Back in the summer, Lord Marland, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at DECC, wrote to stakeholders asking for suggestions as to how the burdens imposed by policies and regulations associated with energy and climate change could be amended, reduced or removed. EEF warmly welcomed this refreshing engagement from the new coalition government, seeing it as the new age in how government intended to work with us going forward.
Fortunately, EEF had recently published our vision for UK climate change policy and therefore we were able to set out our views in full. This week, Lord Marland has published his response to this consultation (see responses below).
So was it worth the wait? On the whole, I don’t think so, however the response should not be seen in isolation. I believe that many of the views that stakeholders sent into DECC, will have been viewed with interest by more than just the Marland consultation team and therefore will be feeding into the general government policy process.
The government response didn’t contain much beyond summarising the views DECC received from the 90 organisations that bothered to share policy views. I would have liked to see something bolder, but could DECC have achieved this through this mechanism, as much of what is wrong about UK climate change policy is shortly to be consulted upon through various separate consultations from both DECC and HM Treasury.
Of course I am being too hard on this government response. Looking at it from another angle, this sort of response could be just what we need. The paper looks at all DECC policy in the round, rather than in silo.
Is this a missed opportunity, where DECC could have used this project to look at the policy burden across the department. Then recommended sweeping strategic changes in order to achieve the goal of reducing UK greenhouse gas emissions at least cost to the economy in a certain, simplistic and transparent way.
I would be interested to hear your views on this government response, am I being to flippant on a Friday afternoon here?
Reducing Red Tape letter.pdf (81.86 kb)
Summary of responses.pdf (76.33 kb)