Marking 25 years of environmental scrutiny: a Committee Corridor special
Welcome to a special episode of Committee Corridor. Today, we're sharing the highlights from a special event to mark 25 years of the Environmental Audit Committee, recorded live at Imperial College London.
The podcast
In today’s episode, you’ll hear from the keynote speaker at the event, the former Prime Minister Theresa May MP, who put the 2050 net zero target into law.
There are contributions from an esteemed panel who discussed the impact of the EAC since it was created in 1997.
The panel consists of Dr Hannah White from the Institute for Government, Professor Mary Ryan from Imperial College, David Shukman - former science editor at the BBC and former EAC Chair and Visiting Professor at Cranfield University, Mary Creagh.
The MPs then invited leading academics to pitch ideas for the Committee to explore as a future inquiry.
Your host is the Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee, Philip Dunne MP.
Transcript
Philip: Welcome to a special episode of Committee Corridor. This is the podcast from the House of Commons where we showcase the work of Parliament’s Select Committees on the most pressing issues of the day.
My name is Philip Dunne and I chair the Environmental Audit Committee and I'm the Conservative member of Parliament for Ludlow and have been since 2005. Committee Corridor's usual host is the chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, Joanna Cherry, and she's kindly passed the baton to me for this episode.
And why has she done that? Well, the Environmental Audit Committee (we call it the EAC) has reached a significant milestone. We've just celebrated our 25th birthday. It's 25 years since the Labour Government established the committee in order to check and challenge environmental policy and sustainable development.
We're called an audit committee because our job is to check whether the Government of the day is living up to its own policies and targets and ambitions that it set for environmental protection.
We're quite unusual amongst select committees because we don't just shadow one Government department. We have the scope to look right across Government, and that's because the environment doesn't respect administrative boundaries.
So, from the quality of water in England's rivers to encouraging energy efficiency in our homes, from the impact of plastic microbeads to the sustainability of fast fashion, the EAC’s work has prompted debate across the country.
Today, we're sharing the highlights from our 25th birthday event recorded live at Imperial College London.
We wanted to reflect on how scrutiny in this area of political life has developed over the last quarter of a century and look forward to the challenges for the next quarter of a century.
We're going to hear from our keynote speaker, the former Prime Minister, Theresa May, who brought into legislation the prospect of Net Zero Britain, and esteemed panel speakers who are going to discuss the impact of the Environmental Audit Committee since 1997.
Our panel included Hannah White from the Institute for Government, Professor Mary Ryan from Imperial College, former EAC chair Mary Creagh, who I succeeded and David Shukman, who was until recently the long-standing science editor for the BBC.
After that, we had a Dragon's Den style event in which we had a panel of EAC members who listened to pitches from leading academics from three different universities, offering their ideas on what the EAC should look into next.
Our event was kicked off by former Prime Minister, Theresa May.
Theresa: I suspect if you went out into the street and asked members of the public how long they thought the House of Commons had had an environmental audit committee, most would say a few years, maybe 10, but not 25.
I think that would reflect an expectation that such a group was linked to recent increased concerns about climate change and would fail to comprehend how long concern about climate change and the environment have been important issues for Government, parliament, and indeed, for our society.
I think there are a number of reasons for this lack of understanding. First, of course, the controversy surrounding the science of climate change. And there are of course, those who still question this today.
My own answer to the sceptics is always the same: whatever you think about the science, doesn't it make sense for us to want to preserve our planet for future generations?
But I have to say that I hope that maybe the increasing extremes of weather that we are experiencing around the globe and the heightened variability of climate will give even the sceptics some pause for thought.
Philip: Theresa May, then look forward to solutions, how a behavioural change can occur, and how that should be stimulated by Government.
Theresa: We won't get where we need to be by wagging our fingers at people and telling them they can never fly again, must never drive a car, and have got to stop eating meat.
We need to take people along with us and help them to recognize the small everyday changes they can make that don't entirely upend their lives, but that will still collectively make a difference.
Philip: She emphasised the important role that prime ministers can play in setting policy agenda, but also pointed out that it can't be done in isolation, you need to build consensus on environmental matters.
Theresa: Dealing with these issues needs Government to work together, one might even describe it as joined-up Government. Against this background, it's easy to set overall ambitions or targets, but harder to ensure the work is being done to achieve them.
One very good example of that is the Net Zero Target. Putting the 2050 Net Zero Target into law was a key moment for the UK. Getting it agreed was perhaps not as difficult as some might assume. This was for a number of reasons.
First, there was a general understanding of the importance of the issue. Secondly, it had cross-party support. And sadly, thirdly, I suspect many people didn't think behind the headline to what would need to be done to achieve this goal.
It was also an example of the sad reality that action in Government is more likely to happen when number 10 is driving it, but number 10 can't drive everything. The centre sets the vision, and it is up to other parts of Government to deliver that in practice.
And that is why encouraging the right collaborative approach across Government is so important. But it is also why it is crucial to have bodies outside Government providing assessment and challenge.
And this is where Parliament and in particular, the Environmental Audit Committee have a critical role to play.
If you look at the landscape now, we have a plethora of targets from the Net Zero Target through the targets for Net Zero delivery, the environmental targets under the 2021 Environment Act, and of course, the recommendations set by Chris Skidmore in his excellent report.
The focus now has to be on delivery. Not on proving the science, not on making the case, not on determining a vision, not on setting the goals. We know the science, we know the case, we know the overall vision, we know the goals, the targets, and the staging posts.
Now, is the time for delivery, and Parliament has a key role in ensuring that delivery takes place.
Philip: She also underlined that while a lot of progress has been made, particularly here in the UK on climate change issues, there's clearly a lot more which still needs to be done.
Theresa: Getting to Net Zero requires all Governments to strengthen significantly their nationally determined contributions. Indeed, the Glasgow Climate Pact, of course, called on countries to revisit and strengthen the 2030 targets in their NDCs by the end of 2022.
The UK strengthened its NDC in a number of ways last September, but we need to be held to what has been promised. The UK's own Climate Change Committee in its most recent report, identified that while the Government has a solid Net Zero strategy in place, important policy gaps such as on land use and energy efficiency of buildings remain and need to be closed.
It also identified that tangible progress was lagging behind the policy ambition, and that in setting out the changes needed, the Government had not paid enough attention to delivery risks and to ensuring there were contingency plans in place.
But they also saw the opportunity in aligning measures being taken to deal with the cost of living and crucially, higher energy costs with Net Zero. If the UK is to make the most of the historic opportunity of the transition to a Net Zero economy, if we are to deliver what is needed for the sake of the planet, scrutiny of Government towards 2050 is critical, and that is the role of the Environmental Audit Committee.
Philip: As a former Prime Minister, Theresa May knows a lot about how Government works best when it's not working in silos. We find the same thing often in collaborating across committees, and this was echoed in the panel discussion.
Hannah White is the Director of the Institute for Government, a leading think tank, which works to make Government more effective by exploring how Government works, and how it can work better.
Hannah: I would say in general, Parliament struggles with doing joined-up scrutiny of cross-cutting policy areas, we saw that in relation to Brexit, and that's both because bluntly, MPS on committees like to have their bit of the scrutiny landscape that they own, but also, can be because it's difficult for cross-cutting committees to get ministers to come to give evidence because the minister thinks that's not the committee to which I'm accountable.
The bigger issue, I think for Parliament is how to ensure joined-up scrutiny and enough scrutiny. And so, I think that the real advantage of the EAC is that cross is your — although as discussed, it has its difficulties. It has this cross-cutting remit.
You can look at issues across the piece … you can convene in a way as you did for example, around COP26 with Alok Sharma and evidence sessions and really, positively bringing in chairs of other committees to conduct that scrutiny. So, that is a really positive role, which the EAC can perform.
Philip: We were also joined by Professor Mary Ryan, who's the Vice-Provost of Research and Enterprise at Imperial. She spoke about the role that universities can play in driving innovation.
Ryan: I think one of the things that we try to do here is very much think about the systems level approach and how you bring together people who are thinking about new batteries, chemistries, for example, and what does that mean in terms of the techno economics of that new technology at a very early stage.
So, you don't create an innovation that actually can't scale. And when we are thinking about the energy of transition, we're not just — I mean, each country will have its own pathway, but a lot of these technologies are part of a global transition and global supply chains.
So, you can't just think about what we need in the UK from the mineral perspective, you have to think more globally. So, I think one thing that universities should be doing in this space, that we talk about innovation and discovery a lot, and I think policy can either follow innovation or it can drive it.
And thinking about where are those policies, particularly how materials flow, we're thinking about single-use plastics, thinking about recycling. What are the circularity innovations that we need that would be enabled by different types of policies? How do we create new technologies that are tolerant to different materials flows and tolerant to different defects?
Those are some really interesting science questions, and would actually unlock a different way of using materials. When we framed zero pollution a few years ago, one of the key things we wanted to change the language from waste to resource.
And I think some of you saw today how we’re using waste in new ways. But once you start to think about any type of pollution as a distributed resource, it becomes economically insane to allow that even from a resilience and security perspective.
So, changing that perspective I think is important. And then I think you were asking me how we can influence policy a little bit, and there's many ways that we can do that.
You talked about giving evidence, giving information, and there's a lot of often a focus just on outwards, us communicating outwards in simple terms some of the latest innovations or the state-of-the-art science or understanding of science.
I think there's more we can do on the inward facing. So, how do we bring policymakers into university so they're closer embedded in our environment, so they have a much better understanding of what is current understanding. I think embedding those relationships is the way forward.
Philip: Through the 25 years of our existence, the Environmental Audit Committee has had six chairs. Mary Creagh was our most recent chair and is now a visiting professor at Cranfield University.
Creagh: The first inquiry we did was looking at the Ministry of Justice and it was like, “Oh, this is, oh, you know …” They're responsible for a quarter of Government emissions, it's a huge department, all these prisons, probation services, courts.
And somebody was in my class literally yesterday and she said, “You know what, MOJ has completely transformed as a result of that inquiry five years ago. They were about to do the first full electric prison at Full Sutton in East Yorkshire. So, the committee might want to go and have a look at that.”
And there is a sustainability dashboard. Before any project gets approved, it all has to go through a green lens. And I was like, “This is incredible.” And yet nobody kind of told us that.
And so, sometimes it's about closing that circle and looking at the different ways that impact can be delivered, not just the big… David's report on the BBC or editorials in the times, but actually, fundamental changes to the workings of Government department, which is as impactful.
Philip: Mary also talked about how the committee works in practice about some of the past successes of the EAC, and how important it is to bring environmental issues to the fore in areas which can be so often dominated purely by economics.
Creagh: I think measurement is one of the most powerful tools that we have. And I think it was set up deliberately as a mirror committee to mirror Public Accounts: same number of MPs, we have a minister on.
It caused me great consternation when Therese Coffey, actually turned up to one of our committee meetings and started demanding the papers off the clocks, and we had all sorts of cat and mouse games over that.
But I think maybe I was a more troublesome chair in my day, who knows? I might have been more troublesome, but I think you are continuing the tradition of making good trouble. And I think that's what John Lewis, the Civil Rights Congressman said, “It's about causing the right sort of trouble.” And there is a long and distinguished tradition of that.
And I'm really interested to see that you've set up now the polar subcommittee. So, taking committee members' passions and then saying, “Okay, well we haven't got enough headspace to do this justice, why don't you do something specific.” Going back to the start, if it didn't exist, you would need to invent it.
Coming from a place where Public Accounts is set up because it's all about the money. And actually, we are moving to a world where actually, it's all about the earth. The earth is the monopoly provider of everything that we need to exist.
Philip: Mary Creagh was not the only former chair of the EAC who joined our event. Our former chair, Joan Walley was also in the audience, and she spoke about how far the committee has come in the last 25 years.
Joan: I think back in 1997, when we had the idea of wanting to have an Environmental Audit Select Committee that was going to be cross-cutting, it was very difficult to get people like the BBC and outside people actually interested in what we were doing, because people didn't really understand that concept of a cross-cutting parliamentary select committee.
So, it’s just wonderful to see that it's now established and it's legitimate. And the questions which Theresa mentioned in her speech as to whether or not we should be looking at things like climate change, which was a new person on the block as it were, that is now embedded.
So, I think, we together, the seventh chairman I think who held that baton, and I presented it to Mr. Speaker when I retired in 2015, that Parliament had to own this agenda.
I think we have come a long way, but I think that you are right that we are focusing now on where we go for the next 25 years, right up until 2050.
Philip: Back on the panel, we also heard from David Shukman. David was the BBC's first Science Editor. He spoke about how the media has reported on the committee's inquiries. I asked him how select committees like ours set the weather for scrutiny of Government policy.
David: I think it's a critical role and it works in different ways. So, one is robust, preferably colourfully phrased conclusions of a report make news.
And I'm thinking most recently of the phrase about going onto a war footing to tackle Britain's leaky homes, which is an absolute scandal that it hasn't been dealt with sooner.
And I thought it was terrific that those words, that colourful language made headlines and went very far as a result, and I thought the report backed that up. I think it works in another way as well, which is the fact of a committee inquiry.
The fact that one’s started, it's been announced, it's a process, allows specialist reporters to go to their editors to say, “Look, these bunch of MPs are interested in this topic, we should cover it as a topic.”
And then it works in a third way, a bit more nebulous this one, but it's worth mentioning, which is that because you are having hearings in the Commons with witnesses turning up and speaking and coming up with various statements and comments, that kind of can get picked up in the Westminster Village, which can work its way through the political reporting teams.
I think it works both ways, and I would argue that it's critically important. Whether we've yet had a kind of Jim Hansen moment, I'm thinking of the NASA scientists critically important testimonies of a congressional committee, not unlike the Environmental Audit Committee back in 1988, which had amazing galvanising effect on the politics around global warming in the States.
Whether there's quite been that moment, I don't know if the mechanisms in the UK allow for that, but certainly, having this process of scrutiny is absolutely essential.
Philip: As our panel discussion concluded, Hannah White, encouraged select committees to take a fresh look at how they gather evidence.
Hannah: I think Parliament needs to think more about its model of evidence gathering, sort of coming out with terms of reference, putting them out there, saying, “Please write us a formal submission.” It's just not the way, quite lots of people, lots of committees want to hear from operate these days.
And actually, there were lots of people with lots of interesting things to say to Parliament who would never engage with that sort of process. And I think there is something important about there being an evidence base, which leads to a report.
But I think that Parliament hasn't really done enough reflection on whether the — as David says, there's not enough investment in different ways of thinking about speaking to the public and different sorts of experts and people in other countries and so on, being able to input into your work.
Philip: To finish the panel discussion, David Shukman pointed out the value of cross-party work when reporting on parliament and when trying to get consensus on an issue. We don't rest on our laurels, but there's so much more that we can do, and everybody agreed about that.
David: It's an incredibly useful asset in the national debate to have a cross-party form of scrutiny. And I would encourage everybody to get stuck into some of the really big questions that so many people who are concerned about these different agendas want answered, offsetting, what's the way forward on offsetting?
We've touched on deforestation. Here's another one, you mentioned, Mary, the supply of minerals. What is the way forward on where we're going to get minerals from? More from land or deep sea?
And I think it would be a service actually, to the national debate on all these topics for your committee to investigate, pronounce. I think it would really help to be a useful guide. I mean, I've got a list here of even more, but that's three.
Philip: So, we've heard David's suggestions, we heard Hannah's call to source more people from across the country. Where should the Environmental Audit Committee go next? We asked academics to pitch ideas for future work to the committee.
Male: Today, I'm requesting the committee to consider a twofold opportunity. The first is to look at whether support for amateur grassroots sports clubs wanted to reduce their carbon footprints and environmental impacts is adequate.
And the second is to assess the potential for a new campaign for sports clubs to form a social movement towards Net Zero promoting a sustainability toolkit to get the team started.
Philip: Should the committee look again at trying to do more on microplastics?
Female: By 2050, we will have produced a cumulative 25 billion tons of new plastic since its mass production began in the fifties. Whilst plastic is incredibly useful in certain sectors and applications, it is also a source of micro and nanoscopic pollution, collectively known as microplastic.
In 2016, the Environment Audit Committee's inquiry into the impact of microplastic in the environment led to the ban of microbeads from personal care products. But microbeads are a small percent of the problem, with the most prolific sources being tires, textiles, and larger pieces of plastic.
Philip: Should the committee look at whether things like air conditioners could affect global warming?
Female: We're at risk of entering a vicious cycle where we buy more air conditioners, we use more energy, and we emit more CO2, but the UK has solutions at hand too.
The UK could reduce its need for cooling and increase its resilience towards heat, for example, by implementing extreme weather plans.
Philip: We will be announcing the winning pitch in coming weeks. You can follow the committee's Twitter account @commonsEAC to find out who won.
Following the event, we all gathered together for a chat, and it was very clear that the event had been a success. David Shukman thought there was much to celebrate.
David: A real highlight for me was the fact that there's so much interest and support for cross-party scrutiny of what I think is the most important set of issues of our time, namely everything environmental.
Because we're in an age where there are claims to be green, boasts about being climate friendly, all kinds of organisations saying, “Oh, we're planet positive and all the rest of it.”
And unless you have a process of really intense scrutiny, we're never going to get to Net Zero. So, I think it's incredibly important that this committee has done its job for so long, and I was very keen to come along and offer my support for another 25 years.
Philip:Mary Creagh, stressed the importance of working collaboratively, whether in Government, in a committee like ours, or at a local authority level.
Creagh: For my part, I would like to see the committee focusing on the role of local councils as conveners and anchor players in their own community. They've all said they're going to — they've declared a climate emergency, they're going to get to Net Zero by 2030. How realistic are those plans and what more should they be doing?
And the second thing is the role of DCMS, the role of culture, media, and sport. How can we better get those cultural institutions talking to people about the small changes that they can make in their lives that can make a really big difference if we all act together.
One of the really enjoyable things for me as a former chair of the committee is looking at the former members of the committee who have gone into Government. And I think once MPs have been through the Environmental Audit Committee and sat on it, they can never say that they didn't know what they learned on that committee.
So, for me, it's a very informative, a very educative process. A politician once said, “We've had enough of experts.” In my view, we can never get enough of experts.
Philip: What a great 25th-anniversary event for the Environmental Audit Committee. I'd like to express my thanks to all those who took part, all those who shared our history in the past, and all of those who will shape our future.
That brings this special episode of Committee Corridor to an end.
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I am Philip Dunne and this has been Committee Corridor, thank you for listening.