Bishop Hill To the trough
Sep 11, 2012 Deben Energy: other Greens Last Friday I wrote to the House of Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee about Lord Deben's interests in Veolia. I received an acknowledgement from the committee noting that my email had been circulated to committee members. My email was as follows:
Dear Sirs
I want to bring to your attention some information regarding your recent hearing with Lord Deben.
Lord Deben spoke at some length about his interests in a water company (my transcript):
“I looked at the water company...I'm chairman of a water company...all the water company does is to, for example, its major job is putting in meters for other water companies. It doesn't own any water companies any longer - it's sold those. If you look to see what it does, it really has no connection at all, and if I thought it did or even had a remote one I would make that change. I think this is too important a job to jeopardise in that way, but I can assure you I've been through that very carefully.”
Unfortunately little of this is true. The company in question is Veolia. Lord Deben’s chairmanship is noted at their website.
http://www.veoliawater.co.uk/about-us/our-board/
Contrary to Lord Deben’s representations, the company has many interests in businesses that could direct from Lord Deben’s work on the CCC. For example, see this excerpt from the company’s website:
http://www.veoliawater.co.uk/services/infrastructure/grid-connection/
Grid Connections
We provide large electrical grid connections for renewable energy producers including waste, wind, and Anaerobic Digestion.
- Electricity grid connections to major and renewable projects.
- High voltage projects up to 132kV.
- Complex technical solutions.
- Primary substations.
- Long off site routes.
- Private electrical balance of plant.
A further example is on this page:
http://www.veoliawater.co.uk/services/infrastructure/commercial-development/
- Multi-utility scheme design and planning
- Design and installation of gas, water and electricity mains and services
- Site investigations and evaluations
- Substation design and construction
- Network construction for gas, electric, water and telecoms
- Project management
- Construction programming and asset adoption expertise
- Localised energy using renewable energy sources and Combined Heat and Power (CHP)
In addition, while Lord Deben suggests that the company’s involvement in water metering does not represent a conflict with the work of the CCC, in fact the CCC has been actively promoting the use of water meters, as these pages on their website demonstrate:
“Based on the application of the assessment toolkit in the ASC's third report, the ASC advises that the Government and water companies should take further steps to increase efficiency in water use, including through water metering and pricing. Increased uptake of meters will be particularly important in locations with current and future risks of supply-demand deficits.”[Link]
“We must take adaptation more seriously if we are to manage the growing risks of floods and droughts. This can be done by investing more in flood defences, faster roll-out of water meters and giving serious consideration to where and how we build our housing and infrastructure. Without action by households and businesses to prepare for these inevitable weather extremes the country faces rising costs, unnecessary damage and future disruption.”[Link]
I conclude from this that Lord Deben retains a significant interest that would conflict with his appointment to the CCC. Moreover, it would appear to me that he has misled the committee about Veolia’s work. I think it will be necessary for you to seek an explanation from Lord Deben as to how it was that this happened. I believe you should also seek an explanation from the permanent secretary at DECC as to how it was that Lord Deben’s interest in Veolia was given the all clear.
Since this is a matter of urgent public interest, I will publish any reply the committee gives.
Yours faithfully
The committee will this morning announce that it is recommending that Lord Deben take up the post. The official notice is embargoed until midnight and I will post a link in the morning. But this is the bit where they mention his conflicts of interest:
In our questioning we sought reassurance about a possible perceived conflict between Lord Deben’s personal financial interests and his prospective role as Chair of the Committee on Climate Change. We note that potential conflicts were assessed according to the 2009 guidelines from the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments. Lord Deben informed us that he had discussed these with the Department of Energy and Climate Change and the Cabinet Office, and would be taking appropriate steps to ensure that any conflicts were removed. We accepted Lord Deben’s reassurances, in correspondence with us and during the hearing, that he will relinquish all relevant financial interests on taking up his appointment. We were further reassured that his political affiliation would not affect the independence of the Committee’s work.
There is some interesting change of tense going on here. Deben led the committee to believe that he had disposed of all his conflicting interests and that DECC had given him the all clear. The report, however, appears to suggest that these disposals will take place in the future.
What this appears to suggest is that the committee knows that they have been misled by Lord Deben but, being under the control of Tim Yeo, who wallows even lower in the trough, they feel obliged to give him a nod and a wink just so long as he disposes of Veolia too.
I don't think there's a more charitable interpretation of what the committee has done is there?
Reader Comments (37)
I take comfort in the fact that this is all out there and they still press on. It will bite them soon enough when all they produce is seen through this prism. Twenty years since it began those in power still fail to see that the net has changed our ability to be flanneled.
This is déja vu all over again, is it not?!
It doesn't seem to matter how valid the argument (or concern), the powers that be (whether they be Allen, Mann, Lewandowsky, Oxburg or Muir Russell) will invariably ensure that they get cast aside and/or papered over in favour of a glowing report.
Once again honesty and integrity are sacrificed on the altar of "the cause".
And they wonder why they're having so much trouble "communicating" their message to the public!
Bish, how can you do this and still watch Murray?
We can collectively stuff Lord Deben in the morn, now watch on of the best finals ever
Your Excellency,
May I sincerely congratulate you on getting the committee to formally recognize your communique.
While it may not immediately have impact on this disgraceful appoinment, it will be a major retrospective milestone in the future when, if there is a God, these scum will forcibly get their snouts yanked from the trough.
They won't be able to say "we didn't know!"
Agree with Political Junkie. Well done Bish and Andy Murray :)
ditto well done bish and murray. great final.
Well done sir!
This needs to gain some publicity now in order to ensure that companies that take this route realise that engaging a politician is not all that they say it is.
And with all three main parties having skin in this scam, we can't even ask the opposition to make a fuss about the appointment. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Consensus Politics. Take a thought to consider whose interests are being served here. It isn't the public's.
I would think that any MP wanting to serve on the HoC Energy and Climate Change Committee would be a pretty committed warmist/alarmist. Therefore they are all probably willing to sacrifice integrity for the greater goal.
The report is now published at http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/energy-and-climate-change-committee/news/pre-appointment-report-revised/ It recognises your letter and says this:
The last Conservative government ended in sleaze and scam - but it took them 13-odd years to get there, and resulted in their being excluded from government for a similar period. This government has only taken 3 years to reach the pits of sleaze. The electorate will recognise this. Yeo and Deben aka Gummer are the totally unacceptable face of Toryism. Thank God for UKIP.
yep - The last Tory government ended in sleaze, the last Labour one started and continued in a sleezy way, and this one is just maintaining the new Parliamentary traditions of self-gain and corruption. I see absolutely no evidence whatsoever that a government either under UKIP or someone from the hard left like the BNP will be any different.
Fundamentally the system is rotten from the smallest local parish council to the centre of government. None of it is worth saving.
I think it also needs to be borne in mind that they may simply not give a stuff for what the 'common man' thinks or feels about their affairs.
Let them eat cake and all that......
Their behaviour suggests as much anyhow.
This would make a good Josh cartoon - Tories and others eating at the green subsidy trough
Which would be fine if Veollia's 90% of income was not directly affected by government policy which will be influenced by it's own chairman. It's starting to look as though Lord Deben is the only one that 'could' be considered for the position and nobody else is capable of steering the committee in the desired direction. Perhaps there is a further influence here than initially meets the eye!
Lord Deben and the Commissioner for Public Appointments are basically saying that we should trust them to do what is right because they are men of honour. Sorry but that is no longer acceptable, the days of taking someone in office at their word are long gone, people in office and high position are just as susceptible to wrong doing as the rest of us.
As a society they are employed by us, if you ran a company and one of your employees was not only receiving salary from you but also taking a salary from a particular contractor engaged by your company you would not hesitate in removing them from the payroll. Is Lord Deben focused on what is best for Britain, or himself?
Well done sir. I find it almost unbelievable that Yeo is still in post and that Deben has not been taken off the list. After the relevent authorities are aware of your work, and that of Christopher Booker and James Delingpole. I drew my MP's attention to articles relevent to the matter some weeks ago but have yet to receive a reply.
Please keep up the good work.
Bish are you going to write to the Committee about the odious Tim Yeo?
Looks like it was him who helped give Deben the "all clear".
Two pigs in clover.
I never really like the term trough, troughing or trougher.
It should be Wollowing in Filth or WiF if you have a stong nose.
DECC really is WiF.
"The company’s sustainable development activities are diverse. Because it operates in four sectors with a huge potential impact on the environment, both the risks and opportunities presented by sustainable development activities are substantial."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veolia_Environnement
I suppose Gummy has a family to feed.
This will be ignored, nothing will happen and they'll get away with it.
O/T, sorry, but it appears that the first academy has broken rank, the German Academy of Science and Engineering has declared the Emperor has no clothes. More to follow I wonder?
Morph said (7:52 AM) "or someone from the hard left like the BNP"
Seems to be a usage of the term "left" that I'm not familiar with.
Congratulations in getting it on record, but this is just a drop in the ocean, (sorry). What about his wind farm interests and his supra-national activities with GLOBE? What about the vested interest in the rest of the CCC, like Sam Fankhauser, Grantham Institute, carbon trade advisor and Chief Economist at GLOBE International? Jim Skea was also involved in the Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership with Yeo, Martin Parry, was a private contractor to DEFRA as "Martin Parry Associates", IPCC Working Group II - with a contract (GA01056), worth £330,187, to be Co-Chair of it.
The BNP are hard left? I hope I never encounter you on a road sir.
Steveta
Since the British National Party bears all the hallmarks of the notorious National Socialist Party which caused a certain amount of inconvenience to Europe some 70 or 80 years ago can you explain by what definition it is not "hard left"?
The Left — especially the leftist media — has for too long been allowed to get away with dictating the language of politics and demanding that we accept their definition of left, right, and centre.
In fact the political spectrum is more annular then linear with moderate libertarians at one side of the circle and the assorted ragbag of extremists at the other. There is virtually nothing to choose in terms of ideology, methods or intended outcome between Nationalist parties and the decaying remnants of the various Stalinist, Leninist, and Trotskyite factions that claim to be Socialists.
The only difference is that the so-called "left" tend to tell more lies about it.
There is no conflict of interest. Deben's personal interest and his interest as Chairman of the Committee are perfectly aligned.
BNP hard left i.e. national socialism
@Mike Jackson
You would find the Political Compass (http://www.politicalcompass.org/) interesting.
The BNP have all the halmarks of being of the hard left - I'm not the only one who thinks it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scXWYPp4DC4
But my main point stands - the system is broken when people can get away with the antics going on with this committee, and indeed everythign else we have witnessed from our "leaders" pretty much since WW2.
I'm one of the increasing number of people who don't bother with voting any more. Unless someone can convince me that UKIP will funamentally change the system they are just as much a waste of time - IMHO ;-)
steveta and blackswhitewash:
Labels, labels....
BNP promote socialist ideas from a nationalist perspective, as opposed to the global socialism expounded by the UK Labour Party, the UN and Socialist International, (Blair, Brown, Kinnock, Papandreou et al)
There are some interesting insights in "Fascism, Environmentalism, and the Third Way..." Bernard Switalski, 2001, well researched. http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig5/Anti-Green.pdf
Eg, Clinton and Blair's "Third Way", actually first emerged around 1900,
"Round the turn of the century, into the breech stepped a new form of Utopia - an idea that had been forming up for a generation - a synthesis of socialism and capitalism, a middle way, a third way."
It developed into Fabianism, which promotes "evolutionary" rather than "revolutionary" socialism and Fabianism begat Socialist International, HQ in London. http://www.fabians.org.uk/,
http://www.socialistinternational.org/about.cfm.
Switalski states that:
"Fascists are socialists."
"First clue: the Nazis called themselves, "The National Socialist German Workers Party", not, "The National Capitalist German Plutocrats Party", and the Nazis boasted that Hitler's Germany was, "the most modern socialist state in the world."
The reply you received is as usual the normal "nothing to worry about, move on". He may eventually have his name taken off the Company heading, but he still has the same mindset. That cannot be changed, as is obvious from his attitude. He is going to have a conflict of interest as far as anyone else is concerned because he will work for the good of those companies. They stand to make millions on his say so, that alone disqualifies for any political work in the area of climate change. And the same applies to Yeo.
Readers must understand that the Appointment of Hunt as Health Secretary, agreed reportedly in May 2012 [ http://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2012/09/10/sleaze-is-dead-long-live-open-for-business/ ] has embedded Corporate interests in Government. As that Government is of an EU province, Cameron's position has changed to being our version of Quisling.
IIRC, HMG is currently being hauled over the coals by the EU for not charging enough VAT on insulation, about which the EU appears schizophrenic. A man/mouse moment for Dave?
I hope I have not spiked the guns of his grace!
I emailed him on Friday to let him know that I had just posted a complaint about Tim Yeo to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. Perhaps the Bish was about to write about Yeo as well as Gummer? I am sure he would have done a better job than me.
I posted a four page complaint with 15 pages of back up evidence but nobody is quite so logical and eloquent in making a case as his grace.
Following revelations ... Yeo has quit as a director of Eco City Vehicles - although he remains a director of ITI Energy, AFC Energy, Eurotunnel and chairman of TMO Renewables.
http://order-order.com/2012/09/11/tim-yeo-quits-lucrative-green-job-mp-and-ceo-walk-from-eco-city-following-guido-revelations/
Bish,
As an ex-Civil Servant, may I suggest that you copy your e-mail to the DECC Secretary of State and Minister of Energy. That should help to shake things up, especially if the CCC Secretariat have not already informed them of your e-mail.
Confusedphoton. Definitely. Will try to post something porcine as soon as possible.
Actually having listened to the whole of Lord Deben's speech to the DECC select Committee I can not accept the criticism from the Bish (puts down payment on graveyard plot).
In his speech Deben said that he would divest himself of all conflicting financial interests IF he was given the job.