‘We should all leave the world a better place... that’s why I’m a Conservative’

But such is the fate, it seems, of John Gummer, long-time ally of Margaret Thatcher, Conservative party grandee and true Parliamentary veteran.

Now ennobled as Lord Deben – his title taking the name of a river in his Suffolk constituency – he is still remembered best for the day when, as Mrs Thatcher’s agriculture minister at the height of the BSE crisis, he fed a beefburger to his young daughter in front of the television cameras in an ill-advised attempt to quell fears over mad cow disease.

But while the public may forever associate him with burgers, blunders and BSE, since stepping down from the Commons last year Lord Deben has focused on a matter he considers more important than any food scare – the battle to save the planet.

An ardent environmentalist, Lord Deben says the breakdown of talks at the 2009 Copenhagen summit on climate change was the final straw which convinced him to devote all his energies toward the fight to cut global carbon emissions.

“I am passionate about it,” he says. “I was brought up in an atmosphere where stewardship was absolutely the central view.

“My father was a clergyman and he had that view, and we caught it.

“All my life I’ve believed it is our duty to leave the better world a better place than when we started off – that’s why I’m a Conservative. I decided this was the area where I could make the biggest contribution.”

As environment secretary under John Major’s premiership, Lord Deben was responsible for introducing the UK’s first ever “green” tax, the landfill tax, paving the way for the huge increase in recycling over recent years.

Fifteen years later, and now aged 71, he is still helping to blaze an environmental trail.

Along with his newly-acquired seat in the House of Lords and his ongoing work as an environmental consultant, Lord Deben is also chairman of Forewind, the consortium of energy firms currently in the early stages of building the world’s biggest offshore wind farm 80 miles off the Yorkshire coast.

The sheer scale of Forewind’s proposed Dogger Bank scheme is awe-inspiring. An area of the North Sea the size of North Yorkshire will be transformed over the next decade, with thousands of towering turbines standing hundreds of feet tall in raging waters up to 180 feet deep.

If built to its full capacity, the project has the potential to provide the UK with 10 per cent of its entire electricity needs.

Quite simply, nothing like it has ever been attempted before.

“It is very exciting,” Lord Deben says. “First of all because of the scale of it, and second because of the technology involved. We really are creating a new industry.”

It is an industry which is growing fast – especially here in Britain.

Already the world leader in offshore wind, the UK is betting big on the sector as it moves towards a future of domestically-produced low-carbon electricity.

“Our energy must be a mix, so that we’re not reliant on just one source,” Lord Deben says.

“Gas will play an important part... And nuclear is certainly part of the mix – you do need it because it’s non-interruptible.

“But what I see for the future is that in northern Europe, wind and tidal barrages will provide a lot of the energy, and in the south, the sun will provide a lot of the energy. Wind will play a major part in the UK, and we’re jolly lucky that we’ve got a lot of it.”

For Yorkshire, in particular, there is reason to share Lord Deben’s enthusiasm for the coming offshore revolution.

Thanks to Forewind’s Dogger Bank scheme and a second, smaller – but still vast – offshore wind farm planned off the coast at Hornsea, thousands of new turbines will need to be built.

Regional planners are desperate to attract the new manufacturing industry to this region, with analysis suggesting tens of thousands of jobs could be created in a boom akin to the discovery of North Sea oil.

Lord Deben has no doubt about the prize at stake for the region.

“I’m not going to try to make prognostications about how big it could be, because it depends entirely upon how much Yorkshire actually grabs the opportunity,” he says.

“There are huge opportunities there. This is the biggest offshore wind farm of all. It’s going to be a very remarkable opportunity for the whole of the east coast.

“Yorkshire is right in the centre of that, and if Yorkshire rises to that opportunity as it certainly should be able to…”

He pauses. “We don’t say where our suppliers are going to come from, but Yorkshire could make sure it is the centre of supply.

“And that is lots of jobs – real manufacturing jobs.”

With technology giant Siemens having already agreed to base a huge new turbine construction plant at the port of Hull, the prospects of a genuine revival of the region’s manufacturing heritage are encouraging.

“It’s a real opportunity for manufacturing,” Lord Deben says. “Yorkshire has great history of manufacturing and of engineering. Now it’s got to be able to compete in such a way that people don’t see it as easier to manufacture somewhere else, and then barge the stuff in.”

As with any major infrastructure project, Government backing is vital. Lord Deben praises the coalition’s energy policies since coming to power, saying recent announcements have helped give investors the certainty they need to back projects like Dogger Bank.

In marked contrast to many on the Right of his own party, he is unequivocal in his backing of the Lib Dem energy and climate change secretary, Chris Huhne.

“I think Chris Huhne is in many ways the huge unexpected success of this Government,” he says. “He is an extraordinarily good Minister. Government has brought the best out of him.”

There is even praise for the leader of the opposition, Ed Miliband who, as the previous climate secretary, introduced a landmark energy bill in 2008 which brought in binding targets for cutting carbon emissions and offered incentives for people to generate their own electricity.

“His policy was a good beginning,” Lord Deben says. “There was someone in the Treasury blocking incentives for all those years, and Ed Miliband broke that. He insisted on it.”

Indeed, it is notable that the former Conservative party chairman’s ire is reserved entirely for those sceptics who seek to deny climate change is even a problem, regardless of party lines.

Even former Tory cabinet colleagues, such as ex-Chancellor Lord Lawson – a vocal opponent of the environmental movement – do not escape his wrath.

“The deniers want to believe there’s a kind of magic in the world which means that all these problems will just disappear,” he says. “Well, that is the basis of most human collapses.

“That’s why bankrupts go bankrupt – because they always think something will just turn up. And that is the policy of the Nigel Lawsons of this world. It is a refusal to face the realities.”

He rejects any suggestion that the politics of climate scepticism are the politics of the Right. “I don’t think it’s true,” he says.

“The early acceptance of climate change came from the Right in Britain. Mrs Thatcher was the first Prime Minister anywhere in the world really to embrace the concept of climate change, to realise it was happening and insist on doing something about it.”

He is dismissive of right-wing parties abroad in countries such as the US, Canada and Australia where climate scepticism seems to be more commonplace than in Britain’s own Tory party.

“They are not conservative,” he says. “In Britain we have a proper Conservative party, that’s the difference. The point about the old ‘High Tory position’ is that it was fundamentally about passing on to the next generation something better than you received yourself.

“‘Conservation’ and ‘conservative’ are very close.”

But does he not despair when he sees movements such as the Tea Party gaining support in the US, and with global agreement over a successor to the Kyoto treaty still seemingly a distant prospect?

“I think the future lies in co-operation between China and Europe,” he says. “The Chinese are totally committed to doing things about climate change.

“I think we’re going to have to operate on the basis that you can’t wait for America.

“Only business will convince America, not the politicians. Big business will drive it; particularly if we create a world where their international capabilities are being held back by the difficulties of the Right in America to recognise the world we live in.

“But then one has to remember that half of Americans don’t believe in evolution,” he adds with a smile. “So you can’t expect them to catch on to climate change very quickly.”

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