EXPOSED: TORY PEER IN £600,000 CONFLICT OF INTEREST
Climate Change chief faces calls to quit over payments from ‘green’ businesses
TORY peer John Selwyn Gummer’s private company has been paid more than £ 600,000 from ‘ green’ businesses that stand to make millions from his advice to Ministers.
The Conservative grandee heads the Government’s powerful Climate Change Committee that vigorously supports pumping billions of pounds in public subsidies into firms developing environmentally friendly technology.
Yet a Mail on Sunday investigation has discovered that his family-run consul- tancy has been paid huge sums by businesses that have cashed in on those lucrative taxpayer-funded handouts.
MPs say Gummer should have declared the payments – but he never has.
Last night, he vehemently denied any conflict of interest and insisted he had
fully complied with disclosure rules. He admitted his company received the payments, but insisted the work it undertook did not involve climate change issues.
Explosive documents leaked to this newspaper reveal that Sancroft International has been paid by at least nine businesses and campaign groups involved in projects to cut greenhouse gases.
That is the main aim of the committee 79-year-old Gummer leads – although policies it champions have been criticised for forcing up taxes and household energy bills.
Among the dossier’s contents, we can reveal that:
Engineering giant Johnson Matthey, which makes batteries for electric cars, paid Gummer’s firm nearly £ 300,000 over five years before he personally urged the Government to speed up plans to make all new cars on Britain’s roads battery-powered;
Venture capitalists Temporis Capital – whose profits from windfarms and solar energy projects are bolstered by huge Government subsidies – paid the company £50,000 between 2012 and 2017;
Controversial green energy producer Drax, which gets £700 million a year in Government subsidies, paid Sancroft £ 15,500 while t he Climate Change Committee was writing a report on its activities.
Last night Gummer, who was a Tory MP for 40 years before becoming Lord Deben in 2010, was facing calls to resign over what appear to be ‘colossal’ and ‘scandalous’ conflicts of interest exposed by this newspaper.
MPs also demanded an urgent inquiry by Parliament’s standards watchdog. David Davies, t he Conservative MP for Monmouth, said: ‘Based on the information you have given me, he appears to be unfit to hold public office.
‘ As CCC chairman, he has been playing a hugely influential role, giving evidence to Parliament, making speeches, and issuing reports that have an enormous impact on both policy and household bills.’
Labour MP Graham Stringer, a member of the Science and Technology Committee in the Commons, said he was ‘staggered and appalled’ by the conflict of interest.
All MPs, peers and public officials must officially declare their outside earnings and interests to avoid conflicts of interest.
As the £1,000-a-day chairman of the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), Gummer is subject to a strict Cabinet Office code of conduct, which clearly states that officials should declare publicly ‘any private interests which may, or may be perceived to, conflict with your public duties’.
And a spokesman for the CCC said: ‘There is a clear policy on conflicts of interest and a register of committee members’ interests. It is the responsibility of members to comply with this policy and to declare any potential conflict.’
Gummer does declare his chairmanship of Sancroft, but offi ci al records show t he former Agriculture Minister – who famously fed his four– year-old daughter a beefburger on TV during the BSE crisis in 1990 – has not publicly declared any payments made by ‘green’ firms to his company.
A statement from his solicitor insisted: ‘ Allegations of conflict of interest and other improprieties are wholly false and misconceived… [he] has, at all times, made disclosures in accordance with the advice he has been given by the House of Lords and the CCC.’
The Committee on Climate Change, established by the 2008 Climate Change Act, is a supposedly i ndependent quango which advises t he Government on how to achieve Britain’s target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent by 2050.
Chaired by Gummer since 2012, it has urged Ministers to fund vast subsidies paid to ‘renewable’ energy companies.
The cost is met by adding ‘green’ levies to household and industry fuel bills, currently totalling £8.6 billion a year.
The CCC supports green taxes that feed the coffers of renewable energy firms. It has also argued in favour of a new carbon tax – a move that would benefit the companies paying Sancroft International.
THE rich and powerful will always use their wealth to try to get governments to do what they want. No age or era is immune from this, and no country is immune from it either.
In most cases, astonishingly, it is perfectly legal. Only perpetual vigilance – best conducted by strong independent newspapers – can keep this in check.
But in recent years this country has also developed stringent rules to prevent the more blatant forms of influence-buying.
Quite simply, those in positions of power are now required by clear, unambiguous rules to declare their interests.
If these rules are followed, then we have proper transparency. A person who has a clear interest cannot be regarded as an impartial, disinterested advocate of any policy.
His contributions to debates on subjects where he has such an interest will in general be discounted or weakened.
It is a good system. The puzzle is that, even now, apparently intelligent, experienced figures in public life still seem unable fully to accept this. Lord Deben, now 79, is better known to the public as John Selwyn Gummer MP. He is a distinguished veteran of Tory politics.
A former Cabinet Minister whose son followed him into public life, he can reasonably be expected to know the rules and have a good current knowledge of what is and is not acceptable.
As the son of an Anglican priest, and an enthusiastic churchgoer himself, he also has an unusually good understanding of morality. He has had more than one serious chastening episode. The first was when large claims for gardening costs were revealed during the Westminster expenses scandal. He repaid more than £10,000.
The second was when The Mail on Sunday disclosed an earlier conflict of i nterest, shortly before he joined the powerful Committee on Climate Change (CCC), which he now chairs.
At that time he also headed the board of a company with strong interests in wind farms.
So it is baffling to find him in his current position. A company he runs with the help of his family – Sancroft International – has received payments of more than £600,000 from firms with interests in the very policies promoted by the CCC.
Lord Deben has even assured MPs that he has no financial interest in any enterprise related to the work of the CCC.
He has declared the fact that he owns and chairs Sancroft, which an uninformed researcher might see as full disclosure.
But he has not identified its clients, whose deep interest in CCC decisions on such matters as electric cars, solar energy, and biomass power generation The Mail on Sunday reveals t oday. All of t hese sectors involve huge amounts of taxpayers’ money.
This is especially shocking because of t he huge direct effect on the public – mainly through energy prices – exerted by the CCC. In such matters we are entitled to assume that decisions are being taken for the general good, uninfluenced by corporate lobbying.
We also ought to be entitled to assume that our political class have learned their lessons from the many scandals over expenses, Formula 1’s attempt to influence tobacco policy, cash for questions and the rest, which have dogged governments of both major parties.
It is clearly time for Lord Deben to resign, and for Parliament and the CCC together to make quite sure that the committee’s future decisions are properly protected from any repeat of t h i s mi s e r a b l e , unacceptable behaviour.