Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what assessment his Department has made of potential conflicts of interest of the members of the Committee on Climate Change.

BEIS carries out thorough due diligence exercises on each new board member of the Climate Change Committee (CCC), prior to approving their appointment, to identify conflicts of interest so that they can be managed appropriately on appointment. As part of due diligence checks, the Government considers anything in the public domain related to potential members’ conduct or professional capacity. In some cases, it will not be appropriate to offer a role if the conflict is too great.

All Committee members are required to recognise and disclose activities on an ongoing basis, that might give rise to actual or perceived conflicts of interest. The CCC secretariat will review each case to determine whether an individual needs to step down from the Committee to avoid an actual or perceived serious conflict of interest arising or to decide on how to manage whilst remaining in role.

The CCC’s conflicts of interest policy, along with a register of interests for Committee members – both of which are annually updated – and the minutes of each Committee meeting are published in the Transparency section of the CCC’s website at: https://www.theccc.org.uk/about/transparency/.