Scottish Power and DTI - Who's Pulling Strings?

The inept and unprecedented intervention by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) into Scottish Power's planning application for Gas Plant II, may not be unconnected with the relationship between Scottish Power non-executive director Euan Baird, and Patricia Hewitt, Secretary of State for Trade and Industry.

When Nigel Peace (DTI director of energy regulation), sent his letter supporting Gas Plant II, to Adrian Lea (planning officer at Cheshire County Council), RAP's first reaction was surprise at the factually-incorrect, ill-informed and patronizing content of the letter, which also included attempts to pressure the County Council into a decision, by phrases such as:
"(Gas) storage projects have been slow to come through, and it is important that obstacles are not put in the way of those that do."
… and …
"Investors in other potential projects will look closely at what happens at Byley and any delay or difficulty in planning approval could deter further projects."
Said RAP Chairman John Halstead: "In summary, the DTI's letter was written by someone who wants to push Cheshire County Council into approving Gas Plant II, but who knows little or nothing of gas storage, or Byley, or Cheshire. So we were easily able to send Cheshire County Council a document demolishing the DTI letter point by point and in detail."
What's more, the DTI probably shouldn't have sent the letter in the first place since it's not their proper function to attempt to influence County planning authorities with lengthy documents on specific cases. So why did DTI risk going quite so far out on a limb to support Scottish Power?
The answer may come from Channel 4 TV's programme 'The Mark Thomas Product' screened last week, in which presenter Mark Thomas revealed that Scottish Power director Euan Baird sits on a powerful Tony Blair quango: 'The Council for Science
and Technology' and that Baird had "forgotten" to declare his Scottish Power - 2 -
directorship on the Council's compulsory register of outside interests. When questioned about this lapse, Baird could not explain it, and neither could Patricia Hewitt, Chairman of the Council for Science and Technology, who is also the minister responsible for the DTI which sent the letter supporting Scottish Power. Furthermore, Euan Baird is not the only link between Scottish Power and DTI.
Scottish Power director Alan Leighton, was recruited via the DTI to serve on the board of Consignia.
So RAP asks: what's going on here? How many other connections might there be between Scottish Power and the supposedly-impartial DTI? And above all, RAP wants to know if Cheshire County Council will be allowed to make up its own mind on Gas Plant II, free from questionable intervention by people remote from the facts, and whose actions are so very much in favour of their friends Scottish Power. Dr John Edwards, Press and Media Officer, 07977 496229