Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 4
4
Rejected
Although calculating an exact figure may be difficult, with Departments claiming it would be a...
Recommendation
Although calculating an exact figure may be difficult, with Departments claiming it would be a great deal of effort to produce something not necessarily precise, Government could do more to improve the transparency of cross-government public spending that has an impact on air pollution. While Defra tracks spend on its own air quality initiatives, it could not provide the National Audit Office with a breakdown of spend across all the cross-government initiatives it expects to contribute to air quality improvements, such as from programmes within BEIS and DLUHC. Government says that disaggregating the air quality impact of these programmes from other outcomes is a difficult technical challenge. It is important for government to be transparent with the public and Parliament about how much taxpayer’s money is going towards meeting air quality targets. Without this information the benefits and risks for air quality of wider programmes across government are not be as clear as they need to be. A lack of cross- government transparency also makes it harder for government to reprioritise when necessary and judge value-for-money. Recommendation: Although calculating an exact level of spend on air quality across government may be too difficult, there is value in improving transparency through higher level estimates. Government should, by the end of the year, develop options for improving the transparency of cross-government air quality spend and inform the Committee of its preferred approach.
Government Response Summary
The government disagrees with the recommendation, stating that the resource required to disaggregate spend driving air quality benefits across the variety of complex policies would be disproportionate, estimates produced would be misleading, and would not support accountability/transparency.
Government Response
Rejected
HM Government
Rejected
The government disagrees with the Committee’s recommendation The government holds robust information on spend for its two air quality programmes: the Air Quality and Industrial Emissions Programme (Defra) and the Joint Air Quality Unit (Defra/DfT). Whilst the department holds overall strategic responsibility for the development and implementation of air quality policy, the levers which affect air pollution are varied, complex and sit across government. The department works closely with other government departments to manage interdependencies and maximise co-benefits of policies that affect air pollution. Where it is beneficial, the government sees the value in making one-off estimates of the cross-cutting economic impacts of policies that impact air pollution. For example, the department has estimated that air quality co-benefits of policies and measures to meet Carbon Budget 6 and Net Zero to be about £35 billion over 2020-2050. However, a wide and diverse range of complex policies across government affect air quality, including transport decarbonisation, active travel, increased use of renewable energy sources, planning regulations, and sustainable food production practices. The government cannot justify the disproportionate level of resource required to disaggregate the amount of spend driving air quality benefits for each of these policies. Due to the complexities surrounding the associated measures, any estimates produced would likely have large uncertainties, making them misleading and therefore unsupportive of greater accountability and transparency regarding government spending.