From the moment that the Sunday Times caught Tim Yeo offering to advise energy companies for cash, it was clear that his chairmanship of the energy and climate change select committee was untenable. Yet he’s coming to this conclusion slowly. It has taken him until now to decide he’ll “step aside,” apparently under pressure from Labour members of the committee.
Committee chairmen are elected nowadays, so what other members of the committee matters in a way it didn’t used to. And Yeo, who took £140,000 from various commercial interests last year, will now have become an embarrassment to the green movement more generally. Those who regard renewable energy as a massive racket will see in him the embodiment of their suspicion: an MP on the take. Perhaps not illegally, and it’s quite possible that (as he insists) he didn’t break any rules. But this looks appalling: why should an MP be taking money from lobbyists?
The the Sunday Times undercover recording (above) shows Yeo explaining how he publicly excused himself from questioning a GB Railfreight chief because of his acknowledged conflict of interest (he’s a director of its parent company, Eurotunnel).
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