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“Certainty is required to encourage investment”
The starting gun for the summer’s in/out referendum has been fired – and divisions in the government have already become apparent, with six members of the cabinet – and London mayor Boris Johnson – all pinning their colours to the Vote Leave mast.
Within Defra, things are a bit more harmonious. Environment secretary Liz Truss has come out in support of the prime minister’s ambition to keep the UK in a reformed EU, and water minister Rory Stewart also advocates this option.
Over at Decc, the ministerial team are not all singing from the same hymn sheet. Energy secretary Amber Rudd announced her support for the ‘in’ campaign early on, saying in mid-January that Brexit would plunge the energy market into uncertainty.
Energy minister Lord Bourne also appears to be an ‘innie’, having retweeted the prime minister’s comments that “Britain is stronger, safer and better off in a reformed European Union”.
However, the other member of Decc’s ministerial team, energy minister Andrea Leadsom, is an ‘outie’, along with a significant section of the Conservative backbench, and six members of the cabinet.
With European environmental and climate change obligations pressing on the UK, especially in the wake of the COP21 agreement, discord in 3 Whitehall Place is far from ideal.
This is even more pressing when utilities face further uncertainty at a time when certainty is required to encourage investment – much of it from continental Europe – to these shores.
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