Examination of Witnesses (Questions 880-884)
Joan Ruddock MP, Ian Pearson MP and Malcolm Wicks
MP
13 MAY 2008
Q880 Lord May of Oxford: The quotations
were not mine but they match my experience.
Ian Pearson: I just happened to be reading yesterday
the Sustainable Development in Government Report and it uses a
sort of traffic light system to assess performance across areas.
For some strange reason blue means excellent progress and red
means no progress or poor progress. I think the Government might
have some issues with that. It categorises blue as meaning excellent
progress being made when it comes to waste reduction. I think
it is important to make the Committee aware of that. When it comes
to recycling increases that is rated as green overall, which is
good progress and means being on track to hit targets. In waste
reduction it is blue and that is excellent progress and on recycling
it is good progress being made.
Q881 Lord May of Oxford: Perhaps
you could give us a written submission about what is being done
in respect of sustainable construction and refurbishment on the
government estate across Whitehall.
Joan Ruddock: The responsibility now for delivery
against government procurement targets is with the Office of Government
Commerce, but Defra continues to lead on public procurement policy.
I am going to acknowledge, as the Sustainable Development Commission
did, that we have got a very mixed picture. There is no doubt
that some government departments on some of these issues are not
doing nearly well enough. We are confident that the steps we have
taken last year have yielded significant improvements in the performance
across government on sustainability. We set out future steps in
the Government Response to the SDC's Sustainable Development and
Government report published in March and we think that will produce
a further step change in performance. We have also announced in
the Budget this year plans to establish a Centre of Expertise
for Sustainable Procurement to be overseen by a new director-general
post of Chief Sustainability Officer within the Office of Government
Commerce. Those are very important steps and through those steps
we do expect to see a great improvement in the way in which Government
pursues these issues.
Q882 Chairman: Will you be undertaking
to implement policies more effectively so that it will be easier
for products to get on the "quick wins" list? Is that
part of the remit of the centre?
Joan Ruddock: It is to oversee, first of all,
the extent to which departments have actually adopted the "quick
wins" list because that is variable in its own right. Some
of those quick wins are around obvious simple products such as
low energy light bulbs and copier paper. Those are areas where
everyone knows what needs to be done and it is a case of making
sure it is being done and to date it has not yet been done. It
is not for me to say, but it seems logical that there will be
an extension of the products that were under consideration.
Q883 Chairman: We realise that it
is really a matter for the OGC. Industry says that if the criteria
are too complicated this frightens off small businesses and we
have heard evidence which suggests that small businesses benefit
from more outcome-focussed, less prescriptive, criteria which
allows them to be innovative. It is things like this that one
would hope that this centre would resolve. I am a wee bit distressed
that it is in the hands of the Office of Government Commerce and
that it going to be answerable to that department. I would be
almost prepared to lay money, although I am not a betting man,
on the fact that when we get the names of the two other departments
in the top three the OGC will not be one of them.
Joan Ruddock: May I just say that there is another
aspect to this which affects all Government departments and that
is the inclusion within permanent secretaries' performance objectives
of the delivery of those commitments and holding those permanent
secretaries accountable for their departments' performance. That
is also a powerful tool. Now it is with the permanent secretary
for each department, they are accountable, they can be tested
on this and indeed the Sustainable Development Commission clearly
will remain on our backs and quite rightly so.
Q884 Chairman: We can only just wait
and see if these rewards and carrots and sticks move permanent
secretaries. Usually what happens is the failure to achieve it
means that the permanent secretary gets moved rather than the
efficiency of the department. That is just a tasteless aside which
will be my closing remark. Thank you very much.
Malcolm Wicks: Chairman, you rather imagine
that now OGC have this responsibility they will move up the table
rather quickly!
Chairman: Thank you very much. You have been
here for two hours and you have answered our questions as best
you could. We look forward to the notes that you are going to
give us. We hope you will find our report interesting reading.
We may well meet again to discuss it at a later stage.
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