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Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Third Report

3 Working methods

Setting priorities for our work

28. Several times this year serious and unforeseen events have occurred which have required Defra to respond: the serious summer floods, avian influenza outbreaks, the bluetongue outbreak, and the foot and mouth disease outbreaks.

29. In addition, policy developments have occurred which have required us to find room in our programme for them at short notice: for example the draft Climate Change Bill, the final report of the Independent Scientific Group on Cattle TB, the report by Sir David King (the Government Chief Scientific Adviser) on TB in cattle and badgers, and the news that Defra was seeking over £270m of budget cuts from existing programmes for 2008-09.

30. This meant that some of our inquiries which we expected to have undertaken in 2007, such as those into the potential of England's rural economy and into the Government's Waste Strategy for England 2007, have been delayed. But we firmly believe that we are right to remain light on our feet, and we will continue to respond to significant new issues as they emerge.

Maximising our time-effectiveness

31. We are conscious that there is a great deal that we could scrutinise, but time does not always allow us to do all that we would wish. We have devised a number of ways of working to maximise the impact we can make within the time available to us.

32. We devised a new form of inquiry for our examination of the Government's implementation of the Environmental Liability Directive. This involved initial exploration of this complex issue by two Members of the Committee, who recommended an inquiry by the Committee as a whole. The Committee announced that it would take written evidence and use it as a basis for the single oral evidence from the Minister. We are very grateful for those who responded and who identified key issues to raise with the Minister. This was a very time-efficient inquiry and we expect to use the format again in the future.

33. We have continued to use sub-committees, notably for our inquiries into the Rural Payments Agency and British Waterways. These sub-committees have generally met on Mondays while the main Committee has met on Wednesdays, allowing us to pursue two matters at once. In the case of British Waterways, the sub-committee was chaired by Mr Drew, with the Chairman a member of the Sub-committee. We have continued our practice of disbanding sub-committees once evidence has been concluded. The draft report is then considered informally by the members of the former sub-committee and the resulting text is then presented to the Committee as a whole in the name of the Chairman of the former sub-committee.

34. We have continued with our avian influenza 'Observatory', consisting of volunteers from among our membership who can keep the matter under review and report back to other Members. During 2007 we received two private briefings from the then Deputy Chief Veterinary Officer, Fred Landeg. In view of the recent outbreak of the disease the Observatory will continue in existence for the foreseeable future.

35. Members of the Committee were also given a briefing by Defra officials on the Department's 'Renew Defra' change programme, which provided useful background to evidence from the Permanent Secretary.

Government responses to our Reports

36. Our work does not finish when we publish our Reports. The Government is supposed to reply to our Reports within two months. Those replies are sometimes late, but more seriously they are often of disappointing quality. They are frequently negative in tone and often fail to engage with our arguments. In three cases—on bioenergy, the Common Agricultural Policy and climate change—we have seen the need to make substantive comments on the Government response. In the last of these cases, we also intend to hear oral evidence from the Secretary of State on the response.

37. We attach as an Annex a table showing the Government responses to our Reports' various conclusions and recommendations.

Public involvement in the Committee's work

38. We have sought to work in ways which make it as easy as possible for members of the general public to take part in our inquiries and give us their views. In January, with the help of the Community Carbon Reduction Programme at the University of East Anglia, we took evidence in Norwich from citizens who were trying to reduce their own or their local community's carbon emissions. This was a great help to us in formulating our recommendations on how the Government should help people reduce their climate change impact. We took evidence in April at the National Waterways Museum, Gloucester, from a number of users of British Waterways' canal network. Again, this evidence was a valuable addition to that which we heard from the other organisations that are our customary witnesses. We repeat our thanks to CRed and the Waterways Trust for their generous help with the organisation of these events.

39. In our flooding inquiry, we have asked anyone affected by the recent floods to contact us with their views and recommendations. As a result of this we have received a very large number of pieces of written evidence from individuals. We also invited Members of Parliament for affected constituencies to write to us, and received very helpful comments from our colleagues. We took oral evidence from five of those Members in December.

Media coverage

40. The Committee has continued to have a high media profile during the year, particularly with the launch of our Reports on the RPA and on Defra's budget, and with the progress of our inquiries into flooding and cattle TB. Specialist agriculture and environment journals frequently carry stories about our Reports and evidence sessions. The daily BBC radio programme Farming Today often broadcasts extracts and reports of our evidence sessions and interviews our Members and witnesses, provoking further interest in our work from the public. In addition Members have contributed to local and regional media outlets interested in our work.

41. On two occasions in the past year—in connection with our inquiries into Climate change: the "citizen's agenda" and The potential of England's rural economy—the BBC radio programme You and Yours has invited the Chairman of the Committee to appear on air to take calls and e-mails from listeners. In both cases there was a very high response from the public. The BBC kindly collated the comments of listeners to the earlier programme and sent it to us as a piece of written evidence. This allowed a wider selection of people than normal to send their thoughts to the Committee. In the case of programme on the rural economy, the purpose was for listeners to suggest areas for the Committee to concentrate on. This has been useful in shaping the inquiry which we will begin in 2008.

Reducing our own climate impact

42. In view of our remit and our recent work on climate change, we are particularly conscious of the climate impact of our own activities, particularly travel. Our domestic visits are largely made by train, with local transport by bus or taxi. Both the Committee's visits abroad in 2007—to Germany and to France—were made by train both because it was convenient and because it would minimise our carbon footprint.

Sources of information and assistance

43. We record our gratitude to all those people and organisations who have sent us evidence and otherwise helped us during the year.

44. Within the House, we have continued to make use of the Commons Scrutiny Unit. This has been particularly important in connection with our work on Defra's budget and finances.

45. As last year, we have benefited from the assistance of the National Audit Office. We asked the NAO to examine the financial figures that were in dispute between Defra and British Waterways, and we have now received its response.

We have had the benefit of the assistance of Jim Watson of the Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex as our special adviser on our climate change inquiries this year. We have also been advised on our flooding inquiry by Professor Colin Green of the Flood Hazard Research Centre at the University of Middlesex, and Frank Farquharson, Director of Water Resource Associates Ltd. We record our thanks to them all.



© Parliamentary copyright 2008	Prepared 23 January 2008