Mr Lambert has already scanned the company’s annual report and noticed it had achieved huge reductions in carbon emissions in the latest year.Gordon Thomson, BASF’s strategy and planning manager, picks up on Mr Lambert’s enthusiasm for climate change as a business opportunity, pointing out it is possible to reduce the emissions of an average home by 90 per cent “if you use the right products”.Dr Thomson is as concerned about the energy situation as the other companies Mr Lambert has seen. 1.10pm Lunch is a quick sandwich at BASF, the giant German chemicals factory, which has its north European headquarters in a Pentagon-style building in Cheadle Hulme. He recalls he lived in a fairly run-down street and says that when he went back with one of his sons, it had not changed much. Later in the day, by chance, he comes across a T-shirt in a Manchester museum shop emblazoned with the logo “I’m from Didsbury” but sadly they don’t have his size in stock.

In the UK, the regulators are a bit quick out of the blocks.” 12.10pm The car passes Didsbury, the suburb of Manchester where Mr Lambert was born and brought up after his parents moved north from London for work. Asked whether he thinks it will be a level playing field across Europe, he says: “No, it will be like looking over the edge of the Eiger. “It is an exciting time,” says Paul Jennings, its chief executive.Ron Shone, vice-president for health and safety, updates the DG on the EU rules on classification, packaging and labelling of dangerous substances that are known as REACH. Innospec, which is based in the UK but listed on Nasdaq, makes chemicals that boost fuel efficiency. He has commissioned a report into business demands before next summer’s Comprehensive Spending Review that is taking up considerable resources 11.10am Next stop Innospec in Ellesmere Port, Cheshire.

It is a company that fits very well with Mr Lambert’s concerns. He says he has not come across a CBI member that was not concerned about climate change. “We are energy intensive so the incidence of energy costs in the finished products is very high,” he says. Mr Lambert says he will “rattle cages” in London and Brussels.The DG probes away at the issues that bother the company, asking about their R&D spend, the difficulty in finding qualified staff and the paucity of science education in the UK. “Energy and skills and education are the themes we are going to be working very hard at,” he tells them.

10.45am Back in the car, with the temperature heading towards a century-record of 36.3 deg C Admittedly, in the “Pilks” glass furnace it was 1,060 deg C. Mr Lambert’s predecessor Sir Digby Jones promised to visit all 14 regions and nations of the UK three time a year each Mr Lambert is cautious about making a similar pledge. For Pilkington, it would have been more expensive to stop the production line, so it managed to switch energy supplies. Paul McKeon, a director of its worldwide building products division, says he is “nervous” after last winter saw spot market gas prices rise five or six-fold. The company is impressed to have the CBI’s boss visit – Prince Andrew is coming for lunch so it’s a busy day – and he is greeted by three executives.It is soon clear that security and cost of energy is top of their agenda.

“It is important to be visible and to be quite noisy,” he says before the meeting. Two decades ago the populace of St Helens marched in protest at a proposed takeover. A month ago the company was taken over by NSG, a smaller Japanese outfit. Long-serving employees were upset but no one marched.Today Mr Lambert is more interested in the future and in what services and help the CBI can offer Pilkington. At the end is the gleaming white building that once housed the Littlewoods pools empire before the company’s sale to the Barclay Brothers and which is due to be converted into city apartments. 9.00am The first stop is Pilkington’s float glass plant in St Helens on Merseyside.