will fall out in
terms of new agri-environment schemes to deliver the vision. We
are going to attract criticism. When I say I do not actively go
out to seek criticism, I do not seek to avoid it either, if we
are being proactive and taking a long-term view. I do not like
it when people criticise us, of course, but there are times when
that is going to happen and we have to be bold enough to accept
when that is and address it and go on talking to people.
Q75 Mr Williams: One thing we have
not touched on is Natural England and National Parks. Could you
say something about your role but specifically in terms of new
designation, where designation of the New Forest and South Downs
has taken such a long time, a huge amount of energy has gone into
it. Some people are very happy now, some people not quite so happy.
What about new designations?
Mr Christensen: The Secretary
of State, did he not, announced three weeks ago a review of all
designations and I am not absolutely clear whether that includes
National Parks, to be quite frank, but certainly a review of all
other designations, SSSIs, NNRs, the whole raft of them, and we
welcome that. I think that is helpful, particularly as we are
going into a new way of doing things maybe with the Campaign for
the Farmed Environment. There are particular challenges in that
campaign but I do really welcome that because it does mean that
for the first time an industry is saying, "We want to deliver
for the natural environment" and we are absolutely behind
that, we want to make that work. Lots of designations, Mr Williams,
which are going to change over time and the review will point
the direction of some of that. Specifically National Parks, National
Parks are funded pretty much directly by the Department, Natural
England have a particular locus in chairing the selection panel
for some members that are the Secretary of State's Members on
National Parks. I hope that answers the specific question. In
general terms, National Parks are iconic, they are stunningly
beautiful places that inspire a lot of people and actually a lot
of people make a lot of money out of National Parks. I know we
hear all the talk about them constraining business, but actually
in many places they promote it. My wife and I have been—not
in my capacity as Chair of Natural England, I am sorry to personalise
this now—in four National Parks this year and you feel better
every time you go there. I think they are stunningly important
to our national economy.
Chairman: Good. Thank you for ending
our first pre-appointment hearing on a positive note. Can we thank
you very much indeed for answering our many and varied questions.
We now have a procedure to follow so I am going to draw the public
part of our proceedings to a conclusion. May I thank Poul Christensen
very much for coming before us. We now have to agree a report.
To members of the public, thank you very much for your interest
in coming, but now is the time if you would be kind enough to
vacate your seats because we have to go into deliberative session
about the report on this appointment. Thank you all very much
indeed.
|
