Lord Deben, the scandal-ridden chair of the Climate Change Committee, has once again displayed his flexible standards. Deben’s consultancy company, Sancroft, published an article about “Learning from Qatar” in the context of the controversy around the World Cup. Deben’s firm advises football clubs to reduce their human rights risk and “create positive change on social issues”. It argues clubs should be vigilant in their supply chains to mitigate human rights concerns. However, Sancroft clearly hasn’t taken its own advice. The environmental advisory company takes money from gas-selling Qatari ministers…
This raises another issue of transparency. After revelations of Deben’s history of dubious business links, the Climate Change Committee tightened its declaration protocols. Despite this, Deben has yet to declare his Qatari connection to the committee, as he does on the Lords’ register, only mentioning his role for Sancroft broadly. It’s hardly a model for transparency. Guido wonders why an environmental adviser wouldn’t want to disclose fossil fuel funding…
Greg Clark was busy launching the Climate Change Committee’s new report this morning calling for a legally-binding target of zero net emissions by 2050. In the BBC’s view there’s just “one controversial recommendation” in the report: to turn down thermostats to 19C in winter – literally a matter of life and death for some elderly people trying to get through winter. Why is Greg Clark trying to kill off Tory voters?
Clark was also particularly effusive about the Committee’s chair, John Gummer/Lord Deben, opening his speech with:
“Everyone knows that when you appoint John Gummer to chair this important committee you are going to get rigour, you are going to get passion, and you are going to be challenged.”
What Clarke also knows is that when you appoint John Gummer, you get conflicts of interest worth over £600,000 with his family business, Sancroft International, raking in hundreds of thousands from “green” companies. Companies that Gummer’s own Committee lobbies the Government to hand billions of pounds of subsidies to.
Somehow Clark forgot to mention this, but that’s really no surprise as it’s just the latest in a long line of his BEIS Department whitewashing the whole affair. Whatever the pros and cons of renewable energy itself, the deeply corrupt industry that has sprung up to shuffle taxpayer subsidies from one gravy train to the next is a scandal of global proportions…
Yesterday the Mail on Sunday sensationally revealed that ‘green’ businesses have funnelled more than £600,000 into Sancroft International, the private company of Climate Change Committee chair and Conservative peer John Selwyn Gummer, now Lord Deben. His powerful committee consistently argues that billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money should be handed out to big green businesses to help them develop green tech. It just so happens some of that money found its way back to him…
- Windfarm and solar investor Temporis Capital paid Gummer’s company £50,000 in the last five years.
- Electric car battery producer Johnson Matthey handed Gummer’s firm nearly £300,000 over five years, after which he personally urged the Government to speed up plans to make all new cars on Britain’s roads battery-powered;
- Energy producer Drax, which gets £700 million a year in Government subsidies, paid Sancroft £15,500 while the Climate Change Committee was writing a report on its activities.
Gummer has never declared these payments made to his company, but insists that he has been fully compliant with disclosure rules.
Despite the scale of the scandal, numerous news organisations including the BBC have entirely failed to cover it so far. Guido hears that the usual cabal of eco-journalists at are steering clear of this story for fear of consequences from the well-connected Gummer….
