Energy Minister took on the job unsure about climate change

Andrea Leadsom.
 

Energy minister Andrea Leadsom told a parliamentary fracking group that she had to ask whether climate change was real when she took the job.

As reported by energy site Drill or Drop, the MP for South Northamptonshire told the All Party Parliamentary Group on Unconventional Gas and Oil: "When I first came to this job one of my two questions was: 'Is climate change real?' and the other was 'Is hydraulic fracturing safe?' And on both of those questions I am now completely persuaded."

Leadsom's explicit views on climate change before she was made energy minister in May are not clear, but in the past she has written to the Prime Minister calling for cuts to wind farm subsidies, and has criticised the pre-coalition Labour government for signing up to an EU target that called for 15 per cent of the UK's energy to come from renewable sources by 2015.

Read the Independent story - “New energy minister Andrea Leadsom asked whether climate change was real when she started the job.”