Senior climate adviser to ministers also gives advice to Qatar on selling gas to UK
ONE of the Government’s most senior climate advisers also works for a company providing advice to Qatari ministers who sell gas to the UK, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal.
Lord Deben, who chairs the Climate Change Committee (CCC), is also chairman of an “international sustainability consultancy” that has a contract with the Qatari Government – one of Britain’s biggest gas suppliers.
In February the committee advised Kwasi Kwarteng, the Business Secretary, that while the UK should continue to use oil and gas ahead of Net Zero, ministers should support a “tighter limit on production” and “a presumption against exploration” in the North Sea, and rely on imports instead. Ministers have instead said that exploration and drilling should continue in the North Sea.
In November, at around the same time the company Lord Deben chairs, Sancroft International, was contracted to work for the Qatari government, it was reported that Doha was looking to expand its exports to the UK market.
Although Lord Deben says that he has declared his company’s Qatari contract in the climate change committee’s registers of interest, the CCC’s meeting minutes show he has yet to raise any conflict of interest in committee.
The committee’s transparency policy requires members to declare any new interests. The updated CCC register of interests is due to be published shortly and he says he has declared his interests appropriately.
The Conservative peer, who was known as John Gummer, denies any conflict of interest. “All correct procedures were followed,” he said.
Sir Alistair Graham, the former chairman of the committee on standards in public life, said: “He needs to demonstrate that he has drawn attention to the Committee and the Government his particular relationship.”