§ Llew SmithTo ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs if she will publish a table showing(a) the attendance by Ministers at Green Ministers' meetings held since December 2000 and (b) the percentage energy savings achieved by each Department across its respective estate over the same period. [19884]
§ Mr. MeacherBetween December 2000 and June 2001, Green Ministers met once and details of ministerial attendance are set out in Table 1. Following the general election in June 2001, the previously informal Committee was upgraded to a Cabinet Sub-Committee of ENV and it is established practice under exemption two of Part H of the Code of Practice on Access to Government Information not to disclose information relating to the proceedings of Cabinet Committees.
Percentage energy savings achieved by Departments from December 2000 to date are not yet available. The latest figures we have available are for the period April 1999 to March 2000 and these are given in Tables 2 and 3.
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Table 1: Ministerial attendance at Green Ministers meeting on 19 March 2001 Minister Department Michael Meacher (Chair) DETR Patricia Hewitt DTI Jacqui Smith DfEE Beverley Hughes DETR Chris Mullin DFID Hugh Bayley DSS Elliott Morley MAFF
Table 1: Ministerial attendance at Green Ministers meeting on 19 March 2001 Minister Department Yvette Cooper DH George Howarth NIO Ross Cranston LOD The Lord Bach LCD 111W
Table 2: Percentage energy efficiency improvement April 1999 to March 2000 for Civil Departments (recent performance measured by a range of efficiency indicators (ie per m2); also by total CO21) Civil Departments, including agencies Performance against energy and cost indicators relevant to 1990–912 Total cost 1999–2000 (%) MAFF-Main Estate 24 MAFF-Laboratories 21 Cabinet Office 15 Culture, Media and Sport 28 Customs and Excise -8 Education and Employment -11 Employment Service -10 Environment, Transport and Regions 11 DETR-HSE3 22 DETR-QEII CC3 -10 FCO -26 Health4 -77 Home Office 0 Home Office-Prisons 2 Inland Revenue 17 International Development 38 Lord Chancellor's Department 15 Northern Ireland 4 Scottish Court Service 30 Scottish Prison Service 2 Social Security 10 Trade and Industry 47 Treasury -23 Welsh Office5 -24 Total 8.3 1 Progress is expressed as a percentage relative to the 1990–91 base year value of the performance indicator in question. Positive figures represent improvement. The standard indicator, against which the target to improve energy efficiency by 20 per cent. by 31 March 2000 is measured, is obtained by weather-correcting energy consumption and converting to costs using 'standard prices' for fuel (6p/kWh for electricity and 1.25p/kWh for all fossil fuels) then dividing by floor area. Conversion to money both reflects the relative costs of electricity and fossil fuel and their environmental impact, and the use of fixed prices eliminates the effects of tariff changes which distort the comparison of fuel bills. 2 Adjusted for estate and weather changes, positive figures represent percentage progress. 3 HSE was removed from the DfEE estate on the formation of that Department. QEII Conference Centre is reported separately because of its business led demands. The initial sharp rise in consumption following the 1997–91 base year was directly attributable to increased revenue earning activity, which has continued throughout the reporting period. 4 Rationalisation of the estate since the base year has led to staff moving from several naturally ventilated buildings to more densely occupied air-conditioned buildings, all equipped extensively with information technology equipment. Staff numbers have increased by over 25 per cent. since 1997–98 which has led to a commensurate increase in energy consumption. 5 The transition from the former Welsh Office to the National Assembly for Wales resulted in staff numbers increasing by some 24 per cent. between 1998–99 and 1999–2000. This has significantly added to substantial increasing energy demands through the use of information technology. The transition to devolution also involved the acquisition of a large air-conditioned headquarters-type building and assimilation into the Assembly of various other building stock.
Table 3: Percentage energy efficiency improvement April 1999 to March 2000 for MOD and total Government Estate1,2 (recent performance measured by a range of efficiency indicators (ie per m2); also by total CO23) Ministry of Defence Percentage reduction relative to 1990–914 Total cost 1999–2000 Navy 33 Army 20 RAF 22 Procurement Executive5 -7 DERA -4 MOD total 21.1 Civil Departments total 8.3 Grant total 17.1 1 The Ministry of Defence (MOD) estate is different from the rest of the Government estate, and has been undergoing more radical changes. It is therefore treated in a slightly different way. In common with the civil estate, it has greatly increased its use of information technology. 2 In civil Departments, the effect of estate changes is allowed for by dividing consumption by floor area. In MOD, floor area is sometimes not meaningful (eg in relation to security or runway lighting) and also not often available. Estate changes are allowed for by being explicitly excluded from the calculations, ie the energy consumption of new facilities is removed, and for facilities no longer part of the estate, the consumption for the last full year of operation is added back. In most cases, such changes are small compared to the total and can often approximately cancel each other out. 3 Progress is expressed as a percentage relative to the 1990–91 base year value of the performance indicator in question. Positive figures represent improvement. The standard indicator, against which the target to improve energy efficiency by 20 per cent. by 31 March 2000 is measured, is obtained by weather-correcting energy consumption and converting to costs using 'standard prices' for fuel (6p/kWh for electricity and 1.25p/kWh for all fossil fuels) then dividing by floor area. Conversion to money both reflects the relative costs of electricity and fossil fuel and their environmental impact, and the use of fixed prices eliminates the effects of tariff changes which distort the comparison of fuel bills. 4 Adjusted for estate changes and weather correction positive figures represent percentage improvement. 5 It is almost impossible to produce any meaningful results to date for MOD's Procurement Executive (PE) since it has suffered major estate gains and losses over the past 10 years and now consists largely of one recently built large office. The standard MOD methodology produces a meaningless 'no change' result (since the present estate is almost entirely different from the original). Consequently, we have taken 1997–98 as the base year and applied the civil Departments' methodology to this office.