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Since the abolition of the Sustainable Development Commission at the beginning of this Parliament, we have examined the Government's progress in embedding sustainable development processes mainly by examining the oversight exercised by Defra and the Cabinet Office. In our most recent progress report, in June 2013, we announced that we would also examine more directly how individual departments were engaging with the new systems, starting with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS). We were greatly assisted by a detailed audit report from the National Audit Office.
We found that overall the Department was delivering on their sustainable operations targets, although that was in part the result of reductions in staffing and the size of the BIS estate. The Department has established a 'Sustainability Champion' and a Sustainability Committee linked into senior management. Defra and the Cabinet Office should encourage other departments to consider introducing similar arrangements.
On policy-making, however, our analysis of specific case studies indicates that environmental and social aspects of sustainability are not getting the same attention as economic factors. The Regional Growth Fund particularly illustrates this. The process for assessing applications for grants does not seek to establish or quantify whether there are environmental or social harms associated with projects put forward. The assessment process needs to be reformed to do so. Defra and the Cabinet Office should challenge other government departments which have similar grant schemes to do the same. Industrial Strategies—another case study—do not appear to consider environmental consequences across the 11 sectors involved as a whole. They are also disconnected from the BIS Business Plan process, weakening the main vehicle by which Defra and the Cabinet Office challenge the sustainability-proofing of BIS policy-making.
BIS should produce sustainable development strategies, to provide a reference point for sustainability initiatives by senior management and the sustainability champion, and to allow all staff to readily understand the wider sustainable development imperatives, including the need to address natural and social capitals, for the department's policies and operations. These strategies should then be a focal point of the Business Plan review process. BIS should encourage all of its agencies and NDPBs to produce sustainability strategies, and where appropriate make their production a condition for securing funding from their parent departments. Again, these are improvements that other departments might also usefully introduce
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