Whitehall Watch

Rebecca Willis casts an insider’s eye down the corridors of power

Who notices when the government gets things wrong? And is there anyone in the political mainstream providing real hard-nosed criticism from an environmental perspective? Because there are a lot of difficult questions that need asking at the moment. Take John Prescott’s Sustainable Communities Plan.

It heralds a huge expansion of house building in the south-east – but does it deserve that ‘sustainable’ tag? Will these new developments offer the very best standards for energy, water, resource use and transport provision? Probably not, unless enough people really push these critical issues.

Or take the Haskins Review. Commissioned by the prime minister, it advocates radical changes to the structure of agencies involved in rural delivery – including English Nature, the Countryside Agency and the Environment Agency. But in the rush to streamline, are the right questions being asked about who will champion the rural environment, wildlife and landscape? Meanwhile, in Brussels, Eurocrats face intense lobbying over new chemicals legislation.

The REACH proposals envisage, at last, proper testing and evaluation of the chemicals present in everyday products and processes. The new system could spur innovation by rewarding the most ingenious companies for finding ways to avoid or substitute the most harmful chemicals. Yet it is being fought tooth and nail, and with shameless sensationalism, by the chemicals industry.

That’s real opposition – but, sadly, pulling the wrong way. The most fundamental question is the tricky one about the way we live – the relationship between consumption and environmental impact. Until now the government has focused on the production side of the economic equation. If we produce things more efficiently, we needn’t worry so much about consumption, need we?

Well, yes. Take transport. Of course we can gain from more fuel-efficient vehicles, but we need behaviour switches too – from cars to public transport, walking and cycling. So it’s reassuring to see the government starting, at last, to encourage a debate on consumption. Its recent strategy on sustainable consumption and production didn’t give many answers, but does at least herald the start of a process of soul-searching about how to encourage people to play their part.

It’s a shame that our opposition parties aren’t doing more to ask the difficult questions. Party conference season encourages speculation about the state they’re in. Can the Tories rebuild themselves as a credible government-in-waiting? Could the Lib Dem victory in Brent East be a foretaste of things to come?

And, as the nights draw in, Iain Duncan Smith is reportedly indulging in cosy fireside chats with the more radical end of the green lobby – Zac Goldsmith and George Monbiot. I’d love to be a fly on the wall. But will their blend of market-restricting, anti-globalising views really cut the mustard with a party that professes to be about small government and the free market?

And, frankly, doesn’t IDS have something even more pressing to worry about – keeping his job? More convincing as an environmental opposition, the Lib Dems do claim – with some justification – to think through the environmental implications of all their policies. Their strong presence in local government gives them the knowledge and authority to hold government to account on, for example, transport and waste.

Yet their front bench team is rarely heard championing the cause. Is it just not macho enough to be the stuff of big political fights? The green lobby does have champions in Parliament – notably some impressive backbench MPs, strengthened since Michael Meacher joined their ranks. And we need to look outside Westminster as well. Some of the best environmental opposition comes from pressure groups. Ask John Gummer. In the days when he was advocating green reforms from within a distinctly unenthusiastic government he would, as he recently admitted, “thank God for Greenpeace”.

Rebecca Willis is director of Green Alliance.

1 December 2003

Rebecca Willis