Without wanting to, the thing that hits you first in the face the moment you find yourself running a ministry is the so-called Yes, Minister syndrome.
I am open to any ideas that can trigger a commitment device that goes beyond a mere political gesture
Particularly since I have always been a firm believer in timeframes and benchmarks, I find the PL manifesto pledge to have a key senior minister responsible for the manifesto implementation process of utmost importance.
While some countries tend to also opt for legislated policy targets, I am open to any ideas that can trigger a commitment device that goes beyond a mere political gesture.
The most crucial aspect is that there should be delivery plans and of that, under this new Administration, I am confident. The only issue open to debate is whether in a number of areas the Government should go further and enshrine those targets in law.
I am aware that in the UK, eminent think tanks like The Institute for Government have even held private roundtables to look at the implications of this practice for policy making. In the UK there are at least three principal examples currently in force: A target to eliminate fuel poverty by a certain year; targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by a particular year; and a target, set some three years ago, to reduce significantly a number of measures of child poverty by 2020.
The previous UK administration had also legislated a target to reduce the budget deficit by half by 2014, but these fiscal policy targets had been repealed by the coalition shortly after taking office when it had set up the Office for Budget Responsibility.
What we need to bear in mind is that although such roundtables had focused on domestic legislation, where one has an option on whether to put a target into law or not, many of the targets which bite on UK policy come from the European Union, with the potential for formal infraction proceedings and heavy fines for non-compliance.
In New Zealand I am told that judges explicitly ask for the principles behind a law to be stated in legislation in order to help the courts interpret what government intended from the legislation.
After all, all governments legislate – and bind successor governments until that legislation is repealed.
The aim of such discussion is to provoke further consideration both of whether and when legislated targets make sense but also on what makes a good legislated target – and what does not.
As I see it, the most important aspect of such a move is that it can act as an internal signal to the rest of government about the priority that the government attaches to an issue.
In the past the climate change legislation had given momentum to the climate change issue and helped DEFRA and DECC in the UK to get buy-in from other departments for their policies.
Following a hard look at our sustainable development legislation, one might consider the feasibility of such a move in this area. But only after the effectiveness of the legislation in place has been tested and a down-to-earth benchmarking is carried out to see whether the structures put in place have been yielding the desired results or not.
One big pitfall that legislated targets pose is that some could be nothing more than a low-cost way for the government to give the appearance of vigorous action without actually having to commit to taking measures in the short term.
It can also be done as a way for an outgoing administration to limit the discretion of a future administration.
In the case of some of our targets regarding the environmental and sustainable development sector, one can argue that this was particularly true of targets introduced towards the end of the former administration’s life, when the existing administration did not bear the brunt of introducing measures to meet the target.
This debate could go on and on, but I think that this is the appropriate time when it should be appraised and evaluated rather than when the half way mark of a legislature is well past.
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Leo Brincat is the Minister for Sustainable Development, the Environment and Climate Change.