It’s political party conference season in the UK right now. At these annual events the party’s politicians and supporters gather together to discuss various issues. In addition, each large party conference has what’s called a ‘fringe’ - a collection of meetings, away from the main conference discussions, about various subjects.

This year, one of the topics for fringe discussion was low carbon energy. A discussion on the issue took place at the fringes of the three main political parties, Labour, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. One of the attendees was to be Tom Burke, former executive director of Friends of the Earth, special adviser to a number of past environment ministers, and a founder of Third Generation Environmentalism. We’ll let Tom take up the tale…

I thought you would all like to know that I was originally invited by [political information publisher] Dod's to speak at the three low carbon fringe meetings at the party conferences. I accepted the invitation and received a confirmation of my participation sometime early in the summer. Three weeks ago I was notified by e-mail that I had been disinvited at the request of EDF who were sponsoring the meetings. This dis-invitation arrived too late to change the programme for the event at the Lib-Dem Conference where I was listed as a speaker.

So why was Tom disinvited? He has the answer.

Given that EDF have now owned up to the fact that they cannot do new build nuclear without subsidies I am not totally surprised that they no longer wish to debate the issue in public.

In June of this year, chief executive of EDF Vincent de Rivaz went on national television in the UK and declared ‘I am very open to debate and discussions’ . Those words sound pretty hollow.