Chris Seeks Confirmation Re Climate Change Committee Recommendations
Sir Christopher Chope: Thank you very much indeed, and I hope you are going to get a different nameplate.
Chair: Don’t I look like a Bill?
Q133 Sir Christopher Chope: Minister, earlier in your evidence you were talking about setting up this new climate security taskforce. What is its remit and scope for action?
Katie White: Thank you. That is an excellent question, and I understand that while we are meeting the Environmental Audit Committee is quizzing my colleague on biodiversity collapse. We know that climate change and nature loss pose a challenge to many of our fundamentals—energy, water and food. There is some excellent work going on across Whitehall, but we want to make sure that we are pulling this together and working across Whitehall, which is why I am doing it with my colleague, the Minister for Security. We also want to challenge ourselves, so we have pulled together a collection of experts from military, academia and science to look at our preparedness. We have set about three different meetings over the next year, but we will be working with the team to look at our preparedness on these issues and where there might be further risks for the UK, what will be their priorities in meeting those risks and where there might be gaps in the analysis.
Q134 Sir Christopher Chope: How does that fit in with the Climate Change Committee’s report on adaptation? It made several recommendations, including some relating to what you have just been talking about but they made a lot of other recommendations as well. What is the interaction between those?
Katie White: It is a good challenge. I know that you raised adaptation in the House yesterday, and I think received the answer from the Secretary of State. Adaptation has been a poor relation of mitigation and as we sit here in a pretty uncomfortable space, I think we are all aware that we need to look at how to adapt the UK more effectively. The Committee on Climate Change, as you know, is an independent organisation that gives us advice, and the Government can take that advice or not. This taskforce that we have set up is the first of its kind but it is time limited. We will see how we get on in a year to look with these individuals across the piece at all of our preparedness and resilience around food, water and energy and how that interacts with the military, because they have been doing a fair amount of work themselves, to make sure we are pulling in all of the work across government so that we are prepared. I am sure there will be interaction and we will be able to outline more of that in due course.
Q135 Sir Christopher Chope: Where the Climate Change Committee makes recommendations, what is the Government’s approach to those recommendations? Obviously taxpayers’ money is being used to fund the Climate Change Committee. Its remit is to advise the Government. It has given specific advice to the Government saying they are failing on adaptation. Have the Government accepted that advice? Are they going to accept the advice?
Katie White: As you will know, this adaptation at the moment sits within DEFRA, so we will be working across government but DEFRA is the responsible Government Department for that. It is a hefty report that I think you might have with you—
Sir Christopher Chope: It is 500 pages plus.
Katie White: It is a hefty report, so they are working through that at the moment and, as ever with reports from the Committee on Climate Change, the Government will issue their response. I do not want to speak on behalf of DEFRA and I do not think they have come to their conclusion of what bits of that advice they will take. We have never taken the advice 100%, so it is which bits of the advice we will take and how we think that is factoring in. At the moment in DESNZ, for instance, with heat pumps, we are already making sure that on the boiler upgrade scheme you can do cooling and heating at the same time. We are looking at how to future-proof our elements of it but the response will come from DEFRA.
Q136 Sir Christopher Chope: The response will come from the Government.
Katie White: Of course.
Sir Christopher Chope: You are part of the Government.
Katie White: Absolutely.
Q137 Sir Christopher Chope: Your Secretary of State was asked specifically questions yesterday about whether he would be adopting the Climate Change Committee’s “A Well-Adapted UK” recommendations and investment plans in full, and all we received was a cop-out as a response from the Secretary of State. He said that is obviously a matter for discussion across Government. This is urgent. The reports come out only every five years, and the last one that was produced five years ago fell far short of delivering what was needed and the Climate Change Committee is now saying that the Government need to get down to dealing with this. We have had discussions today about what public attitudes are. My constituents would much prefer to see action taken on dealing with flooding and overheating in schools and hospitals and elsewhere than throwing a heck of a lot of taxpayers’ money at windmills made in China. That is the view of my constituents, and it seems as though your Department is almost in denial about its obligation to deliver on adaptation. I am hoping you are going to be able to change my views on this.
Katie White: Well, thank you for the opportunity and the challenge of changing your views, which I think might be long held. There is quite a lot in that. I absolutely agree with you that the public expects more for adaptation, and as we sit here very uncomfortably in this room getting hotter and hotter, we see the impact on productivity, we have seen schools closing and at the same time if we go back a few months we have had floods. This is about crops, this is about parents. We know we must adapt to the changing climate.
You have been around this place for a lot longer than most of us and are well aware that I would make sure that any big announcements on a very in-depth and detailed report that came out a matter of weeks ago were well considered across government. Of course as soon as we have a robust, thoughtful, appropriate and commensurate response we will report on that. I agree with you it should be a commensurate response. What I disagree with is that we should not be doing anything on mitigation. I will not want to play a role in the idea that we would hand this country over less resilient for future generations. Playing our full part means mitigation and adaptation.
Q138 Sir Christopher Chope: If we are going to invest in both of those, the Climate Change Committee says that we need to invest a large sum of money, probably £11 billion a year until the 2050s, in adaptation. That is a very strong recommendation, and they say that is probably an underestimate of what is needed. Are the Government committed to providing that investment, which is recommended by the Climate Change Committee?
Chair: Can we make sure that we have relatively short responses? We have one more question and we are going past the 5 pm limit. Just check in your diary.
Katie White: Thank you. I think we are okay. I agree with you that we need to make more investment in this. Of course I am not going to come here and make a huge commitment about our fiscal investment on this today. You have been around this place for far longer and you that that would be an ill thought through decision. We need to make sure we have a proper, thought through, commensurate response and that it is backed up with numbers. It would be irresponsible of me to come here today and to not have done that across government yet. I will be working closely with my colleagues to do that at pace because, as you say, we are suffering the consequences today.
Q139 Sir Christopher Chope: When will a decision on this be announced?
Katie White: When we know we will report to the Committee. As soon as possible.
Q140 Sir Christopher Chope: Will you consider transferring from DEFRA to your Department responsibility for adaptation? At the moment this is a good example of a lack of joined-up government dealing with the issues around climate change.
Katie White: Obviously it is above my pay grade to make machinery of government changes and announcements or decisions today—way above my pay grade. I agree that we need to make sure we are working across government. We have been doing that with me sitting here with my colleague from the FCDO. I work very closely with DEFRA colleagues as well, and the taskforce we announced is with the Cabinet Office. We need to make sure that we are working as a team and there are various things we have done since we came into office that show how we are trying to improve that. I am sure there is more room for improvement and I will continue to push on that but thank you for the suggestion.
Chair: Sir Christopher, thank you. You are straying into some questions that I wanted to ask. Do you want one more bite of the cherry?
Q141 Sir Christopher Chope: I was just going to say to the Minister that when she goes to Bournemouth tomorrow to see the Local Government Association she might take a look at the cliff erosion in Bournemouth, the costs of repair of which seem to be beyond the means of the BCP Council, which includes Christchurch. Is that not an example of where people would much prefer to see the cliff path restored in Bournemouth rather than massive subsidies being given to wind farms?
Katie White: I think the British public want investment in adaptation and mitigation. There are areas where we agree but I beg to say I am a little more ambitious for this country and for our future.
Q142 Chair: Thank you. On the point about governmental coherence and Departments working together, there has been significant criticism, particularly from the ICAI, which has found blurred responsibilities between FCDO and DESNZ. We have had overlapping programming and weakened portfolio coherence, because there has been limited co-ordination. Have any changes been made at a portfolio level to try to address those issues?
Katie White: I will start off but both of my colleagues probably have quite a lot to say on this. We have a regular ODA board meeting, which is between myself and Minister Creagh and Minister Chapman. We have set that up since we came in and I think it has been working very effectively. We now have a strategy that we work on together, which we published. Matt, can I ask you first and I am sure Rachel has something to add?
Matt Toombs: Yes, absolutely. As the Minister said, we have this new ICF4 strategy that is looking at, as I mentioned earlier, how we use ODA but also other levers. Those other levers are quite often held in different Departments, so FCDO looks over the work of UKAF or BII, or the mutilateral development banks or other areas, and that is firmly connected to what we are looking to do with ICF. We are also looking, within our climate finance, to streamline and focus on a smaller number of programmes and to do that in a very integrated way. The ICAI that you mentioned did a report into energy transitions and finance for energy transitions, and some of the work that highlighted are things that we are working on directly between DESNZ and FCDO, joining up our activity on how we do energy programming in a fully integrated way.
Rachel Kyte: From my perspective, the co-ordination at the ministerial level has pulled officials together and given a single point of direction, which I think is helpful. I was appointed by the Secretary of State for DESNZ and the Foreign Secretary. My counterpart, Ruth Davis, was appointed by the Secretary of State for DEFRA and the Foreign Secretary. When we see that things are not as co-ordinated as perhaps they should be we can raise a red flag as well so it gives an extra line of defence.
Q143 Chair: Are you confident that the ICAI will not be damning the co-operation and co-ordination between Departments on this agenda?
Katie White: I think we feel confident we have improved the position. I do not want to pre-empt any outcome but we have definitely made inroads on this and we will continue to endeavour to do that. As Rachel said, having these special representatives has been pretty game changing from my position.
Q144 Ms Polly Billington: Can I follow up? It is not only the ICAI who found this. We found this as a Committee. Getting you three in front of us was quite hard. It goes to the point that Sir Christopher Chope and Melanie Onn have mentioned that if net zero and climate change is a corporate responsibility for the whole of government, I would suggest that the Government respond accordingly to make sure that government officials are accountable to the appropriate Committees, of which we are certainly a central one. Can you convey that to your seniors?
The Committee continues...
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