BBC Give Ed Davey Free Rein To Spout His Nonsense

By Paul Homewood

With huge irony, the day after the BBC had flagellated itself for allowing Lord Lawson to make comments without challenge, the Today programme interviewed Ed Davey.

The topic was Dieter Helm’s new report criticising successive government’s energy policies and highlighting the ruinous cost of them. Ed Davey was, of course, one of the guilty parties, but (surprise, surprise) the interviewer, Nick Robinson, gave Davey pretty much free rein to spout his nonsense.

The segment starts at about 1.52 into the programme and Robinson makes a good start with his opening remarks summarising Helm’s conclusion that “spectacularly bad decisions have been made by ministers to subsidise green energy and nuclear power”.

Asked how he pleaded, Davey retorted:

“Not guilty. If you look at the auction just a few weeks ago, we saw the price of offshore wind falling by over 50%.

It’s been a massive success in reducing the cost of green energy”

Robinson points out that, as Helm states, Davey’s decisions trapped us into expensive subsidies for old tech, rather than wait for costs to fall. Davey replies:

“No, I think that people looking at solar and wind say these are the technologies of the future. “

This of course totally fails to answer the question posed, but Robinson was not prepared to press Davey further on the matter.

He does however remind Davey that the OBR forecasts that the cost of green subsidies will more than treble in the next five years.

In reply, Davey waffles about there was always going to be a cost of transitioning to a low carbon economy, but that the costs of climate change would be dramatically more.

Robinson could have challenged this unsubstantiated claim, particularly with reference to the UK. He could have pointed out that the tiny reduction in CO2 emissions achieved so far by the UK won’t make the slightest difference to the world’s climate.

He could have reminded Davey that emissions in the rest of the world have rocketed since the UK passed the Climate Change Act.

Or he could have followed up his original question and asked Davey why he did not wait until the cost of renewable energy fell.

In fact, he does none of these things, and asks one more tame question about current government policy, which allows Davey to claim that renewable energy is now cheaper than fossil fuels and that loads of green jobs are being created. Again, no challenge is made.

All in all, another gutless performance by the BBC.