‘Keep the bills down and get the deal in Paris’: an interpretive analysis of UK ministers and climate policy between 2010 – 2016

Whilst climate change is one of the most difficult political problems to solve, politics itself is one of the major obstacles to taking climate action. However, existing literature demonstrates that there is a lack of knowledge on both politicians’ understanding of, and engagement with, climate change and, correspondingly, the decisions they make with regards to climate mitigation policies (Jordan et al., 2022). Existing work which does attempt to fill this gap either amalgamates politicians into an indistinct ‘policymaker’ group alongside civil servants and other actors (Parker, Letelier and Muñoz, 2013; Rickards, Wiseman and Kashima, 2014) or focuses on those already engaged in advocating for climate action (Willis, 2018, 2020). Furthermore, given politicians are a difficult group to access, it is often hard to get a sense of the political ‘backstage’ of those most elite legislators: government ministers. This paper fills this gap by utilising secondary qualitative data on UK MPs from the ‘Ministers Reflect’ interview transcript repository from the Institute for Government. It compares these reflective, ‘backstage’ accounts with ‘frontstage’ speeches in parliament of previous Ministers and Secretaries of State in the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) to highlight the lived experience of ministers (Yanow, 2007). It uses discourse analysis techniques to analyse the extent to which ‘frontstage’ and ‘backstage’ language of these actors diverge - or converge. In doing so, it provides an insight into the personal and political issues that ministers in charge of climate action faced in the years leading up to the 2015 Paris agreement. As well as contributing to this gap in the literature on elite politicians’ understanding of climate change, it may also shed light on the challenges facing ministers in the new UK Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. Jordan, A. et al. (2022) ‘The political challenges of deep decarbonisation: towards a more integrated agenda’, Climate Action, 1(1), p. 6. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s44168-022-00004-7. Parker, C., Letelier, M. and Muñoz, J. (2013) ‘Elites, climate change and agency in a developing society: the Chilean case’, Environment, Development and Sustainability, 15(5), pp. 1337–1363. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-013-9444-2. Rickards, L., Wiseman, J. and Kashima, Y. (2014) ‘Barriers to effective climate change mitigation: the case of senior government and business decision makers’, WIREs Climate Change, 5(6), pp. 753–773. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.305. Willis, R. (2018) How do politicians understand and respond to climate change. Lancaster University. Available at: https://eprints.lancs.ac.uk/id/eprint/129826/1/2018willisphd.pdf. Willis, R. (2020) ‘The role of national politicians in global climate governance’, Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 3(3), pp. 885–903. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/2514848619887464. Yanow, D. (2007) ‘Interpretation in policy analysis: On methods and practice’, Critical Policy Studies, 1(1), pp. 110–122. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/19460171.2007.9518511.