Written evidence submitted by the New
Economics Foundation
SUMMARY
Sustainable development objectives are universally
supported in principle, but are often not acted on when they conflict
with more immediately pressing objectives. It is this conflict
that has to be managed.
The traditional approach is to institutionalise the
conflict into different departmental points of view. The alternative,
which we recommend, is to make the conflict the business of a
central unit.
This is because the traditional approach:
- Is at times wasteful and inefficient.
- Makes it difficult for the government to respond
in an agile way when things don't go according to plan.
- Cannot mobilise society for the major changes
that will be needed in the 2020s.
- Cannot provide the kind of strategic perspective
which the scale of the challenge demands.
- Cannot give enough air time to non-climate change
threats to sustainability.
Hence we recommend:
- The Cabinet Office Minister of State should have
responsibility for ensuring that the prosperity and well-being
of citizens today is not bought at the expense of their prosperity
and well-being in the future.
- There should be a dedicated unit serving the
Minister of State, to develop a long term strategy, to monitor
performance against this, and to co-ordinate and engage with all
those whose support will be needed for implementation.
- The unit should hold a significant budget which
it would then allocate to departments - this would be instead
of not in addition to existing budgets.
- The Climate Change Committee (CCC) and the Environmental
Audit Committee (EAC) should each report regularly on the adequacy
of the evolving strategy, the success with which it is being implemented
and on potential improvements.
MAIN SUBMISSION
How can mechanisms to ensure the sustainability
of Government operations, procurement and policy-making be improved
and further embedded and mainstreamed across Government departments?
1. Our response covers policy only and is based
on a single, simple observation. Sustainable development objectives
are universally supported in principle, but are often not acted
on when they conflict with more immediately pressing objectives.
It is this conflict between the long and the short term that makes
the issue difficult and it is this conflict that has to be managed.
This requires both effective policy making and effective and independent
policy auditing: there are biases in government towards the short
term and against action and we need external pressures to counter
them.
2. As far as policy making is concerned
we believe there are two possible approaches to managing the conflict:
- The conflict can be institutionalised into different
departmental points of view, and resolved through cabinet committees,
cross cutting targets and the associated machinery. This was the
approach of the last government.
- The conflict can become the business of a central
unit, either permanently or at least for a while, and resolved
through a combination of strategic analysis and the widest possible
engagement with the private and public sectors and the public
at large. This is the approach we recommend.
3. There are good arguments for preserving the
previous approach: playing out the conflict in this way helps
ensure that different points of view are represented, with the
political equivalent of the invisible hand resolving differences.
However we also believe it has real shortcomings (the examples
are all from before May of this year):
- It is at times wasteful and inefficient, with
work being duplicated in different places to support different
departmental agendas (for example on occasion this happened on
supply chains, low carbon skills and consumption patterns), and
poor alignment of policy development and implementation (for example
on employment subsidies, fuel poverty, behaviour change and regional
policy).
- It makes it difficult for the government to respond
in an agile way when things don't go according to plan - institutional
bias and associated entrenched positions are designed into the
system. One senior official has said that this slowness is actually
a merit of the system, preventing politicians from constantly
shooting off in new directions, but anyone who has worked in the
private sector will know that responding to events slowly is hardly
a pre-condition of good strategic decision making.
- It cannot mobilise society for the fundamental
changes all parties agree will be needed in the 2020s and beyond,
and indeed sends out very mixed signals: business, citizens and
indeed the public sector need a very clear sense of where government
thinks we are going if they are to play their role.
- It cannot provide the kind of strategic perspective
demanded by the scale of the challenges involved; these are simply
too large for the negotiation of trade offs, micro-economic analysis
and direction (or nudging) from the centre that the current structures
are designed to deliver. As a result, no-one is dealing with them
(as one senior official in a position to know has put it). A much
broader strategic approach is needed, integrating economics (ie
how to mobilise the private sector), organisational strategy (ie
how to mobilise and co-ordinate government and the wider public
sector) and political strategy (ie how to mobilise the public).
The Secretary of State for the Environment told the House of Commons
on 22 July that "We will put processes in place to join up
activity across Government much more effectively." Governments
have been trying to do that unsuccessfully since the middle ages;
it is strategy not simply process that makes effective joining
up of major policy development possible.
- It does not effectively integrate responses to
non-climate change threats to sustainability into long term economic
policy - the process is structured as a negotiation (between say
DECC and BIS) which means the third player (in practice often
DEFRA, representing biodiversity for example) does not get the
air time it deserves.
4. Hence we recommend a structure along the following
lines:
- The Cabinet Office Minister of State should have
responsibility for ensuring that the prosperity and well-being
of citizens today is not bought at the expense of their prosperity
and well-being in the future; he should also be the Prime Minister's
representative in negotiations between departments on this agenda.
- There should be a dedicated unit serving the
Minister of State, to develop a long term strategy, to monitor
performance against this, and to co-ordinate and engage with all
those whose support will be needed for implementation; the Director
of the unit could also be a member of the No 10 Staff.
- The unit should hold a significant budget which
it would then allocate to departments - this would be instead
of not in addition to existing budgets.
- The Minister of State should chair a quarterly
meeting of junior ministers across Whitehall with sustainable
development responsibilities, with a view to spotting and nurturing
opportunities for co-ordination and co-operation and for generating
new ideas.
- The remit of Cabinet sub-committee ED(EE) should
be expanded to include policies designed to ensure sustainability
and the successful transition to a low carbon, sustainable economy
(it should also be rebadged).
5. The role of the central unit in more detail
would be:
- To identify risks and ways of mitigating these.
- To caretake and communicate an evolving framework
for the policies designed to deliver the transformation to a low
carbon, sustainable economy.
- To monitor performance against the metrics in
this framework, building on existing systems such as carbon budgets.
- To co-ordinate and ideally reduce the number
of Whitehall initiatives that fit within this framework, and where
there are policy conflicts, create areas of agreement that can
be acted on, when necessary negotiating changes.
- To build capability by providing analytical tools
for policy makers (eg inputs to the Green Book), advice, training
and commissioned research
- To stimulate and respond to the networks beyond
Whitehall that encourage creative, joined up policy.
- To engage with the public, business and the public
and third sectors.
6. This would make much of the role of the Sustainable
Development Programme Office in DEFRA redundant.
7. We believe this unit, if it stuck to this
brief, would win the necessary Whitehall support. The Institute
for Government reported recently in "Shaping Up" (2010)
that while senior officials would strongly resist "micro-management",
they would generally welcome "stronger leadership" from
the centre. We also believe that a small but strategic centre
is more compatible with devolution of powers to local government
than is traditional departmentalism.
8. As to the policy audit process, we
recommend that the Climate Change Committee (CCC) and the Environmental
Audit Committee (EAC) each report regularly on the adequacy of
the evolving strategy, the success with which it is being implemented
and on potential improvements. The CCC would, of course, be concerned
purely with climate change; the EAC, ideally reporting after the
CCC and incorporating its findings, would take a broader view
of sustainability. We recommend that the EAC is supported by the
National Audit Office in this work.
How can governance arrangements for sustainable
development in Government be improved, and how can sustainability
reporting by Government departments be made more transparent and
accountable?
9. Our response covers policy only. The existing
sustainability reporting as it applies to policy making is largely
post hoc justification and as such a complete waste of time and
money. The various official structures that have from time to
time sprung up (such as the Sustainable Development Programme
Board) have been equally pointless.
10. The governance and reporting have to be conducted
by a unit with the confidence of the Prime Minister. What it says
will then count - but, conscious of the need to retain that confidence,
it will also remain sensitive to the conflicting pressures that
departments face. Hence our recommendation above that the unit
reporting to the Cabinet Office Minister of State is also responsible
for monitoring policy across government: it would develop the
strategy, monitor progress across government against that strategy,
and then report on that progress to the Cabinet, as well as the
EAC and the CCC. The latter, as noted, would then supply an independent
audit.
Was the SDC successful in fulfilling its remit?
Which aspects of its work have reached a natural end, or are otherwise
of less importance, and which remain of particular continuing
importance?
11. Promoting awareness of the concept of sustainable
development
The SDC established greater awareness of the concept
amongst a number of officials, largely but not exclusively those
dealing with operations and procurement. It also had some successes
in its work with DCFS on the curriculum. However it was not successful
at promoting the concept to the wider world. The concept - basically
not depriving our children and their children of a decent life
- is very simple and intuitively appealing. The SDC, and DEFRA
under the last government, made it rather complex and difficult
to understand. Promoting wider awareness of the need for sustainable
development - and of how this means more than dealing with climate
change - remains of vital importance.
12. Establishing good working practices within
Government
The SDC made a significant contribution to establishing
good operations and procurement working practices within Government
(it did not influence policy working practices). This was largely
through its successful SOGE and SDIG reports and associated capability
building processes. Much of this work is done and the baton can
easily be passed on to the Centre of Expertise in Sustainable
Procurement.
13. Advising key Ministers and others across
Government
The SDC partly fulfilled its remit in this respect:
it was successful in DH and in DCSF/ DfE but less successful in
other departments. This was probably because it failed to win
the trust of key Ministers, and was unable (and to some extent
unwilling) to use its inside track to identify how it could help
Ministers solve the problems they faced.
14. Monitoring performance against sustainable
development targets and reporting on these.
As just noted, the SDC fulfilled its remit in this
respect effectively, in so far as the targets related to central
government operations and procurement.
In formulating a future architecture for sustainable
development in Government, how can it take on board wider developments
and initiatives (eg to develop "sustainability reporting"
in departments' accounts) and the contributions that other bodies
might make (eg Centre of Expertise in Sustainable Procurement)?
15. We do not have any additional comments to
make under this heading.
How, without the assistance of the SDC, will the
Government be able to demonstrate that it is "the greenest
government ever"?
16. The extension of the Cabinet Office Minister
of State's remit as proposed above, together with the formation
of a supporting unit and the development of ED(EE)'s remit, would
begin to demonstrate the Government's commitment. The kind of
public engagement that we are calling on the new unit to perform
would continue to demonstrate this.
11 October 2010
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