The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Mr Edward Davey)
I wish to inform the House that, further to the Foreign Secretary’s oral statement launching the review of the balance of competences in July 2012 and the written statements on the progress of the review in October 2012, and May 2013, the Department of Energy and Climate Change has today published its call for evidence for the energy report.
This report, which will be completed by the summer 2014, will focus on the application and effect of the EU’s competence in relation to energy. It will include the internal energy market and its contribution to the single market and growth; security of energy supply, indigenous resources and energy infrastructure development; sustainability and energy efficiency measures, renewables and carbon capture and storage; the EU external energy dimension; and nuclear and Euratom.
The report will not include climate change aspects of the Department’s work, international climate change negotiations, the reduction of collective EU member state greenhouse gas emissions via burden-sharing arrangements and the EU emissions trading system. These issues will be covered in the Environment and Climate Change report due to be published this winter.
The energy call for evidence period will be open for 12 weeks and close on 15 January 2014. My Department will draw together the evidence and policy analysis into a first draft which will subsequently go through a process of scrutiny before publication next summer.
We will take a rigorous approach to the collection and analysis of evidence. The call for evidence sets out the scope of the report and includes a series of broad questions on which contributors are asked to focus. The evidence received (subject to the provisions of the Data Protection Act) will be published alongside the final report and will be available on: www.gov.uk/review-of-the-balance-of-competences. We will pursue an active engagement process, consulting with departmental Select Committees, the devolved Administrations, businesses and civil society in order to obtain evidence to contribute to our analysis of the issues. Our EU partners and the EU institutions will also be invited to contribute evidence to the review.
The resulting report is intended to be a comprehensive, thorough and detailed analysis of EU competence for environment and climate change and what this means for the UK. It will aid our understanding of the nature of our EU membership and will provide a constructive and serious contribution to the wider European debate about modernising, reforming and improving the EU. The report will not produce specific policy recommendations.
I am placing this document and the call for evidence in the Libraries of both Houses. The call for evidence will also be available at: www.gov.uk/review-of-the-balance- of-competences.