§ Lord Kennetasked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they make environmental assessments of their own projects before or after they have decided to carry them out.
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of the Environment (Lord Hesketh)Environmental assessment is the process of collecting information on the environmental effects of a project, the consideration of that information and the final judgment on whether that project may go ahead. Any developer, including the Government, needs to consider the available information about the effects of a proposed project as it is prepared. Where the Government promote a project requiring environmental assessment in the circumstances described in my reply of 16th March to the noble Lord (Official Report col. 445), they will submit a statement of the project's environmental effects to the body responsible for giving development consent before that body makes a decision on the project.