The idea of giving an outgoing Chair of a statutory agency the opportunity to reflect on the state of the world is a good one – particularly if they grasp the opportunity , which Andrew Sells did this morning.
He went out of his way to talk up vicarious liability and removal of the general licence as means to tackle wildlife crime (see earlier blog) but he said a lot of other interesting things too.
Committee Room 8 is the Wellington Room and it is next to the Peel Room with a portrait of Lord John Russell by the entrance. The Efra Committee members present under the Chairmanship of Neil Parish were Angela Smith, Kerry McCarthy and John Grogan (all Labour) and Sheryll Murray and Julian Sturdy (both Conservative). The transcript of the session will, no doubt, be published tomorrow, but these were the highlights for me.
NE independence – or lack of it.
Sells described the relationship between Defra and NE as a three-dimensional game of noughts and crosses where there were all sorts of complex links but Defra pays the bills! He said that NE had decided to ‘work with the grain of government policy’ which could be taken to mean, ‘not to rock the boat’ – which some say was exactly why Owen Paterson brought in Andrew Sells to the role in the first place. Paterson was only the first of four Secretaries of State under whom Sells had had to guide NE and I got the impression that he hadn’t found the changes of management that helpful.
Clearly there have been cuts to budgets and these were accompanied by what would have been seen as perhaps sensible moves to share offices and IT systems but were followed by Defra deciding that NE’s finance system, human resource function and communications staff would be enveloped by the home department too. Later Sells mentioned ‘creeping control’ and I think this referred to this process of engulfing the NE organisation. Sells asked how can the CEO of NE be seen as an accounting officer when he doesn’t have a finance director and relies on Defra systems? Good question!
When NE staff want to complain, they have to go to Defra rather than an HR expert in their own agency, and when the press ask for a comment from NE then Defra press office drafts the first response and puts their slant on it!
Sells described this process as starting as cost-cutting but ending up making NE ‘less free’. Wouldn’t Boris and Jacob describe NE as a vassal agency?
When asked how NE could reclaim the powers and duties it had been given under the 2000 CRoW Act he, rather poignantly, said ‘I tried and failed’. And when asked what his successor should do he said ‘Never forget you chair a public body with duties’.
Cuts
Sells suggested that Defra’s budget had been cut by 23% whereas government spending as a whole had increased and NE had taken a disproportionately hard 47% cut in grant in aid. And the latest £6m cut came within the financial year in which it needed to be met. He said that with cuts of this size there will inevitably be consequences for biodiversity and that the costs of recovering wildlife will eventually be much higher as a result.
SSSI monitoring was an area he touched upon – it’s not a ring-fenced area of expenditure so cuts amount to about 55%.
Regulation or encouragement
Carrots or sticks? This got us into wildlife crime and Mr Sells’s personal favouring of vicarious liability, stiffer penalties for convictions and the ability to withdraw from particular estates the general licence under which crows etc can be killed.
Hen Harriers were mentioned but Mr Sells, quite rightly, said that was the subject of a court case so he shouldn’t talk about it though he criticised the NGOs (ie the RSPB) for not supporting a Hen Harrier reintroduction in the lowlands. He said, twice I think, that ‘Grouse shooting is lawful but killing Hen Harriers is illegal’ which is a lot further than we have ever heard Therese Coffey or Michael Gove go.
He was asked about the slapped wrist for the Abbeystead Estate over Lesser Black-backed Gull culls – he thought it best not to go into an individual case.
We moved on to burning of blanket bogs which is possibly a familiar subject to readers of this blog. Sells said that they had approached landowners for voluntary agreements (not to exercise their existing consents, given in the past by NE, to burn blanket bogs) but that wouldn’t deal with the issue in the long term and that NE was working hard on this matter to resolve things with the landowners so that their aims and NE’s aims could both be met. Sells was worried that there was short time (did he say two years – I will check the published transcript when available) to get this fixed before infraction proceedings would start.
Countryside Stewardship Scheme
Sells said that CS is ‘Like a badly-designed car. Key parts have never worked.’ and that the scheme was ‘Overcomplicated’ and ‘Massively over-engineered’. He said that nobody had done well on this but NE had had more flak than it really deserved. He conceded that NE had suffered from ‘optimism bias’ (quite a nice phrase) and had thought it could do a lot more to put things right than had actually been achievable. All in all, Sells admitted that it was a ‘Very unhappy story’.
Defra Board
This was an intereting vignette. Sells had been asked on to the Defra Board some time ago and had declined thinking that it was a bit of a conflict of interest and would mean getting too close to Defra. A while later a very senior woman (I wonder – Liz Truss or the Perm Sec?) had phoned him to say that David Cameron (a former Prime Minister) wanted him to be on the Board and that the Chair of the Environment Agency had already said yes so Mr Sells decided to give it a go. There never was a conflict of interest as NE’s work was never discussed. But interestingly, Sells said that the Defra Board was bordering on the dysfunctional until Michael Gove arrived.
Michael Gove
Given that Sells worked under the gaze of Paterson, Truss, Leadsom and now Gove he didn’t say a lot about these folk except to say that Michael Gove’s 25-year plan was good and that the Sec of State had been ‘brilliant’ at bringing people together behind the plan – which now needs to be delivered.
The new guard
When asked why he was going there was a brief mention of health reasons and the repeated suggestion that 5 years at the helm was the right length of time. In response to the question about the Chair and CEO going at the same time then Sells said that it wasn’t ideal but that NE had a new Deputy Chair, a new Interim CEO and a new post of Deputy CEO so they’d probably be OK. His successor ought to:
- show passion and love for nature and the countryside
- treasure and nurture the brilliant staff
- remember NE is a public body and not part of Defra
But he also said ‘Have we reversed biodiversity decline – sadly not!’
All in all this was a touching and open performance from someone who appears to care about all the right things. However, let’s remember that Andrew Sells was put into NE by Owen Paterson and wasn’t chosen to cause trouble. With more robust leadership from the whole Board and from the senior staff NE could be in a better place now. NE has spent too much of its time getting close to people, and the wrong people, and has forgotten that it has duties to perform and powers with which to perform them. If only NE flexed the muscles it has then it might find that it is not a 7-stone weakling after all, and it might get a lot more done. But that task now passes to the unknown new team.
Really interesting stuff for policy/Govt wonks, Mark !
Whilst I suspect there may have been ways NE could have done better – as even more so the conservation NGOs – the impacts of re- (actually dis)organisation come across really strongly – for example, work being handed over to the rural payments agency, a body which achieved the near impossible in running into massive problems GIVING money to people !
I also wonder about the great Defra ‘family’ – dysfunctional, or what ? Having looked down from at least the middle slopes in the past, I experienced the worms eye view of the finances of an NNR. NE (and by implication Defra) are roughly where the Forestry Commission was in 1990 – no one can actually tell you what the reserve costs, for example the electricity bill of the rotting, uninsulated reserve office.
Still, things could be worse – it could be Natural Resources Wales (or ‘Not Really Working’)
I’ve just watched it. Agree with your last para. His very English instinct for compromise cuts across the clear judgements which are sometimes needed – or required by law.
On infraction proceedings he said “not much more than two years or eighteen months.”
https://www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/d2a1906d-71c9-4820-9467-b03ff492d477
I wonder if it can ever recover? Personally I like the idea of Link UK but as it is completely devolved that certainly needs a long time to formulate something for a new Environment Act. The RSPB says it is campaigning for a new Environment Act but members hear the same amount on that as RSPB cost cutting.
I think that what members hear from the RSPB depends on what they sign up for and want to take part in. RSPB have emailed me asking me to email my MP about the Environment Bill. I haven’t yet done so because I’ve focussed on trying to get my MP to back a “People’s Vote”. Unfortunately he thinks this would undermine democracy!
Bob, I fully support all the great work that the RSPB does. However, I do not agree that the few people it has signed up to be more active will make a real difference if all they do is write to their MP. In your case, as well as mine, I know it will achieve nothing. There are more effective things the RSPB could urge their ‘active’ members to do. I hope that with the news this morning we can encourage the RSPB to do more than I suspect it is proposing, and involve more than the ‘active’ members.
Thanks Alex. I made my comment because I was aware that the RSPB were doing a lot on this behind the scenes. I’m happy to let them decide how best to get the results we all want.
Bob W – you often write of your knowledge of what RSPB does behind the scenes but we all have to take that on trust as you are anonymous don’t we…
Thanks Mark. To be clear, I’m just an enthusiastic member and I have no special knowledge although I do talk to RSPB staff from time to time. You can pick up a lot from reading blogs on the website, especially Martin Harper’s of course. What really impressed me was the tribute Caroline Lucas paid at the AGM to the help she receives from the RSPB for her work in parliament, and they obviously do the same for like-minded MPs of all parties. There’s a balance to be struck between behind the scenes stuff and public campaigning and obviously they can be done in combination. I’m happy to let the RSPB decide how best to pursue individual issues.
A real good write up, well done for getting the early London train.
“and the repeated suggestion that 5 years at the helm was the right length of time.”. Why, I wonder? Does that mindset not encourage short-termism? Five years is not a long time to change things and make them work properly. Then off you go and someone else comes in and changes things again. I don’t think heads of major corporations would agree with this.
“though he criticised the NGOs (ie the RSPB) for not supporting a Hen Harrier reintroduction in the lowlands.”
I scratch my head with this whole concept. The idea that you can introduce Hen Harriers to lowland areas, when they are being persistently killed on upland territories is ecologically ignorant. It seems to be based on the simplistic and mistaken conception that because Hen Harriers nest on lowland sites in Europe, that somehow you can re-introduce them into lowland sites in Britain, where they won’t be persecuted. It’s a specious idea i.e. superficially convincing, but on closer examination a fallacious idea.
Like lots of birds, Hen Harriers have favoured habitat preference for breeding. When the first choice territories are occupied, if there is a surfeit of birds looking for breeding territories, they will occupy the next choice habitat, then the third choice and so on. Unfortunately, their first choice breeding habitat is upland moorland, a very large proportion of which is used as grouse moor. Where of course the Hen Harriers attempting to nest will either be killed, or have their nests destroyed. This creates empty territories which will draw in more breeding Hen Harriers which will be killed, and so on. A type of sink effect, so there is never a surfeit of Hen Harriers which would chose third choice breeding territories, unlike in Europe.
Hen Harriers range far and wide, as is obvious from the published data of satellite tagged Hen Harriers which have “disappeared”. Likewise upland moorland is only really occupied by Hen Harriers in the breeding season and following months when it is warm. In winter, Hen Harriers tend to be found in open coastal areas, and other open lowland areas. This is because prey they rely on in the warmer months on upland moorland, is not there in the numbers that can sustain them. A similar thing happens with Short-eared Owls, which are found on lowland areas in the winter, and uplands in the breeding season and summer.
In other words, if you re-introduce Hen Harriers to lowland areas, where they are already found in the winter anyway, they will not stop to breed there when it warms up, but will disperse in the spring to find prime first choice breeding habitat for Hen Harriers, upland moorland i.e. grouse moor.
Therefore I’m at a complete loss to understand how or why it is thought that Hen Harriers “re-introduced” in the lowlands could be expected to hang around in the lowlands as it warms up and breed there. When Hen Harriers are already found in these lowland sites in the winter, but don’t hang around when it gets warmer, because these are not their first choice breeding territory. Presumably, the RSPB don’t support this half-baked idea, because they understand how Hen Harriers behave, and why it would be a futile exercise.