Oral Answers to Questions

Alan Whitehead Excerpts

Thursday 17th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Richard Benyon]

We are shortly to publish our waste review, which is examining the balance and trying to move waste up the waste hierarchy. It will demonstrate this Government’s serious ambition to work towards getting as close as we can to a waste-free society and to ensure that communities are protected wherever they can be.

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

This morning, the Secretary of State repeated her suggestion that the Environmental Audit Committee might take over the functions of the Sustainable Development Commission, which she has abolished, as a watchdog on sustainable development. Does she recognise that that will be a complete fantasy unless resources and organisation are fundamentally addressed? What efforts has she made to get resources for the EAC so that it can perform that role?

[Mrs Spelman]

The hon. Gentleman might have misunderstood what I said. There is a four-pronged approach to mainstreaming sustainable development, in which the Environmental Audit Committee might, I suggested, play the role of holding Secretaries of State to account in the way that Select Committees regularly do. Although the Select Committees are bodies of Parliament rather than Government, I have written to the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee to ask whether some of the 700 auditors in the National Audit Office, which comes under her jurisdiction, might be released to help the Environmental Audit Committee in that role.