Date:              19 May 2008
Embargo:       None

Select Committee quiz Permanent Secretary

ESA attended a recent meeting of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (EFRA) Select Committee in the House of Commons at which Defra’s Permanent Secretary Helen Gohsh, and officials Bill Stow Director General for Strategy and Evidence Group, and Stephen Park, interim Director of General Finance, were questioned by MPs on the committee on Defra’s priorities, particularly concerning funding issues. The session began with a long discussion on issues relating to food security, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and climate change.

Ms Gohsh said she believed that Defra would come out with a balanced budget in the current financial year. When challenged by the Labour MP Paddy Tipping about cuts to the WRAP budget she said that  this was a strategic issue for Defra and that the “relative maturity” of the advice market meant that the “extent to which Government needed to finance individual advice to individual companies was getting less”.

The Labour MP Lynne Jones highlighted the work of the National Industrial Symbiosis Programme (NISP), which is based in her constituency, asking why its budget had been cut when it is not actually providing direct advice but brings different companies together. Conservative MP James Gray asked for an explanation of the work of NISP, which Ms Gohsh explained operated like a “marriage broking service between company A and company B” to which Mr Gray responded that he was glad its budget had been cut as it sounded like a “useless quango”. Ms Jones argued that NISP had made a positive contribution to reducing volumes of waste being sent to landfill.

ENDS

Link to full meeting transcript