WHY GREEN BUSINESSES PAID PEER’S FAMILY FIRM £600,000

Family firm of peer who advises Ministers on climate change took £ 600,000 in fees from green businesses... who stood to make fortunes from vital policy decisions he could influence

AS THE energetic chairman of the Government’s powerful Committee on Climate Change, Tory peer John Selwyn Gummer has fiercely championed the causes of renewable energy, electric vehicles and greenhouse gas reduction – all in the name of saving the planet.

For this crucial part-time role, his Government salary is £40,000. But since taking the job, the former Minister’s family firm has earned more than 15 times as much from an array of ‘ green’ businesses and lobby groups which stood to benefit from the policies he so enthusiastically promotes.

Today The Mail on Sunday exposes Gummer’s conflicts of interest by revealing that at least nine businesses and campaign groups have made payments – some running into hundreds of thousands of pounds – to Sancroft International Ltd, the consultancy firm he chairs from his £5 million Westminster townhouse.

We can also reveal that the 79-year-old appears to have flouted strict Whitehall rules governing such conflicts, by failing to declare those payments to officials.

He has always declared the fact that he owns and chairs Sancroft to both the House of Lords register and the CCC – but has never identified its clients.

The former Agriculture Minister, best remembered for a 1990 PR stunt in which he fed a burger to his then four-year-old daughter during the mad cow disease crisis, has repeatedly given assurances that Sancroft’s work could in no way impinge on his work as CCC chairman.

Last night, in a statement issued via his solicitor, he repeated this, saying that to claim he had conflicts of interest was ‘wholly false and misconceived’.

He admitted Sancroft had received the various payments from businesses which stood to benefit from the CCC’s decisions, but insisted they did not amount to conflicts because the work Sancroft did for them did not directly concern green technology.

However, the businesses are heavily involved in this field.

The strict code of conduct for members of public bodies such as the CCC, issued by the Cabinet Office, suggests he is mistaken.

This states: ‘You must ensure that no conflict arises, or could reasonably be perceived to arise, between your public duties and your private interests.’

Advice from the National Audit Office adds: ‘Conflicts can exist if the circumstances create a risk that decisions may be influenced.’ This, it goes on, could be in any circumstances where someone has derived a private, financial benefit.

This newspaper has obtained leaked documents covering the five-year period from September 2012, when Gummer became CC C chairman, and hence a driving force behind the Government’s climate change and green energy policies. The dossier reveals how:

Engineering giant Johnson Matthey paid Sancroft £ 292,699 between 2012 and 2017, while it was investing heavily in new technology for electric vehicles. The CCC strongly backed electric cars in a 2018 report, and just two weeks ago, Gummer urged the Government to bring forward its deadline for making them compulsory. His statement says Sancroft’s work for the business did not cover this subject;

Temporis Capital, which funds UK windfarms and solar energy projects, paid Sancroft £ 50,000 between 2012 and 2017. Its profits are bolstered by multi- millionpound subsidies pushed by the CCC and paid for by consumers;

Gummer was warned in a confi- dential 2015 report from an Exeter Business School academic that the Temporis payments were a ‘clearly unethical’ conflict of interest which would cause ‘ embarrassment’ if made public. Gummer ignored this and afterwards, Sancroft got a further £37,000 from Temporis. His lawyers say Sancroft did no ‘consultancy’ for Temporis but merely sent a ‘ daily digest of relevant press and other material’ and this was not a conflict of interest;

Sancroft was paid £ 46,625 by lobby group the Foodchain and Biomass Renewables Association, which represents several firms that make energy from wood and farm waste. A 160-page CCC report published in November last year called on the Government to increase the use of this type of energy, which is also heavily subsidised;

Controversial British green energy company Drax, which produces electricity by burning wood pellets and receives an annual £700 million government subsidy,

was backed by the CCC in a November 2018 report, after it had paid Gummer’s firm £15,500 to carry out a study of its operations. Gummer said he cleared this with the CCC compliance officer.

Gummer and his children – of whom three, Felix, Leonora and Cordelia, also serve as directors – own all Sancroft’s shares. It was Cordelia to whom Gummer fed the burger during the BSE scare.

Their salaries are not disclosed in its accounts. The firm has also frequently given all of them interestfree loans. A fourth child, Ben, served as an MP and co-wrote the 2017 Tory manifesto. He was a Sancroft director until 2015, standing down when he became a Minister.

On its website, Sancroft says it provides regular ‘ briefings’ and research for clients on issues such as supply chains and ethics.

Under the 2008 Climate Change Act, the CCC wields enormous influence. Its actions have contributed to steep rises in energy bills, caused by the lucrative subsidies for renewable energy suppliers which the CCC strongly supports.

Under Gummer, the CCC has said the country must cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 60 per cent by 2030.

In 2012, Gummer – who was ennobled as Lord Deben two years earlier – was quizzed by the Commons’ Select Committee on Energy and Climate Change, which had to vet his appointment to the CCC.

Asked about Sancroft and possible conflicts of interest, he said, ‘almost everything it does has no connection with the Committee on Climate Change’ except for one client, which it had now jettisoned. As a result, he said, ‘I do not think there will be any financial or other interests that will remain’ which could be a conflict. He added: ‘I do not think anybody could properly say… that I have any interests that would pervert my views.’

However, an earlier MoS investigation revealed that he did have a conflict of interest when he joined the CCC. We revealed that Veolia UK plc, whose board he also chaired, made money connecting windfarms to the national grid. He was criticised by MPs for failing to declare this, and for insisting that none of his interests then had anything to do with renewable energy. However, he survived this, and was reappointed CCC chair for a second five-year term in 2017. By then he had stepped down from Veolia UK.

Last month, Gummer sang the praises of battery-powered vehicles to the Commons’ Select Committee on Science and Technology, saying the Government must ‘bring forward’ the 2040 date when petrol and diesel cars are to be banned. A CCC report last year also heavily backed electric vehicles, calling for a massive i ncrease i n the number of public charging points.

On neither occasion did Gummer reveal that one of Sancroft’s biggest clients is Johnson Matthey, which after years of research and development, announced in 2018 it is to build two high-tech electric vehicle battery component plants in Britain and one in Europe, at a cost of more than £200 million.

Labour MP Graham Stringer, a member of the Science and Technology Committee, said yesterday he was ‘staggered and appalled’ by this, which, he said, was a conflict of interest. He added: ‘We had no idea his firm had been paid by Johnson Matthey, and it would undoubtedly have affected the way we treated his evidence if we had known it was getting paid by an electric vehicle battery business. The whole matter must be referred to the Lords Commissioner for Standards for an immediate inquiry. I have never come across conflicts on this scale before.’

Gummer’s solicitors insisted that Johnson Matthey’s payments to Sancroft were not a conflict, because although Sancroft had worked for several divisions of the business, none of them ‘had anything to do with battery technology

for electric vehicles’, adding: ‘There is no requirement for Lord Deben to declare that a company in which he has an interest does business with a company whose sister companies may have business relevant to the CCC.’

Mr Stringer disagreed, saying: ‘It’s not the details of the work the payment was for that matters, but the fact he had a relationship with a business that stood to gain by the decisions of the CCC – and that he hasn’t declared this when he should have.’

Monmouth Tory MP David Davies added: ‘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. He should refer himself to the Standards Commissioner, and if he does not, I shall consider doing this myself.’

Gummer’s lawyer’s statement admits the payments to Sancroft from renewable energy investment fund Temporis Capital, which totalled £50,000. According to a report by Merlin Hanbury-Tenison, from Exeter Business School, who spent four months at Sancroft in 2015, this relationship with a company that did nothing except invest in one of the CCC’s core areas of concern was a ‘clear conflict of interest’, that was bound to damage Gummer if it were ever publicly disclosed.

Yet the payments from Temporis to Sancroft for daily briefings continued for a further two years, amounting to another £37,000. Gummer’s lawyers insist that as this was not consultancy work, it was not relevant to disclose.

Sancroft has also been paid by three businesses involved with biomass energy generated from biological material, including wood pellets and farm waste.

In November, biomass was the subject of a 160-page report by the CCC, which said it had a ‘crucial role’ in curbing global warming.

The CCC said member Rebecca Heaton had withdrawn from the report as she also works for Drax, the giant Yorkshire power plant fuelled by wood pellets cut from American forests, ‘in line with the CCC’s policy on conflicts of interest.’ Drax is highly controversial, because it has so far received £3 billion in subsidies, and US environmentalists say its furnaces are fuelled by cutting down trees in their thousands, and the destruction of wildlife habitats. The CCC report supported Drax, suggesting its operations should continue after its subsidy contract ends in 2027.

But Gummer did not withdraw from the report, even though Sancroft was paid £15,500 by Drax for conducting a study while the report was being compiled. His lawyer’s statement says he did declare this to the CCC compliance officer, and was cleared – because the Sancroft study only covered ‘human rights and geopolitical risks’ in forests.

Gummer’s declaration of this interest is not mentioned on the section of the CCC website dealing with members’ interests.

Sancroft has also been paid £46,650 by the Foodchain and Biomass Renewables Association, which represents several businesses. The lawyers’ statement says its members are ‘not in the business of selling biofuels’. But its website suggests at least three are, including Saria – yet another Sancroft client, which paid the firm £183,062 from 2012 to 2017.

The lawyers’ statement concluded: ‘Lord Deben has at all times complied with the rules governing the declaration of interests.’ It said attempts to suggest otherwise were ‘strained and implausible’, and motivated by ‘hostility to Lord Deben rather than the investigation of matters of genuine public interest.’