Former Chancellor Nigel Lawson has launched an attack on the Government's policy of bringing together energy and climate change into a single department.
In a letter to the Financial Times, he said: 'I would like, as a former energy secretary, to wish Ed Davey, the new secretary of state for energy and climate change, the best of luck in his new job. He has the opportunity to enter the history books as the only minister to use his position to abolish it for the wider public good.'
Lord Lawson slams what he describes as 'the yoking together of energy and climate change' which 'has given this country the worst energy policy for a generation - bad for the economy, bad for industry, bad for the taxpayer and bad for the consumer'.
He said he believed the time had come to put responsibility for climate change policy back into the environment department, and to put energy policy into the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.
