UK: Hogerhuislid en pleitbezorger slimme meter blijkt consultant voor de fabrikant.

Het Britse Hogerhuislid Lord Truscott, vurig pleitbezorger voor de in Engeland verplicht ingevoerde slimme meter blijkt achteraf consultant bij een van de firma's die de slimme meters op de markt brengt, het Zwitserse Landis + Gyr. (In Mei 2009 werd Lord Truscott voor zes maanden geschorst als lid van het Hogerhuis vanwege een eerdere corruptiezaak).

Gerelateerd atikel: Verhalen/3485 .

Bron: The Sunday Times July 26, 2009

‘Lords-for-hire’ peer Lord Truscott faces new quiz on lobbying
Lord Truscott

Auteur: Chris Hastings

LORD TRUSCOTT, one of the peers in the lords-for-hire row, lobbied for the interests of clients at a meeting with government officials despite telling a House of Lords inquiry that he had attended only for “information purposes”.

Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that the Labour peer pressed officials from the business department to speed up the roll-out of smart meters for domestic electricity customers.

At the time of the meeting the peer was working as a consultant for Landis + Gyr, the Swiss-based smart meter company.

The disclosures throw fresh light on the extent of Truscott’s lobbying for clients. In May, Truscott and a fellow peer were suspended from the House of Lords for six months after they said they would be willing to help undercover Sunday Times reporters posing as lobbyists to seek amendments to legislation in exchange for money.

The confidential documents will raise questions about his evidence to a parliamentary inquiry into the affair.

Details of what was said at the meeting are contained in an e-mail sent from Truscott’s parliamentary researcher to officials at the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform on September 9, 2008.

They show that the peer urged them to speed up the planned roll-out of smart meters from 12 years to 10, saying that utility companies did not want to be in a position where they were running both old and new metering systems.

In the e-mail, Truscott’s researcher wrote: “After discussing with industry we feel that a definitive deadline could well provide the decisive regulatory impetus.”

Officials were keen to consider Truscott’s ideas because they believed they might deter peers from tabling further amendments to the energy bill.

In an e-mail sent shortly after the meeting took place, one official wrote: “I think the only point worth noting was that we asked about whether he thought some sort of compromise around laying a timetable or consulting in licence modifications on a 10-year roll-out would be acceptable to some of the peers who were tabling the amendments. He felt it was likely that they would be acceptable.”

The government subsequently announced that the programme for smart meters would be rolled out over 10 years.

Truscott was unavailable for comment this weekend.

Voor het originele bericht met foto van Lord Truscott zie:
www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6727621.ece ,



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