Brown downgrades cabinet committee on climate change
Sunday, 5 August 2007
Print
Email
Gordon Brown's commitment to tackling global warming has been called into doubt after Downing Street decided to downgrade the key cabinet committee on global warming.
The Ministerial Committee on Energy and the Environment, which under Tony Blair was a top-grade cabinet committee chaired by the Prime Minister, has been reduced to a sub-committee, chaired by the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Mr Brown has also scrapped a ministerial committee devoted to promoting sustainability across government. The committee on Sustainable Development was designed to ensure that policy decisions, for example on housing, would not have an adverse impact on the environment in the future.
The cabinet committees see major policy decisions taken by ministers. They were set up so that the full cabinet does not have to consider every policy decision and to ensure that ministers from across government departments can sit together to discuss policy developments.
Tony Blair's decision to chair the cabinet committee on the environment was seen, at the time, as a sign of his personal commitment to tackling climate change.
The former prime minister said that cutting CO2 emissions was a key priority and he spent his last years in office putting pressure on other nations, including America, to launch action to take global warming more seriously.
Some environmental groups have expressed concern that Gordon Brown does not share a similar commitment to tackling global warming as poverty in the Third World.
However, they have warned that the energy he has put into promoting development may be destroyed if the threat of global warming cannot be tackled. They say that sub-Saharan Africa stands to suffer drought and starvation if the planet heats up.
A spokesman for Greenpeace said: "Gordon Brown has said on many occasions that Africa is one of the biggest priority for him. Well climate change will decimate Africa, so if he is serious about Africa he needs to put global warming at the top of the agenda. We need to see a clear sign that tackling climate change is one of his top priorities and that global warming is not only an important environment, but will soon be the overwhelming development issue."
Opposition MPs accused the government of sneakily downgrading the key cabinet body that makes decisions on the environment and questioned the Prime Minister's decision not to chair the committee personally.
"This is a clear sign that climate change is not a priority for the Prime Minister," said Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat environment spokesman. "Despite his recent rhetoric Gordon Brown fails to realise the need for a joined-up environmental policy. The only way of knocking some joined-up sense into the chaos of government policy on climate change is a strong cabinet committee led from the top, but instead the committee has been downgraded. Brown's green façade is fast fading."
The Government reordered the cabinet committees presided over by Tony Blair, abolishing several of them. Shortly after becoming Prime Minister Mr Brown said he had "strengthened the system by recasting it to focus on the Government's priorities and, in doing so, have reduced the total number of committees."
Last night Downing Street commented that Mr Brown said the new Environment and Energy committee would "continue to drive government action in this area in the context of our broader efforts on climate change and sustainability".
A No 10 spokesman said: "The environment is a key priority for this government. This is a strengthening of the system not a weakening and committees do not need to be chaired by the Prime Minister to be effective."
