Environment Bill (First sitting)

Deidre Brock Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 10th March 2020 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Thank you very much. I apologise; I should have asked that at the beginning for the record, and because there are people in this room who may not read everything that they should have read into just the bald titles.

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

Q Returning to the OEP, what are your thoughts on the relationship between the OEP and the environmental governance bodies, including the Committee on Climate Change, the Environment Agency and Natural England? Major budget cuts have clearly been made at Natural England recently, and the organisation has expressed concerns about its ability to monitor environmental breaches. What are your thoughts on how that works, or does not work, in the Bill?

Martin Baxter: We support the creation of the OEP. Its role in ensuring that public authorities fulfil their duties under environmental law is important. That remit is quite different from the role of the Environment Agency, Natural England and the Committee on Climate Change. That committee has an advisory role; it does a lot of analysis and a lot of fantastic work, but it does not have a role in holding public authorities to account for the delivery of net zero commitments. That is an important distinction to make between the OEP and the Committee on Climate Change.

Ideally, the OEP will be a strategic body able to look at where our governance system might either need to be strengthened or become more effective, and then make recommendations. It has an important monitoring and scrutiny role that extends into progress towards achieving long-term targets and looking at environmental improvement plans, so at least we will have a transparent and independent view of that, which is important. We welcome that.

The OEP also has an ability to advise on the implementation of environmental law. That implementation role is critical, because the effectiveness of environmental law is often in the extent to which it might be properly enforced. In terms of monitoring the implementation of environmental law, the OEP has the power to comment on whether there are sufficient resources in place for those laws to be properly implemented, enforced and delivered. There are the right hooks in the Bill, in terms of the OEP’s role and remit, to allow that to go forward.

[The Chair]

Ms Norberg, do you want to come in?

Signe Norberg: Martin summarised it fairly well. There is a recognition that these bodies will have to have some level of co-operation. That will be important in terms of the practical aspects of these bodies.

[Deidre Brock]

Q You sound a wee bit equivocal or dubious about whether the OEP has sufficient powers to enforce this properly. That is the impression I am getting; correct me if I am wrong.

Martin Baxter: No, it has the powers to be able to do it. The question is how it chooses to use its powers. In setting up the OEP, one of the first things it has to do is develop its strategy, which will be absolutely crucial in determining the direction that it sees for itself, in terms of implementing the powers and duties that it has. If it chooses to utilise those powers to help to drive systemic change where there may be weaknesses in our system of environmental governance, that would be really welcome. That is what we expect it to be able to do.

[Bim Afolami (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)]

Q Ms Norberg, in the event that, in the future after the passage of the Bill, the British Government—for whatever reason—do not perform very well and do not do the things that we believe they should, who should be the main accountable individual or group of individuals for that?

Signe Norberg: Within Government?