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“BEIS needs to make more progress on the ‘e’ in its title”
Greg Clark’s in-tray must be mighty crowded these days. When he’s not going to foreign capitals to talk to multinational companies such as Citroen, the BEIS secretary of state has been charged with developing an industrial strategy for the UK.
A host of energy-related decisions, inherited by Clark from Decc following its absorption into the souped-up business department last summer, have been pushed down the pile.
Reuniting energy and business in the same Whitehall ministry, essentially recreating the old-style DTI, is generally perceived to be good if it delivers a more integrated policy. Decc had become a “Whitehall minnow”, as ex-environment ministry special adviser Stephen Tindale referred to it at a conference last week.
However, losing its dedicated champion at the Whitehall top table brings risks for utilities. The concern is that energy issues will be sidelined amid the focus on higher profile business issues. For example, announcements have been pending on both the emissions reduction plan and the small modular nuclear reactor competition since before Decc’s post-EU referendum dissolution.
More than six months after its creation, Tindale observed, BEIS is running out of excuses for not making more progress on the ‘e’ in its title.
Figures showing the UK’s carbon emissions plunging to Victorian levels will give BEIS breathing space on the energy and climate change front. But as the recent furore over utility bills has shown, energy has a habit of biting ministers in the back.
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