Aug 2009 26

Fisking the Carbon Trust's ludicrous defence of their foreign ventures9

Today the TaxPayers' Alliance has released a new press release with the Competitive Enterprise Institute attacking the waste of taxpayers' money by the Carbon Trust trying to expand around the world.  The Daily Mail have reported the story and written in their leader that, as Gordon Brown is under pressure to identify cuts: "He should start with the Carbon Trust."  They are absolutely right.

Unfortunately, Carbon Trust Chief Executive Tom Delay doesn't appear to be getting the message.  Here is his response to the Daily Mail story:

"They are barking up the wrong tree.  We do not lobby governments wherever they are in the world, we help business reduce carbon emissions now and in the future.  Our work overseas is funded by overseas companies and governments and our support for this represents 1 per cent of our UK budget."

Let's take that bit by bit:

"We do not lobby governments wherever they are in the world"

The job advert for the Head of Carbon Trust USA called for someone who could "establish and maintain key relationships with internal and external stakeholders, including elected members, policy makers and advisers"; build "trusted relationships with the Administration and key elected members in Washington/ States"; and "carry out visits arranged by the British Embassy/Consulates in the US and the British High Commission in Canada to meet and present the Carbon Trust model to high-level government and business representatives. There may also be a small number of similar visits to South American countries."  If that doesn't qualify as lobbying in the mind of Tom Delay then it's difficult to know what would.

However, it doesn't end there.  The Carbon Trust also expends considerable effort lobbying in the United Kingdom.  The latest Association of Professional Political Consultants register (PDF) shows that they have contracts with Grayling Political Strategy and Weber Shandwick, two of the biggest lobbying firms in the country.  The Carbon Trust's accounts boast that:

"Back in 2005 we published a major review of the UK’s policy framework focused on energy efficiency in the business and public sector. This work, in particular, highlighted a gap in policy to incentivise change in the large, less energy-intensive organisations that contribute up to 10% of UK-wide emissions. We suggested that a new, mandatory trading scheme could fill this gap, and in 2007/08 this work came to fruition. The UK Government decided that a mandatory scheme was the correct approach. It consulted on the detailed design of the proposed new scheme, and currently plans to put it into place in 2010."

That is an organisation promoting its political importance, similar to the way countless other political groups will promote themselves.  Only, the other groups aren't funded with the money of ordinary taxpayers who will end up paying for this new trading scheme the same way they pay the price for the existing European Union Emissions Trading Scheme.

"Our work overseas is funded by overseas companies and governments and our support for this represents 1 per cent of our UK budget."

This is deliberately misleading.  The story was about their using our money lobbying to expand abroad.  The market they're trying to capture is, indeed, foreign taxpayers' money.  They are lobbying for the funding to establish clones of themselves in a range of countries.  However, the money they are using to do that lobbying is ours.  We didn't know how much they were spending but 1 per cent of their UK budget is about £1 million, that money could – and should – be returned to UK taxpayers.

Of course, they are right that this is only a small part of their overall budget.  But, and here's the real kick in the teeth, we just don't know how they spend most of the hundred million pounds a year that they are given.  As an "independent" company they don't have to respond to Freedom of Information requests and there is very little information in their accounts.  What information the accounts do provide is often a bit dodgy.  They only list two executive directors in their remuneration report (the account of how their directors are paid that all companies and public bodies – except councils – have to produce), presumably because they've hived the others off to subsidiaries, making their operations even more opaque.

The Carbon Trust should be abolished.  Even if that can't be achieved, they should at least be made subject to FOI so people can know how their money is being spent.  If they've got nothing to hide, that shouldn't scare them in the least.

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  • http://dickiebo.wordpress.com dickiebo

    Very well said.

  • G. Martin

    The green lobby in general have been very clever at siphoning money from the taxpayer.

  • Malcolm ogg

    Well done. A total waste of taxpayers money even if you believe (as I don’t) that Gobal warming/climate change is down to CO2.

  • J D of Rossendale

    OMG, an AVERAGE salary of £75k that means there must be loads of them on more than this! How do these quangos get the green light in the first place?heir remit is to “help” businesses to go green. This is the same sort of help that the Councils offer to farmers to keep footpaths open – otherwise known as oppression and threats.

  • R LORD

    Time all these quangos were abolished, most of them do no good at all and some do a great deal of harm (eg Learning and Skills Council).
    The Carbon Trust is an expensive waste of taxpayers cash.

  • Peter Phillips

    C Lord says:
    “Time all these quangos were abolished…”
    They will be automatically, when the economy collapses and there are no longer public funds to pay for them. I have every certainty that the economy will collapse, suddenly, in a few weeks or months time, when the financial markets are no longer willing to risk buying Government bonds to fund it’s unsustainable debt, except for much higher interest rates.
    The politicians, the media scribblers, and endless stream of commentators and economic ‘experts’ wheeled into the TV studios, still don’t understand that it is the serious decline of our manufacturing industry that is the country’s main problem, not the banking crisis. (The Tories have been just as complicit as Labour in having brought this about during its years in office). That’s why other countries are begining to emerge from their recession but we are not, from our DEpression.

  • K Lidington

    What the Carbon Trust needs is a new CEO — that rather level-headed new mayor of Doncaster would be ideal. I am sure he would reduced average salaries to around £25000, de-twin it from its international activities and possibly reduce its staff levels to 2: himself and a receptionist.

  • Steve Robson

    He could hire some of his friends from the Taliban to help him run it!
    He’s about as level headed as Lord Lucan.

  • http://www.nationwideutilities.com Alex

    ENDS’ Carbon Trust challenge rejected
    The Information Commissioner’s Office has rejected a claim by ENDS that the Carbon Trust should be covered by freedom of information legislation.
    The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has rejected a claim by ENDS that the Carbon Trust should be subject to the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act 2000 and the Environmental Information Regulations (EIR) 2004.
    The FOI Act gives the public the right to access information held by public authorities, while the EIR convey similar rights to environmental information.
    The ICO upholds the public’s information rights and promotes openness by government bodies. The Carbon Trust advises and finances companies and public sector organisations on reducing their carbon emissions. It also invests in companies developing low-carbon technologies.
    In a decision issued in January, the ICO says the Carbon Trust does not meet the legislation’s definition of a public authority and is therefore not caught by it.1
    ENDS had argued that the Carbon Trust was a public authority because it was established by the government in 2001 to help deliver policy on climate change. It further argued that government exercised significant influence over the Carbon Trust’s strategic direction and provided most of its funding.
    The government established the Carbon Trust as a private company limited by guarantee. Instead of shareholders, it has 15 members, five of whom are government ministers from the departments funding it. Each minister appoints a non-executive member of the Carbon Trust’s board. In 2008/09, the Carbon Trust received a £90m grant from the energy and climate change department (DECC) and other government departments and devolved administrations.
    ENDS made a formal complaint to the ICO in September 2009 after the Carbon Trust refused to disclose its business plan. ENDS wanted to use the information to assess the trust’s performance, but it was deemed commercially confidential.
    In January 2009, the Carbon Trust refused to disclose correspondence with companies about the government’s change in guidance on reporting greenhouse gas emissions. Other government-funded bodies such as the Energy Saving Trust and the National Industrial Symbiosis Programme also say they are not subject to freedom of information legislation (ENDS Report 408, pp 8-9 ).
    The case centres on whether the Carbon Trust is a public authority. The ICO’s decision letter says that for an organisation to be subject to the FOI Act, it must be listed in the act as a public authority, which it is not.
    For the Carbon Trust to be subject to the EIR, it must meet its definition of a public authority. The ICO says two elements of the definition are relevant to this case. The first is whether the Carbon Trust carries out “functions of public administration”.
    Although the ICO accepts the Carbon Trust “operates in pursuit of a government objective”, it does not carry out a public administrative function that would normally be performed by a government authority under national law.
    As a private company, the Carbon Trust does not have any statutory or regulatory functions, it adds.
    Government control
    In the second element, the EIR defines a public authority as a body under the control of a government department that has public responsibilities, functions or services relating to the environment.
    The ICO says guidance on the EIR from the environment department (DEFRA) indicates this level of control needs to be sufficient to exert a decisive influence.
    The ICO says the government cannot form an overall majority on the Carbon Trust’s board, leaving it free to make its own commercial and management decisions. It also says that if government funding was withdrawn, the Carbon Trust could seek alternative funding from its own activities or elsewhere.
    The ICO concludes the Carbon Trust is not a public authority and is not therefore subject to the EIR.
    The EIR have been in place in the UK since 1992. They were updated in 2004 to reflect an EU directive on environmental information and the 1998 Aarhus Convention (ENDS Report 279, pp 43-44 ).
    Phil Michaels, Friends of the Earth’s head lawyer, said of the ICO’s decision: “The new environmental information directive was explicitly designed to ensure that quasi-public bodies such as the Carbon Trust were subject to the same access to environmental information obligations as pure public bodies.
    “That is important because significant amounts of public money in the environment field are now disbursed through such bodies and because they play an important role in environmental protection issues.”