Jon Excell

Carbon chief: Lord Browne

In-Depth

About five minutes into 
my interview with Lord Browne, the former BP boss loses the otherwise calm and controlled demeanour for which he is known. It is only for a second and he quickly regains himself for most of the rest of our time together, but his brief stutter seems to demonstrate his passion and frustration.

‘I don’t agree that by talking about a subject you make it worse,’ he said. ‘This is a piece of reality.’ The topic in question is the same as that of his new book, The Glass Closet, in which he sets out the case for businesses to do more to make lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) staff feel comfortable enough to come out to their colleagues.

When The Engineer recently published an article making a similar point about engineering firms, it received many comments from readers arguing workplace homophobia was no longer an issue — that nobody really cared about sexuality these days — and that raising these concerns created problems where there were none. Browne emphatically disagrees.

It’s easy in almost anything in life [to say] that a problem is solved until it smacks you in the face

‘There is a gay acceptance issue, which is different from homophobia,’ he said. ‘I think it’s easy in almost anything in life [to say] that a problem is solved until it smacks you in the face. And that I think creates a series of tragedies all over the place when you deal with individuals.’

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