Emissions data reporting by UK government ‘inconsistent’, say MPs

UK government emissions data are so poorly reported that parliament cannot assess whether the public sector is on track to meet its decarbonisation targets, a high-profile group of MPs warned on Wednesday.

In a highly critical report just days before the COP27 climate summit, the House of Commons public accounts committee said the reporting of greenhouse gas emissions by Whitehall departments was substandard and “inconsistent”.

It added that the government’s promise to “lead by example” on achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 was not being met.

The assessment follows weeks of turbulence in Westminster, including uncertainty over whether prime minister Rishi Sunak will attend COP27 in Egypt next week.

His initial decision not to go prompted accusations that the government was not taking climate change seriously, since the UK hosted COP26 last year and retains the presidency until the start of November’s conference.

Downing Street this week said Sunak was reconsidering travelling to the summit.

The committee on Wednesday said oversight of emissions reporting by government was split across three departments, and that guidance was “inconsistent” and “too vague”. That meant it was impossible to track the public sector’s progress on decarbonisation accurately, it noted.

The committee pointed to a recent assessment by the National Audit Office that found that fewer than half of 21 ministerial and non-ministerial departments had fully complied with the Treasury’s mandatory sustainability reporting requirements.

It also said it was “not convinced” that either government departments or the wider public sector were using information on greenhouse gas emissions to inform decision-making related to the 2050 target.

The independent Climate Change Committee, which advises the government, has said consistently that net zero should be embedded across decision making. The PAC last year said all fiscal stimulus packages and infrastructure proposals should be “stress tested” against net zero.

The government has in recent months come under increasing pressure over its commitment to climate action, following moves by former premier Liz Truss to lift the ban on fracking in England and extract more fossil fuels from the North Sea.

Ministers were also ordered in July to publish an updated net zero strategy by the end of March 2023, after a judge ruled the original plan lacked detail on how the target would be met.

The public accounts committee on Wednesday recommended that the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, which has overall responsibility for delivering net zero, release data on the progress of public sector decarbonisation compared with what is needed to achieve net zero emissions.

It added that the business department should begin to hold other departments to account if they were failing to meet decarbonisation targets, and publish consistent reporting guidance for the entire public sector.

A government spokesperson said: “We have halved emissions from the central government estate in the last 12 years, and invested £2.5bn in supporting those running our public buildings such as schools and hospitals to make similar progress.

“This is on top of our wider efforts to increase our use of homegrown energy such as renewables, increasing our energy security while meeting our net zero ambitions.”

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