A few weeks ago I came across some new correspondence between the Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee (ECCC) and Lord Deben relating to his appointment as chairman of the advisory Committee on Climate Change. This was on the committee's web server, but didn't appear to have been linked from the publications page.
The correspondence was pretty interesting stuff, and suggested that the Committee was taking Deben's misrepresentation of Veolia's business quite seriously. Intriguingly, reference was made to letters from Climate Change Secretary Ed Davey on the same subject, but while such letters to the committee are normally published, these were nowhere to be seen.
I therefore put in an FOI request to DECC which received its response last week. This response was that the correspondence was already in the public domain and I was pointed to the ECCC webpage where, lo and behold, the letters had been published 24 hours earlier.
You can read them here.
As you can see, it seems to have been clear to everybody involved - Davey, DECC and the ethics people at the Cabinet Office - that Deben had interest in a business that would benefit from decisions he would make at the CCC. They knew. And every single one of them waved these concerns aside, accepting without question that if Deben pretended not to be involved in decisionmaking at the infrastructure arm of Veolia this would somehow mean that decisions he made at the CCC were no longer conflicted. This is, not to put too fine a point on it, disgraceful. The question Mr Davey has to answer is "How can you know that the advice from the CCC is designed to benefit the public and not Veolia Infrastructure?". Taxpayers need to know.
David Rose has the story in the Mail on Sunday this morning, part of a spread also featuring stories about Judith Curry's latest paper and also links between LibDem ministers and anticapitalist activists.
Environmental policy is a cesspit.