Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-52)
Baroness Young of Old Scone, Ms Tricia Henton and
Ms Aileen Kirmond
17 JANUARY 2007
Q40 Lord Palmer: I reckon that two
of my three questions you have fully answered, but you may want
to add something. Some of us are a little worried about the timetable
for this implementation. Do you feel that you will be able to
stick it? And, perhaps more important, do you have a sufficient
budget to do so? As a matter of interest, have you had to take
on any extra staff to help you implement this?
Baroness Young of Old Scone: The timetable is
very tight. We are aware of the fact that the timetable is very
tight, and we have tried to build into it quite a long period
for the Secretary of State to ponder on the River Basin Plans,
because they are going to be potentially quite controversial.
I think that he/she/it needs to be given plenty of elbow room
to talk to stakeholders once the plans are available in draft
form. However, that means we all have to keep up to the timetables.
That is why getting the regulations, once the quality indicators
are available, is important to keeping that timetable going. It
is very tight, therefore. Europe began by saying that we were
going to have to deliver all the objectives of the Framework Directive
by 2015. We have told them right from the start that we did not
see that that was possible anywhere across Europe, quite frankly.
So I think that they are a little less gung-ho about it now. We
need to deliver the processes that will produce plans and actions
that we have outlined in the first set of plans by 2015, but we
then have the successive Round Two and Round Three, where we can
build on those. In terms of cash, what we have been trying to
do—because Defra is broke, we are broke, and the Government
will not necessarily hand out money in the Spending Review—is
to divert some of the work that we are already involved in in
issues that were pretty well Water Framework Directive issues.
In terms of all our water management issues, quality and quantity,
which are important for the directive, we have made sure that
we have taken a step back and used the directive as the framework
for deciding what are the important things to do and how we make
sure they are done in the most efficient way. However, we have
had to put additional funding into the Framework Directive and
we have received some money from Defra for that. Somewhere—and
I cannot remember where—we have a bid in under the Comprehensive
Spending Review. We are not really expecting that we will get
any, but the sorts of figures we are talking about would be in
the range of £6 million for next year and £11 million
for the year after that. They are big money but they are not huge
money, bearing in mind the scale of the task because we are corralling
the resources that we have already and also, to be frank, many
of the bits of delivery will have to be done by other folk.
Q41 Chairman: Does that effectively
mean putting the cost on to other folk?
Baroness Young of Old Scone: It may not be cost;
it may just be the different way of doing things. If you think
about, for example, looking at local authority development options,
we want to see the housing development that is coming on to be
done in the right place, so that it does not impact on flood risk
management, which is part of the Framework Directive. We are not
going to be putting houses where there is either not sufficient
water for them to have a decent water supply, or indeed where
there is not sufficient water to flush away their sewage. We do
not want to see houses built that are not water-efficient as far
as possible. So there are things about the way in which planning
applications are given, the location of stuff, and the nature
of the development that goes ahead. We want to see sustainable
urban drainage systems built into developments, so that we do
not see surface water run-off that contaminates water bodies.
There is therefore a whole range of processes that individual
co-deliverers need to think through when they are doing the stuff
that is their day job. It is not necessarily additional cost,
therefore; it is about how they do their normal duties. There
will be some additional cost, however, and I think the farming
thing and the size of the agri-environment budget will be pretty
material to this.
Q42 Lord Palmer: Have you had to
take on extra staff?
Baroness Young of Old Scone: Yes, we have, but
I do not have a clue how many.
Ms Kirmond: We have, for example, a voluntary
programme and, as my colleague said, we have reviewed it very
heavily and, where possible, we have re-deployed people to start
doing things differently. Overall we have taken on something like
two extra people on to the programme. There are some areas where
we are using other people's data. So, for example, CEFAS has to
look at marine, so rather than us doing it ourselves we are collaborating
with other people to build together a comprehensive picture, rather
than employ lots and lots more people to do things that may already
be happening elsewhere.
Baroness Young of Old Scone: Just to give you
an example of some of the stuff, the monitoring programme costs
60 million, but then we were spending quite a lot of that already
on water body monitoring, so that is not a fresh cost on top;
about two-thirds of what we are doing in the Framework Directive
is from the existing funding.
Q43 Lord Cameron of Dillington: You
have already mentioned the Ribble Basin pilot, and apart from
the encouraging news—at least I think it is encouraging—that
the local panel is going faster than you, are there any lessons
which you have learnt from this pilot that are going to impact
upon your implementation or approach?
Baroness Young of Old Scone: Yes, I think I
had two lessons from it really. One was that, given half a chance,
everybody will over-complicate this damn thing and we will not
get delivery from it: we will just have tons of processes and
no outcome if we are not careful. So we learnt not to over-complicate
it. I think what we heard from stakeholders was that they did
want to be involved but they did not want this to be an add-on
to additional stakeholder groups and processes; they wanted to
be involved but they did not want new mechanisms and they did
not want to turn up to new meetings—it needs to be built
into the day job as some of the things that they do. They were
very clear with us about the balance between engaging in discussion
and doing—they wanted more doing as well. I think what it
also showed us was this new partnerships thing—we held the
ring and people got together but they started talking together
and went away holding hands into the sunset and did things together,
and it was great. I think the Ribble Conservation Trust really
got great benefit from new people being brought in that they had
not previously had a framework to talk with, and they now have
collaborative work going ahead, and obviously we want to play
a role in it, but it is not being led by us by any means, which
is good.
Chairman: Baroness Miller, with the question
that you will absolutely love!
Q44 Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer:
You have mentioned the fact that it would be useful if the
Government advised planning policy guidance, but I think you are
also on record as saying that there are other powers that you
do not currently have but that it would be very useful to have.
Could you outline some of the actions that could be taken by government,
either legislative or others, that would be helpful to you in
order to implement the framework?
Ms Henton: I think most of the actions that
we would like government to take, rather than legislative, is
things that need to be done. We are working very closely with
Defra, we have a joint plan with Defra and the Welsh Assembly
Government, and we are working on the timetable. That is really
the key thing, getting this joint plan flowing through both the
Environment Agency and government to time and not getting delayed
in any way. In order for that to happen there are various things
that we particularly require Defra to deliver. In particular they
are the Competent Authority still for the economic requirements
of the Water Framework Directive; they are carrying out the preliminary
cost effective analysis. That is a very, very important part for
us because without that we really cannot set the objectives. So
we need that piece of work to finish, we need guidance from them,
and we need guidance from them on what is considered to be disproportionate
costs. So there are various things we need delivered. We also
need feedback. Obviously we are talking to them very closely all
the time, but we do not want to get to a position where they do
not like, for any reason, what we have proposed so that major
revisions are needed. So that is again part of the dialogue with
Defra and the Welsh Assembly Government. We need some consultations
to be put out, for example on diffuse pollution control and on
hydromorphology. They need to go out to time table because once
the consultation has been finished there may be recommendations
that come out of that and there may be the need for new powers
to be put in place—that is a possibility, we do not know.
Another very important aspect we need from them is for them to
be working across government and picking up on issues. For example,
we have touched on spatial planning on land use and obviously
DCLG has the lead role in that, and it is very, very important
that Defra works across government so that other government departments
are aware of and can incorporate in their own guidance the requirements
of the Water Framework Directive. We are working with the new
environmental standards and that is ongoing work, and we need
a result from that, and something that is only beginning to come
into the frame now as we progress towards the first cycle is that
it is going to be very important to keep a corporate memory within
Defra of why did we get to where we are, why have we taken certain
decisions—and I use "we" collectively. As we move
forward into the Second Cycle and the third cycle that is going
to be very important; so we need a corporate memory within Defra.
Baroness Young of Old Scone: Can I add one other
thing—and we have not thought our way through it yet—that
as the Marine Bill comes through, if it does come through, we
need the new marine legislation to take account of the Framework
Directive issues because, of course, the Framework Directive involves
estuarine and coastal waters as well.
Q45 Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer:
Yes, there are 46 questions that come to my mind on that!
Baroness Young of Old Scone: We have 47!
Q46 Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer:
If I might ask this, my Lord Chairman? What is your relationship
with the RDAs?
Baroness Young of Old Scone: Through our regional
offices we work very closely with the RDAs to try to get environmental
outcomes into regional economic strategies and other mechanisms
that the RDAs use, and also into the things that they fund. It
varies from RDA to RDA. Because they are development agencies
the environment is never going to be their primary objective,
but they do have a requirement to take account of sustainability
issues, and so we will be trying to get Water Framework Directive
objectives and processes into the regional economic strategies
and the various other economic instruments at regional level.
Q47 Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer:
They do seem to hold the key to quite a lot of what happens
in the region as far as the Water Framework Directives goes.
Baroness Young of Old Scone: It is difficult
to know. If I was asked to bet who was the most important player
in the Framework Directive, I do not quite know what I would say
because it depends on the water body. The good thing about a Regional
Development Agency is the limited number—you can nail them.
The biggest, most difficult group to deal with—not because
they are difficult but because they are manifold—are the
farmers and the land managers, because with a lot of them you
have to find ways to talking to groups of people and getting them
to collaborate as well as getting the formal processes of an RDA,
where you can eyeball them fairly close up.
Q48 Viscount Ullswater: Can I ask
a supplementary on that? Are you satisfied that local authorities
are taking sufficient notice of your advice on development, particularly
on flood plains or maybe that huge requirement in the South East
where the availability of water is perhaps at its minimum? Do
you think that they really do listen to you now? Are you seeing
it in the decisions that they are taking that they are listening
more to you than they listened five years ago, when perhaps they
did not listen?
Baroness Young of Old Scone: I think it varies,
depending on the issue and also the local authority. We are getting
quite good collaboration now on flood risk management but there
are a tiny, tiny number of local authorities that still give planning
permissions against our advice—but it is a very tiny number
now. On water quantity we are working to try to get a statutory
right for water companies to be able comment on planning applications
and for water quantity to be taken account of in the planning
authorities' decisions, because at the moment until recently that
had not been adequately done. I think now, because of the drought
issues in the southeast, there is much more focus on that and
there is much more readiness to get that to happen. The area that
is probably the most difficult and least well thought through
at the moment is the issue of surface water drainage and sewerage.
Generally speaking, what happens at the moment is that somebody
builds a whacking great development and only discovers after they
have built it that it is perched on a tiny Victorian sewer that
cracked 50 years ago anyway. So we are looking through some of
the discussions that are happening with government on issues like
the use of land for development—the Barker Reports, both
Barker 1 and Barker 2—and to try and get a debate going
that says that green infrastructure planning over a 25-year period,
planning for water supply, planning for sewerage and drainage
is as important as planning for water resource, and therefore
there need to be mechanisms not only in planning 25-years ahead
for these issues that can take the Water Framework Directive objectives
into account, but also the ways in which they can be funded because
at the moment funding for this sort of environmental infrastructure
is really hit and miss. The water companies provide it through
charges to water payers if it is water supply or main sewerage,
but nobody does it for surface water drainage and drainage within
developments. At the moment it is all very haphazard and done
on the back of development, and in some cases it is not done adequately
at all. I got it in the neck from the Deputy Prime Minister over
Corby, which wants to increase its size—it must have pretty
well doubled in size—and it basically does not have a sewerage
system to do it. The first developer who is going to build the
school and a few houses does not want to build the whole sewerage
system and pay for it, so who does? The local authority does not
have the money; it is not their job to pay for sewerage systems.
If the developer is not going to do it, there has to be some strategic
process of funding, either on land values or on planning conditions
or in some fashion or another. But that is the least well-provisioned
relationship between a Water Framework Directive issue and a local
authority at the moment.
Q49 Lord Cameron of Dillington: Could
I ask a question about inter-European liaison? Thinking about
this, it occurred to me that we probably have a slight advantage
because for decades our water management has been done on a river
catchment basis, which is not the case on most of the Continent.
I wondered whether during liaison knowledge and skills have been
passing and perhaps which way they have been going?
Ms Kirmond: I think we are proud to say that
a lot of views and regulatory experience is being seen in the
approaches in the European guidance that is coming through. We
have been very heavily involved in Europe, both through individual
technical expertise and through a group like UKTAG, where we are
working to a common European understanding of the challenges.
So I can say very positively that we have been very heavily involved
in Europe. We have looked at working hard on what is called the
Common Implementation Strategy, because when a Framework Directive
was promoted obviously, you are quite right, we came from lots
of very different starting points and the thrust has been very
much to reach a common goal in terms of objectives, a common goal
in terms of good ecological status, in terms of what we are trying
to achieve, and therefore we have worked hard to bring in our
approaches, which has helped us in terms of minimising the disruption
to ourselves and the people we work with, because it means that
the transition from what we have to what we are going to have
has been kept to a minimum where we have been able to manage it.
And I think Europe has been very grateful for our help, and we
have also worked through our Administrations and through Defra
and our Water Director in terms of getting those views at a European
level.
Q50 Lord Cameron of Dillington: Can
I now turn to the Daughter Directives, the Groundwater Directive
and the Environmental Quality Standards in Water Directive? Two
questions. One: to what extent have you been involved in the process?
And are you happy with the direction of travel that the development
of these two Daughter Directives is going? My second question
probably applies to the whole issue and is: does the emphasis
on quality, particularly in these Daughter Directives, in any
way clash with the problems of water quantity and supply that
we have in certain parts of our country?
Ms Kirmond: If one looks at why we have two
Daughter Directives in the first place, they are there because
Europe could not reach agreement on them during the time of the
agreement on the main body of the directive, so they are there
because Europe could not reach decisions on some of the chemical
substances in some of the groundwater issues, so they are very
much subsidiary to the main, and therefore they should not clash,
they should be part of the whole regulatory framework that helps
us to achieve good ecological status, both on the biological and
chemical and quantitative basis. So they are very much complementary
to each other. We have been very heavily involved in the negotiations
of both these Directives. In the Agency we are lucky enough to
have some of the top ten technical experts in these areas working
with us and they have supported the negotiations very heavily
in Europe. For the Groundwater "Daughter" Directive
we now have—coming back to some of the other questions—a
directive very similar to the UK approach because it is based
on environmental standards and it is looking at the outcomes rather
than the process; and we are currently working with Europe on
the detail of what that looks like, so that actually came under
legislation in December. With the priority substances, the environmental
quality that you refer to, we are working very hard and supporting
Defra in that negotiation so that we will get something which
helps us to be in a good position to replace the Dangerous Substances
Directive. But we are also thinking very carefully about the applicability
of the directive and what it will mean in terms of regulation
and whether it is a reasonable approach. So we always have that
in our mind as well, the reasonability of the chemical standards
that are being proposed and whether they are transposable into
reality.
Q51 Lord Cameron of Dillington: Is
there generally a clash between the quality of water and the quantity?
For instance, I remember once talking to old water authorities
about what goes on in some of the hotter parts of the world, where
during the rainy season they pump water down into aqueducts. I
was told this was a complete no-no because it might pollute some
of the aqueducts and so on. It seems to me that we have a water
shortage problem and at some point some compromises might have
to be made.
Ms Kirmond: I think it comes back to the point
we were discussing earlier, that in protection of good ecological
status we look at the interaction of both the groundwater and
the surface water. So under our future planning process we would
have to look very carefully at an activity in groundwater that
will compromise the successful achievement of good ecological
status in our surface waters. So if we were, for example, either
going to put something in that would manifest itself in surface
waters, or we would pump it very hard which might cause the chemical
quality to deteriorate, then that will appear in terms of good
ecological status, in terms of our groundwater body. So it is
very much an integrated view. We have always had to reach compromises
in the past and, as my colleagues have said, we are going to have
to reach some level of compromise in the future because this is
about the environment, society, the economy—it is an integrating
directive. But I think the important thing that we have now are
the tools to be able to look at it in an integrated way and, if
we are going to have to do something where we are hard pressed,
then we are doing it in an open and transparent way. We are saying,
"If this is what we need to do, then this is the impact.
Is it acceptable? Can we deal with it? Can we mitigate it? Is
it affordable? What are the long-term outcomes?" So it enables
us to put all those things on the table and say, "Is this
the right thing to do?" rather than do it in little packages
and then not be joined up with each other.
Baroness Young of Old Scone: Could I make one
point about water supply? I personally do not believe that we
have a water supply problem in this country if we get our act
together. If we get proper water efficiency measures that allow
us to be more confident about where we do need to develop more
water resource and we get ahead with the planning of that and
make a positive interaction with the public so that they are willing
to fund these things through their water bills, I do not see that
we need run short of water. But at the moment the framework within
which that happens, the price round by which what needs to happen
to protect the water supply is paid for by customers, is severely
flawed and, in my opinion, irretrievably broken. And I would like
to see it substantially reviewed, because at the moment we are
not hacking that in terms of getting ahead of climate change.
Q52 Chairman: Thank you very much
indeed. I think we have come to the end of our questions but it
is always advisable in these circumstances to say: is there anything
that you think we ought to know that we have not asked?
Baroness Young of Old Scone: I think we have
told you quite a lot!
Chairman: I think you have! Thank you very much indeed,
all three of you; it has been an absolute delight, particularly
the emphasis on delivery rather than an over-complicated process.
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