Lobby row: Energy policy MP Tim Yeo 'filmed boasting about introducing businessmen to Government'The Conservative MP who scrutinises energy policy has been filmed boasting that he can be paid to introduce businessman to members of the Government. Tim Yeo, the chairman of the Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee, also said he had coached John Smith, managing director of GB Railfreight, before the executive gave evidence to the committee last month. Yeo is a paid director and shareholder of Eurotunnel — the firm’s parent company.
Mr Yeo was filmed by undercover reporters working for The Sunday Times saying: "I told him [Mr Smith] in advance what to say. Ha-ha."
When asked if he would be interested in a £7,000-a-day consultancy contract with a solar company, the MP said: "If you want to meet the right people, I can facilitate all those introductions and I use the knowledge I get from what is quite an active network of connections."
The reporters queried if this included Government figures. Mr Yeo replied "Yes".
The House of Commons' code of conduct forbids MPs from acting as paid advocates, including by lobbying ministers.
Mr Yeo is the latest in a series of politicians to have become embroiled in the lobbying scandal sweeping through Westminster. Patrick Mercer MP resigned the Tory whip after he offered to help Fiji return to the Commonwealth in a joint investigation by The Daily Telegraph and the BBC's Panorama programme.
The Lords authorities have launched an investigation into Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate, Lord [edited by admin] and Lord Laird following similar undercover investigations. All three peers deny wrongdoing.
Mr Yeo denied "absolutely" that he had breached the MPs' code of conduct and said he made no firm commitment to work for the reporters posing as lobbyists.
He denied offering to provide parliamentary advice or advocacy, which he said were roles he had never performed for any company, because he said that would be a breach of the code. No tutoring of Mr Smith had ever taken place by him, he said.
He added that he intended to reject the offer of work from the undercover journalists as he suspected it amounted to an “impermissable lobbying role”.
A spokesman for GB Railfreight said that at the energy and climate change committee hearing in question the company had “made the same arguments that we consistently make in submissions, articles and on the record time and again.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politic ... nment.htmlComment from politics.co.uk: Yeo has been hiding in plain sight for years Tim Yeo has two motives when it comes to his energy work: saving the world and personal gain.
This is not a damning comment or even a subjective one. It is a statement of fact. Yeo is, as he told Politics.co.uk last week, "a robust advocate for the need for action to address climate change". His job as chair of the Commons' energy and climate change committee makes him one of the most influential policy influencers in the country on energy and climate change.
He is also very well paid by private companies which are directly interested in the area of policy his parliamentary work focuses on. Take the 2012/13 financial year, for example.
Between May 2012 and May 2013 he earned £43,400 from AFC Energy, a company developing alkaline fuel cell technology, for his role chairing its board. His remuneration to date has notched up 2.5 million share options.
Yeo is also chairman of TMO Renewables, "a company developing and supplying technology for second generation biofuels". This earned him £44,583.28 between March 2012 and April 2013.
Yeo did not receive any payment from Eco City Vehicles, a firm which distributes and services London taxis, between October 2011 and October 2012. But he was paid a lump sum of £40,000 on October 2nd last year for 91 hours' work over the year ending September 31st 2012.
On top of all this, his work as a non-executive director on the board of Groupe Europtunnel - which involved attending meetings and "advising senior management on a range of issues" - saw him paid a total of £37,489.78 between May 2012 and April 2013.
I interviewed Yeo last week and was surprised by how unabashed Yeo is about the large amount of cash he receives every year from the renewable energy firms whose cause he advances in parliament. When totted up this comes to a total of £165,473.06. On top of that he will receive £66,396 for his salary as an MP in the 2013/14 financial year and a further £14,728 top-up because of his select committee chair role.
Is it right that an MP in such a position of influence have financial interests so closely associated with his scrutinising work? According to parliament's official rules, the answer is an unequivocal 'yes'. Members of parliament are permitted to earn additional money with second jobs; all they have to do is declare an interest whenever their parliamentary work takes them near the topic.
Take Yeo's contribution to the energy bill debate last week, when he led a rebellion against the government's refusal to include a 2030 decarbonisation target in the legislation. "I draw the attention of the House to my entry in the register of members' financial interests, in particular to my interests in the energy industry," Yeo declared. Most MPs simply leave it at that and move on, but Yeo chose to launch into a lengthy defence of his arrangements. He told the chamber: "My views on climate change and on the need for Britain to move more swiftly to a low-carbon economy and to cut its dependence of fossil fuels were formed two decades ago when I had ministerial responsibility for this area of policy."
Or, as he told me in his enormous Westminster office last Wednesday: "I think it's quite hard for anyone to sustain the argument what I'm doing is the result of financial interests when I was actually doing it 12 years before I had those financial interests."
This logic is not just weak. It is also flawed.
It is weak because, on this basis, it is acceptable that a politician should be able to cash in on their stance on any particular issue, using it as a selling point to reinforce their credibility in the section of the business world which will benefit from its association with the MP. It does not matter that the views were originally honestly held. As soon as money becomes a factor, those views become tainted.
Holding consistent views is barely admirable in a politician - they are expected to maintain some degree of consistency, after all. What sliver of respect this warrants is undermined by the possibility their views are being maintained for less than straightforward reasons. Consistency is not always appropriate. It does not offer carte blanche for profiteering.
Yeo's premise that business insight is valuable is deeply flawed. "I'm a much better chairman of the committee because I not only have a political and academic network, but also a range of business connections that would not be available to me if I was not active in the business world," he told Politics.co.uk on Wednesday.
"My judgements... are better-informed because I talk to people in business more than I otherwise would."
Yeo's credibility is diminished, not enhanced, by his business links. As a businessman seeking to advance the interests of the private causes he is paid to nurture, he becomes just another actor in the lobbying game. He lacks the distant perspective of a genuine outsider. Yeo cannot see the wood for the trees.
This is a man who has been hiding in plain sight for years. His activities are deeply unusual for a select committee chair; a couple of other chairs earn over £10,000 from legal work on the side, but these fall far short of his levels of earnings, or the proximity of those earnings to his policy area. He has remained within parliamentary rules - despite the outrageous extent of his activities.
His obvious susceptibility to money may be why the Sunday Times' investigative reporters chose to target him as they went undercover. Yeo boasted to undercover journalists that he could introduce those in the private sector to "almost everyone you need to get hold of in this country" because he could get away with it behind closed doors.
In the Commons, his activities are limited because of suspicions about his commercial interests. In private, it's a very different matter. As he put it: "What I say to people in private is another matter altogether."
That is the line which Yeo has now crossed. He has been caught on camera revealing he is prepared to accept money in return for assisting those who he should be scrutinising impartially. It is the most fundamental conflict of interests, and it is one for which he should pay with his job.
source:
http://www.politics.co.uk/comment-analy ... -for-yearsThe Sunday Times undercover operation has exposed the corrupt conduct of Tim Yeo , Chair of the Energy and Climate Change Committee. In a meeting which was filmed he was asked if he could help a fictitious Solar Company and he bragged ‘I’ve got a very close relationship with all the key players in the UK Government’ and said ‘I think I could help define how to influence the policy process here, at a national level and on a local level...’
The video can be seen here;
http://order-order.com/2013/06/08/sunda ... conspiracy)
These statements are shocking, but what is more shocking is that he has not just said that he could potentially do these things to the undercover reporter, he has ACTUALLY been doing this for years and getting away with it.
In 2007 Tim Yeo was appointed as Chairman of Eco-City Vehicles, a role for which he has been received substantial reward of tens of thousands of pounds and shares in the company.
At the same time he was also coincidentally Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee, and he used his position to ‘influence the policy process’ and used his ‘close relationship with the key players in Government’ to benefit his own company Eco-City Vehicles.
In 2009 at the Tory party conference he suggested an Age Limit for London Taxis, saying that in order to reduce pollution older vehicles should be scrapped.
In 2010 Boris Johnson (obviously one of the ‘key players’ Yeo refers to ) proposed an Age Limit for London Taxis in his proposed Air Quality Strategy to reduce pollution in London.
The Department of Transport had previously advised Transport for London against imposing a Taxi Age Limit on the basis of emissions because ‘the older taxis are not necessarily more polluting than the newer taxis’.
Many London Assembly Members and MPs asked the Mayor on many occasions to conduct testing to prove that the older taxis were more polluting and he flatly refused to conduct even the most basic testing.
Public Law requires that the Mayors decisions are evidence based.
An improper and unlawful consultation for the Taxi Age Limit was carried out which involved the CEO of Eco-City Vehicles. A similar Age Limit Consultation in Newport in Wales was ruled to be unlawful by a High Court Judge.
The London Taxi Age Limit was implemented by Boris Johnson in January 2012, needlessly scrapping several thousand London Taxis and forcing operators and drivers to buy Tim Yeo’s new Mercedes Vito Taxis.
The improper and unlawful involvement of Eco City Vehicles in the Taxi Age Limit Consultation was exposed in September 2012 and Tim Yeo immediately resigned his position as Chairman, although absolutely no disciplinary action was taken against him.
London MP Andy Slaughter challenged Boris Johnson about the improper consultation and in a letter the Mayor replied that Eco-City Vehicles had no involvement whatsoever in the taxi age limit consultation.
This is proven to be factually incorrect by the TFL minutes of the consultation meetings, which show Eco City Vehicles CEO Peter Da Costa attending the meetings and persuading others to impose an age limit.
Boris Johnson claims to have had no contact with Tim Yeo, even though Tim Yeo now claims to have a close relationship with all the key players.
In 2012 the Environmental Research Group at Kings College London was commissioned by the City of London Corporation and Ealing Council to conduct proper emissions testing on vehicles in London, and the emissions of more than 10,000 taxis were measured using a new roadside technology.
In May 2013 Defra published the report from this testing which showed that the older taxis were no more polluting than the newer taxis , and in fact that the brand new Mercedes Vito taxis(that drivers had been forced to buy at £43k from Yeo’s company) were actually creating MORE NO2 than the older taxis.
The Sunday Times story exposes the fact that corruption has clearly taken place and absolutely nothing has been done about it.
However the result of that corruption is that there has been absolutely no reduction in pollution in London in 10 years. The Mayors own research has shown that 4267 people a year are dying from pollution and absolutely nothing g has been done to change that.
There should be an immediate and urgent Public Inquiry into the corrupt practices which have directly resulted in thousands of deaths from pollution.
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