§ Mr. Simon HughesTo ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science what actions have been taken since the appointment of a Minister in his Department to consider the environmental implications of his Department's policies; and if he will make a statement.
§ Mr. FallonThere are four major areas of education policy interest in the Government's White Paper, "This Common Inheritance", which the Department is taking forward. Those are: environmental education in the school curriculum which has been identified as a cross-curricular theme in the national curriculum: guidance has been issued to all schools in England on this aspect of their work; the built and external environment for education; further and higher education provision relevant to the environment; and the establishment of a new environment unit within the further and higher education sector to support post-experience environmental training geared to the specific needs of employers and their employees. Our departmental report, published last month, records, with a reference to the White Paper, "This Common Inheritance", that about half publicly funded environmental research is financed from the science budget. The Department also has a strategy which is designed to achieve savings of 15 percent. in the total energy bill, for the premises it occupies on the Government estate, over a five-year period.