Statement on the Consultation on the Review of the Sustainable Development Scheme

The Minister for Environment, Planning and Countryside (Carwyn Jones): In my statement on 24 June, I outlined the approach that I intended to take to revise the Assembly’s sustainable development scheme, and explained how I would report on the effectiveness of the scheme so far. Revising the scheme is the responsibility of the whole Assembly, but the functions of reporting and consulting have been delegated to Ministers.

I am launching ‘Starting to Live Differently’ today, the formal consultation on revising the scheme, and I am announcing the publication of an independent report on the difference that the scheme has made. CAG Consultants prepared that report for us, based on its investigations, the Davidoff report that I drew to your attention in June, and other material.

The Welsh Assembly Government is committed to honest, open reporting. We wanted a warts-and-all report that would show how we could improve our scheme and implement it better. CAG Consultants have given us that, as it judged us against a high standard. These are some of its conclusions:

‘There is no question that over the last four years the National Assembly has worked hard to mainstream sustainable development into its policies…. The Assembly can be proud of setting a standard that is rarely matched elsewhere.’

‘Co-ordination mechanisms sit at the heart of the political and administrative structure of the Assembly.’

‘At the same time the Assembly has succeeded in dispersing responsibility for the duty across the organisation.’

‘The scheme has raised the profile of sustainable development across Wales, and has galvanised many organisations to start thinking more seriously about this issue. As the annual reports demonstrate, the Assembly has done much over the last four years to promote the duty.’
Those are not my words, but the independent judgment of a well-respected organisation with considerable experience in the field. All Members can take pride in that assessment, particularly Sue Essex, who did so much to earn it.

However, we did not ask to be congratulated: we wanted to know how we could improve. We have been told that:

‘There are also areas in need of improvement: efforts are dispersed, rather than focused on the key sustainability pressures and crunch issues facing Wales; it is not clear that the policy changes that have been introduced will amount to enough to turn round unsustainable trends; sustainable development has not been systematically fed down from policies into the Assembly’s practice and the practice of other organisations; the Assembly’s policies for leading by example need to be implemented more fully; and there is little evidence that real change is happening on the ground.’

That is not such welcome news. We are doing many good things, but we are not living up to our own aspirations yet. We need to focus our efforts, and deliver real change.

I am grateful to CAG, and to all the individuals and organisations whose views it reports, for its criticisms as well as its plaudits. That is what we wanted to help us formulate proposals for revising the scheme. That brings me to our consultation paper. In June, I spoke of informal discussions with stakeholders to help us develop our proposals. I thank the 33 representatives of the 29 organisations who took part in these discussions, and especially the five organisations—Carmarthenshire County Council, Groundwork Aberdare, the Centre for Alternative Technology, the Environment Agency Wales, and Shotton Paper Company plc—that hosted or offered to host them. These discussions helped us decide what proposals to put forward in our consultation. We have tried to make a distinction between the scheme itself, which is the whole Assembly’s responsibility, and a plan of action to deliver change that will be the Welsh Assembly Government’s responsibility.

We are proposing to strengthen and generalise the scheme’s principles, clarify how it relates to the Assembly’s partners, update the wording to reflect developments since November 2000, and provide more robust systems for monitoring and reporting. To achieve real change, the paper indicates the issues on which we believe we should concentrate our efforts. We will work to develop an action plan during and after the consultation period, in discussion with the Assembly’s many partners. It will need to reflect the outcome of the consultation regarding the scheme.


It will be important to get the scheme right, as our overarching statement of principles, but I hope that debates and discussions during the consultation period will focus as much on the content of a realistic action plan as on the wording of the scheme itself. That will help us deliver real change on the ground. The consultation period will last for three months. I welcome the intention of the three Regional Committees to invite presentations from interested organisations. In addition, we have asked the Sustainable Development Forum for Wales to work with some key organisations to stage workshops focusing on possible actions in priority areas. At the same time, consultation on the draft Wales spatial plan will also be under way. That too is about putting sustainable development into effect, so there is an important link between the two consultations.


I shall report regularly to the Environment, Planning and Countryside Committee on how our consultation is going. I hope to meet Subject Committee Chairs and other parties’ sustainable development spokespersons soon to discuss progress, and establish whether Subject Committees will wish to be involved in the consultation or in considering its outcomes. I said in June that I hoped to have a new scheme adopted by the Assembly in March 2004. That is still my hope and intention. We have a fund of goodwill to draw on, from organisations and individuals across Wales. Our independent experts have told us that:

‘For a very new organisation the Assembly has made an excellent start’.

Now, we must press on.