Brown demotes Energy and Environment Committee

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Gordon Brown will no longer chair the high-level Ministerial Committee on Energy and the Environment, the Independent has reported.
 

The Prime Minister has downgraded the Committee to a ‘sub-committee’, which will be chaired by the Chancellor, in what opposition MPs have called a ‘sneaky downgrading’ which betrays Brown’s attitude towards environmental issues.

The Committee’s demotion comes in the same reshuffle which sees the abolition of the Sustainable Development Committee, now considered redundant.

Liberal Democrat Environment spokesman Chris Huhne told the paper that in spite of Gordon’s Brown’s green rhetoric, he has ‘failed to realise the need for a joined-up environmental policy.’

‘Brown’s green façade is fading fast,’ he added.

A spokesman for the Prime Minister maintained that a committee did not need to be chaired by the PM to be effective.

This article first appeared in the Ecologist August 2007

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