ENVIRONMENT,

The making of a Super Minister

STANLEY JOHNSON

In the big world beyond the basement windows, the environment issue gets bigger and bigger. Both Chataway and Crosland appear, though on different days, at the Stras.4 bourg conference kicking off European Con- servation Year. As spring tails into summer and the election looms, there is a good deal of speculation as to whether the environment will achieve a 'breakthrough into electoral politics' and, if so will come off best.

But environment sinks without trace dur- ing a shopping-basket campaign and, throughout the long silent summer following the Conservative victory, only those closest to the new Prime Minister know how and in what form it will reappear, or indeed whether it will reappear at all. Mr Eldon Griffiths, Parliamentary Secretary at the Ministry of Housing, is made formally re- sponsible for both environment and recrea- tion. But inevitably this is felt to be a cared taker role. There is some impressive language in the Queen's Speech ('my ministers will intensify the drive But still we wait for some hard facts.

In the event, Mr Heath surprises us all. He goes for broke. He creates a new Department of the Environment, merging Housing and Transport and Public Works. And he creates the new post of Secretary of State for the Environment, appointing as its first occupant the Rt Hon Peter Walker, mar—Member of Parliament for Worcester, the Walker of Slater Walker; founder of the first postwar Unit Trust; former National Chairman of the Young Conservatives; and still only thirty-eight years old.

Mr Walker should therefore be wary of journalists and of the environmental lobby; There will be plenty of boos when he makes a wrong decision and almost no cheers when he makes a right one. Small inaccuracies (he doesn't have any double-breasted suits; 'embryonic Tory lady' conveys exactly the wrong impression of his young wife Tessa; the dog is called Max) will lead on to much larger misrepresentations. It is odd 'how much of his speech at Blackpool he had to spend justifying his decision to overrule his inspector over the Salmesbury brewery.

Yet, almost certainly, it was the right decision. It was not a Green Belt area he had imposed the tougher landscaping pro- vision; his decision would diminish not in- crease the river pollution; it would provide 600 jobs and reduce traffic congestion in the centre of the town.

The Salmesbury affair, and Mr Walker's attitude to it, indicates the line we can expect him to follow. Conservationists have had a good run for their money. A lot of storms have brewed in a lot of tea cups. One narrow sectional interest has tended to contradict another, and who wins has often seemed to depend on who can make the loudest com- motion. Will the bird lobby at Foulness make more fuss than the noise lobby at Heathrow? Will those who oppose reser- voirs push through the Morecambe Bay bar- rage over the protests of the wetland ecolog- ists? It all makes for a good show (Whit- bread and circuses?) but does it make for sound planning? Mr Walker thinks otherwise.

'It would be terribly easy', he says 'for a Tory Minister for the Environment. or Secre•1

tary of State for the Environment—or what- ever it is I'm called—to pursue a narrow con•

servationist policy. I am not going to do that.

It would be absurd to concentrate on the preservation of rural England if the result was urban hell. That is why we have got to have a regional strategy. I published the South-East Study immediately. I've given

the local authorities till the end of the year,

for their comments and I can pronounce on it very shortly after that. The Midland region promise that strategy by the early spring and the North-West, I hope, will move in the same direction.'

It is within the framework of a regional strategy, one which looks after the town as well as the countryside, with the bits and pieces which go to make up a policy for the environment will be fitted.

For example, on the traffic: 'I want to make a really objective assessment. I want to see what can,really be done in stopping

the noise and the air pollution. I find it difficult to believe the incredible lethargy that has been shown in developing the elec- tric motor. It's a poor reflection on private enterprise. I want to see what can be done in terms of planning, the lack of freight terminals; the links between the motorways and the distribution network. We ought to have more people working at home, new systems of communication.'

On railways: 'What are the natural ad- vantages? Surely for fast inter-city traffic; for long distance freight; for moving large numbers of people in and out of cities' On people: 'A population policy? I've sympathy, but this is a very difficult one: One of the things which seem to have got lost in the reshuffle is the fact that Mr Walker is a funny man. For a go-getter who

got there at the age of thirty-eight, he has a highly developed sense of humour. He

once planned when he was in Opposition to airlift Mr Chataway by helicopter to Corn- wall so that, as Opposition spokesman on the Environment, Mr C could be photo- graphed holding a dead seal pup on a Corn- ish beach. The plan had to be dropped when

the RAF were unable to find any helicopters. Nor was it sure that there would be any (impudent young) pups being washed up at the right moment.

Next week the new Mr Environment will be attending the third conference in 'The

Countryside in 1970' series. He will be on display, as it were, for the first time in his new role. One suspects that from this mo- ment on, the conservationist debate in this country will take a significant sideways lurch. Pollution and measures to combat it will of course remain profoundly important. A lot of sewage is still passing under the bridge. The fight must go on. And, as Peter Walker recognises, it must go on inter- nationally as well as nationally. 'One nation's out-tray it another nation's in-tray.' But it seems clear that, under the no% management, the focus of the debate will not be on conservation per se, but rather on the potential of long-term planning as a tool for good housekeeping. 'Environment', Mr Walker says, 'suffers from the temporary expedient nature of parliamentary democracy.'

So it does. But then, so does everything,