Rotherham Borough Council has for the second time turned down an application from the shale oil hopeful INEOS, to drill at Woodsetts on planning grounds.

Yet when I joined anti-fracking protectors at the proposed Tinker Lane, near Retford, and Misson, near Doncaster, sites on Monday, there was little celebration.

For we’ve long since learned that while Lancashire said no to fracking, as did Rotherham and Derbyshire, neither the fracking companies, nor the government in far-off Westminster is likely to take no for an answer.

Six-year battle

“Oh, INEOS will appeal,” the locals said, and history shows they are likely right.

There was more cheer, however, in events at Tinker Lane. I’d been asked to return there because credible reports suggested that a drilling rig might be arriving on Monday.

It’s the subject of an injunction, one of the many attacks we’re seeing on democracy and right to protest around the country, both by frackers and others (hello Sheffield’s Labour City Council).

But that hasn’t deterred people coming out to protest and show their opposition to the rig, and on an autumnal weekday, about 35 people came out prepared to demonstrate their opposition.

No rig appeared – and that was a victory, one more small one in this now six-year battle to stop fracking in England. (It has already been blocked in Wales and Scotland, not to mention France, Germany and Bulgaria.)

Small village

And those small victories have added up to something big. Back when fracking was aiming to get started in Balcombe, the expectation was that there would be an entire industry operating by now, but instead public opposition has grown and grown, protests have slowed and prevented activity.

The very weak arguments made then about gas being needed as a “bridging fuel” until renewables came on line have entirely evaporated as renewables have come online far faster, and at far lower prices, than predicted.

Huge credit is due to the many thousands of people who’ve given up their time and energy to show their opposition, and keep a close check on what the industry is doing – what their importation of the cowboy culture of US fracking looks like at close hand.

After Tinker Lane, I visited the protection camp at Misson, where Ineos’s activity had visibly, although chaotically, stepped up.

The protectors told me that three times in the one day vehicles had breached the traffic management plan. Vehicles are supposed to enter and leave the site not through this small village, with its school, nursery, and tightly bending road but from the other direction. The security guards were at one stage not wearing their proper identification.

Overheated planet

Police on the gate – there were two standing there and at least four more sat in a van around the corner – were frustrated at their inability to get information about what the company was planning. “Well there was supposed to be a lorry at 2pm, but it hasn’t turned up so it probably won’t now,” was all the gate guard could say, with a shrug, about 3.30pm.

I heard from local people here just how traumatic the whole issue has been for them – lack of sleep and stress is clearly having a significant health toll.

But one of the things that struck me about this visit, as to my recent one to Preston New Road, is about how conversation on the frackers’ gates has moved on.

Of course we’re still talking about the certainly local environmental impacts – the lorries, the water use, and the noise and light pollution – “don’t worry about the gas flaring I heard a Lancashire planning officer say, “you can always get blackout blinds” – and the risks of spills and contamination.

And about climate change – how we need to be moving away, fast, from fossil fuels – the carbon stored in the grounds over aeons being left there, instead of lifted into the atmosphere of our already overheated planet.

Take control

But the top topic of conversation these days in democracy. “We thought this was a free country,” is a common sentiment.

Most of the people working day after day, week after week, on the anti-fracking effort are not longtime political activists. They’re small business people, grandmas, parents, workers taking days off when they can, who’ve been horrified by what is being done to their communities. And by their lack of ability to take control of what’s happening.

At Tinker Lane it was striking since my last visit how many more passing locals have clearly been alerted to the fracking attempt, and the issues around it. Toots and waves of support come thick and fast, from lorry drivers, from people in suits, from parents ferrying their children.

Tinker Lane, Misson, Woodsetts, and many other communities threatened by fracking have made up their mind against it. The British public has come out in clear and obvious opposition to it.

But we have a government that wants to press on regardless, and an industry using the courts to seek to draconianly end peaceful protest.

Power doctrine

When history is written, there’s a good chance the fight against fracking will be seen as an important part of the awakening to determination for parliament to reflect the will of the people. It certainly doesn’t now – with 68 percent of votes not really counting in 2017.  This is a fight to stop resources, money and control being seized by Westminster – while the rest of the country has politics done to it.

Reflecting that, today Theresa May will be confronted outside parliament by 100 women dressed in the costumes of 100 years ago, as the suffragettes and suffragists were dressed, many of them travelling down from Lancashire.

Their message is simple: “Let communities decide on fracking, without the top-down power doctrine of central government.”

One hundred years on from some women getting the vote, there are growing numbers of women and men determined to complete the work of the campaigners then – to end the astonishing centralisation of power in London, and take back control of their communities.

This Author

Natalie Bennett is a member of Sheffield Green Party and former Green Party leader.

Rotherham Borough Council has for the second time turned down an application from the shale oil hopeful INEOS, to drill at Woodsetts on planning grounds.

Yet when I joined anti-fracking protectors at the proposed Tinker Lane, near Retford, and Misson, near Doncaster, sites on Monday, there was little celebration.

For we’ve long since learned that while Lancashire said no to fracking, as did Rotherham and Derbyshire, neither the fracking companies, nor the government in far-off Westminster is likely to take no for an answer.

Six-year battle

“Oh, INEOS will appeal,” the locals said, and history shows they are likely right.

There was more cheer, however, in events at Tinker Lane. I’d been asked to return there because credible reports suggested that a drilling rig might be arriving on Monday.

It’s the subject of an injunction, one of the many attacks we’re seeing on democracy and right to protest around the country, both by frackers and others (hello Sheffield’s Labour City Council).

But that hasn’t deterred people coming out to protest and show their opposition to the rig, and on an autumnal weekday, about 35 people came out prepared to demonstrate their opposition.

No rig appeared – and that was a victory, one more small one in this now six-year battle to stop fracking in England. (It has already been blocked in Wales and Scotland, not to mention France, Germany and Bulgaria.)

Small village

And those small victories have added up to something big. Back when fracking was aiming to get started in Balcombe, the expectation was that there would be an entire industry operating by now, but instead public opposition has grown and grown, protests have slowed and prevented activity.

The very weak arguments made then about gas being needed as a “bridging fuel” until renewables came on line have entirely evaporated as renewables have come online far faster, and at far lower prices, than predicted.

Huge credit is due to the many thousands of people who’ve given up their time and energy to show their opposition, and keep a close check on what the industry is doing – what their importation of the cowboy culture of US fracking looks like at close hand.

After Tinker Lane, I visited the protection camp at Misson, where Ineos’s activity had visibly, although chaotically, stepped up.

The protectors told me that three times in the one day vehicles had breached the traffic management plan. Vehicles are supposed to enter and leave the site not through this small village, with its school, nursery, and tightly bending road but from the other direction. The security guards were at one stage not wearing their proper identification.

Overheated planet

Police on the gate – there were two standing there and at least four more sat in a van around the corner – were frustrated at their inability to get information about what the company was planning. “Well there was supposed to be a lorry at 2pm, but it hasn’t turned up so it probably won’t now,” was all the gate guard could say, with a shrug, about 3.30pm.

I heard from local people here just how traumatic the whole issue has been for them – lack of sleep and stress is clearly having a significant health toll.

But one of the things that struck me about this visit, as to my recent one to Preston New Road, is about how conversation on the frackers’ gates has moved on.

Of course we’re still talking about the certainly local environmental impacts – the lorries, the water use, and the noise and light pollution – “don’t worry about the gas flaring I heard a Lancashire planning officer say, “you can always get blackout blinds” – and the risks of spills and contamination.

And about climate change – how we need to be moving away, fast, from fossil fuels – the carbon stored in the grounds over aeons being left there, instead of lifted into the atmosphere of our already overheated planet.

Take control

But the top topic of conversation these days in democracy. “We thought this was a free country,” is a common sentiment.

Most of the people working day after day, week after week, on the anti-fracking effort are not longtime political activists. They’re small business people, grandmas, parents, workers taking days off when they can, who’ve been horrified by what is being done to their communities. And by their lack of ability to take control of what’s happening.

At Tinker Lane it was striking since my last visit how many more passing locals have clearly been alerted to the fracking attempt, and the issues around it. Toots and waves of support come thick and fast, from lorry drivers, from people in suits, from parents ferrying their children.

Tinker Lane, Misson, Woodsetts, and many other communities threatened by fracking have made up their mind against it. The British public has come out in clear and obvious opposition to it.

But we have a government that wants to press on regardless, and an industry using the courts to seek to draconianly end peaceful protest.

Power doctrine

When history is written, there’s a good chance the fight against fracking will be seen as an important part of the awakening to determination for parliament to reflect the will of the people. It certainly doesn’t now – with 68 percent of votes not really counting in 2017.  This is a fight to stop resources, money and control being seized by Westminster – while the rest of the country has politics done to it.

Reflecting that, today Theresa May will be confronted outside parliament by 100 women dressed in the costumes of 100 years ago, as the suffragettes and suffragists were dressed, many of them travelling down from Lancashire.

Their message is simple: “Let communities decide on fracking, without the top-down power doctrine of central government.”

One hundred years on from some women getting the vote, there are growing numbers of women and men determined to complete the work of the campaigners then – to end the astonishing centralisation of power in London, and take back control of their communities.

This Author

Natalie Bennett is a member of Sheffield Green Party and former Green Party leader.

Rotherham Borough Council has for the second time turned down an application from the shale oil hopeful INEOS, to drill at Woodsetts on planning grounds.

Yet when I joined anti-fracking protectors at the proposed Tinker Lane, near Retford, and Misson, near Doncaster, sites on Monday, there was little celebration.

For we’ve long since learned that while Lancashire said no to fracking, as did Rotherham and Derbyshire, neither the fracking companies, nor the government in far-off Westminster is likely to take no for an answer.

Six-year battle

“Oh, INEOS will appeal,” the locals said, and history shows they are likely right.

There was more cheer, however, in events at Tinker Lane. I’d been asked to return there because credible reports suggested that a drilling rig might be arriving on Monday.

It’s the subject of an injunction, one of the many attacks we’re seeing on democracy and right to protest around the country, both by frackers and others (hello Sheffield’s Labour City Council).

But that hasn’t deterred people coming out to protest and show their opposition to the rig, and on an autumnal weekday, about 35 people came out prepared to demonstrate their opposition.

No rig appeared – and that was a victory, one more small one in this now six-year battle to stop fracking in England. (It has already been blocked in Wales and Scotland, not to mention France, Germany and Bulgaria.)

Small village

And those small victories have added up to something big. Back when fracking was aiming to get started in Balcombe, the expectation was that there would be an entire industry operating by now, but instead public opposition has grown and grown, protests have slowed and prevented activity.

The very weak arguments made then about gas being needed as a “bridging fuel” until renewables came on line have entirely evaporated as renewables have come online far faster, and at far lower prices, than predicted.

Huge credit is due to the many thousands of people who’ve given up their time and energy to show their opposition, and keep a close check on what the industry is doing – what their importation of the cowboy culture of US fracking looks like at close hand.

After Tinker Lane, I visited the protection camp at Misson, where Ineos’s activity had visibly, although chaotically, stepped up.

The protectors told me that three times in the one day vehicles had breached the traffic management plan. Vehicles are supposed to enter and leave the site not through this small village, with its school, nursery, and tightly bending road but from the other direction. The security guards were at one stage not wearing their proper identification.

Overheated planet

Police on the gate – there were two standing there and at least four more sat in a van around the corner – were frustrated at their inability to get information about what the company was planning. “Well there was supposed to be a lorry at 2pm, but it hasn’t turned up so it probably won’t now,” was all the gate guard could say, with a shrug, about 3.30pm.

I heard from local people here just how traumatic the whole issue has been for them – lack of sleep and stress is clearly having a significant health toll.

But one of the things that struck me about this visit, as to my recent one to Preston New Road, is about how conversation on the frackers’ gates has moved on.

Of course we’re still talking about the certainly local environmental impacts – the lorries, the water use, and the noise and light pollution – “don’t worry about the gas flaring I heard a Lancashire planning officer say, “you can always get blackout blinds” – and the risks of spills and contamination.

And about climate change – how we need to be moving away, fast, from fossil fuels – the carbon stored in the grounds over aeons being left there, instead of lifted into the atmosphere of our already overheated planet.

Take control

But the top topic of conversation these days in democracy. “We thought this was a free country,” is a common sentiment.

Most of the people working day after day, week after week, on the anti-fracking effort are not longtime political activists. They’re small business people, grandmas, parents, workers taking days off when they can, who’ve been horrified by what is being done to their communities. And by their lack of ability to take control of what’s happening.

At Tinker Lane it was striking since my last visit how many more passing locals have clearly been alerted to the fracking attempt, and the issues around it. Toots and waves of support come thick and fast, from lorry drivers, from people in suits, from parents ferrying their children.

Tinker Lane, Misson, Woodsetts, and many other communities threatened by fracking have made up their mind against it. The British public has come out in clear and obvious opposition to it.

But we have a government that wants to press on regardless, and an industry using the courts to seek to draconianly end peaceful protest.

Power doctrine

When history is written, there’s a good chance the fight against fracking will be seen as an important part of the awakening to determination for parliament to reflect the will of the people. It certainly doesn’t now – with 68 percent of votes not really counting in 2017.  This is a fight to stop resources, money and control being seized by Westminster – while the rest of the country has politics done to it.

Reflecting that, today Theresa May will be confronted outside parliament by 100 women dressed in the costumes of 100 years ago, as the suffragettes and suffragists were dressed, many of them travelling down from Lancashire.

Their message is simple: “Let communities decide on fracking, without the top-down power doctrine of central government.”

One hundred years on from some women getting the vote, there are growing numbers of women and men determined to complete the work of the campaigners then – to end the astonishing centralisation of power in London, and take back control of their communities.

This Author

Natalie Bennett is a member of Sheffield Green Party and former Green Party leader.

Rotherham Borough Council has for the second time turned down an application from the shale oil hopeful INEOS, to drill at Woodsetts on planning grounds.

Yet when I joined anti-fracking protectors at the proposed Tinker Lane, near Retford, and Misson, near Doncaster, sites on Monday, there was little celebration.

For we’ve long since learned that while Lancashire said no to fracking, as did Rotherham and Derbyshire, neither the fracking companies, nor the government in far-off Westminster is likely to take no for an answer.

Six-year battle

“Oh, INEOS will appeal,” the locals said, and history shows they are likely right.

There was more cheer, however, in events at Tinker Lane. I’d been asked to return there because credible reports suggested that a drilling rig might be arriving on Monday.

It’s the subject of an injunction, one of the many attacks we’re seeing on democracy and right to protest around the country, both by frackers and others (hello Sheffield’s Labour City Council).

But that hasn’t deterred people coming out to protest and show their opposition to the rig, and on an autumnal weekday, about 35 people came out prepared to demonstrate their opposition.

No rig appeared – and that was a victory, one more small one in this now six-year battle to stop fracking in England. (It has already been blocked in Wales and Scotland, not to mention France, Germany and Bulgaria.)

Small village

And those small victories have added up to something big. Back when fracking was aiming to get started in Balcombe, the expectation was that there would be an entire industry operating by now, but instead public opposition has grown and grown, protests have slowed and prevented activity.

The very weak arguments made then about gas being needed as a “bridging fuel” until renewables came on line have entirely evaporated as renewables have come online far faster, and at far lower prices, than predicted.

Huge credit is due to the many thousands of people who’ve given up their time and energy to show their opposition, and keep a close check on what the industry is doing – what their importation of the cowboy culture of US fracking looks like at close hand.

After Tinker Lane, I visited the protection camp at Misson, where Ineos’s activity had visibly, although chaotically, stepped up.

The protectors told me that three times in the one day vehicles had breached the traffic management plan. Vehicles are supposed to enter and leave the site not through this small village, with its school, nursery, and tightly bending road but from the other direction. The security guards were at one stage not wearing their proper identification.

Overheated planet

Police on the gate – there were two standing there and at least four more sat in a van around the corner – were frustrated at their inability to get information about what the company was planning. “Well there was supposed to be a lorry at 2pm, but it hasn’t turned up so it probably won’t now,” was all the gate guard could say, with a shrug, about 3.30pm.

I heard from local people here just how traumatic the whole issue has been for them – lack of sleep and stress is clearly having a significant health toll.

But one of the things that struck me about this visit, as to my recent one to Preston New Road, is about how conversation on the frackers’ gates has moved on.

Of course we’re still talking about the certainly local environmental impacts – the lorries, the water use, and the noise and light pollution – “don’t worry about the gas flaring I heard a Lancashire planning officer say, “you can always get blackout blinds” – and the risks of spills and contamination.

And about climate change – how we need to be moving away, fast, from fossil fuels – the carbon stored in the grounds over aeons being left there, instead of lifted into the atmosphere of our already overheated planet.

Take control

But the top topic of conversation these days in democracy. “We thought this was a free country,” is a common sentiment.

Most of the people working day after day, week after week, on the anti-fracking effort are not longtime political activists. They’re small business people, grandmas, parents, workers taking days off when they can, who’ve been horrified by what is being done to their communities. And by their lack of ability to take control of what’s happening.

At Tinker Lane it was striking since my last visit how many more passing locals have clearly been alerted to the fracking attempt, and the issues around it. Toots and waves of support come thick and fast, from lorry drivers, from people in suits, from parents ferrying their children.

Tinker Lane, Misson, Woodsetts, and many other communities threatened by fracking have made up their mind against it. The British public has come out in clear and obvious opposition to it.

But we have a government that wants to press on regardless, and an industry using the courts to seek to draconianly end peaceful protest.

Power doctrine

When history is written, there’s a good chance the fight against fracking will be seen as an important part of the awakening to determination for parliament to reflect the will of the people. It certainly doesn’t now – with 68 percent of votes not really counting in 2017.  This is a fight to stop resources, money and control being seized by Westminster – while the rest of the country has politics done to it.

Reflecting that, today Theresa May will be confronted outside parliament by 100 women dressed in the costumes of 100 years ago, as the suffragettes and suffragists were dressed, many of them travelling down from Lancashire.

Their message is simple: “Let communities decide on fracking, without the top-down power doctrine of central government.”

One hundred years on from some women getting the vote, there are growing numbers of women and men determined to complete the work of the campaigners then – to end the astonishing centralisation of power in London, and take back control of their communities.

This Author

Natalie Bennett is a member of Sheffield Green Party and former Green Party leader.

The Leave and Remain camps are readying for a second campaign over the nature of the UK’s future relationship with the union – as the deadline looms for a final Brexit agreement between the EU and the UK.

Both camps will seek to push their arguments into the British press, hoping to convince late-comers to their cause.

While national newspapers have long taken a stance on Brexit, op-eds, columns and opinion pieces will be a key tool for lobbyist from both sides of the debate to push their agenda into the public sphere.

More exposure

Research by DeSmog UK shows how a network of hard-Brexit think tanks pushing for deregulation and with links to climate science deniers has secured a footing in the mainstream press.

Working out of two addresses in Tufton Street near Westminster, this network which includes climate science denial group the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), has been accused by BeLeave whistleblower Shahmir Sanni of holding regular meetings to “agree on a single set of right-wing talking points” and “securing more exposure to the public”.

This Tufton Street network has strong ties with the right-wing press including the free business newspaper distributed in and around London City AM and The Telegraph — both of which have been repeatedly used to push the group’s agenda into the media.

Deep ties

At the heart of the Tufton Street network is the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), an opaque London-based free-market think tank registered as an “educational charity” with the mission “to improve understanding of the fundamental institutions of a free society”.

Earlier this month, on the same day as the UK government released its ‘no deal’ scenarios, the IEA launched what it called a series of “‘no deal’ Brexit fear-checkers” which it said would “help separate theoretical risks from reality” or what it called “Project Fear from Project Fact”.

Former under secretary of state for exiting the EU, Steve Baker, promoted the IEA’s briefings on Twitter as bringing “more impartiality and objectivity” into the debate.

The IEA recently hit headlines after an undercover investigation by Greenpeace’s Unearthed and The Guardian suggested the think tank was involved in a “cash for access” system and offered potential US donors access to UK ministers.

The IEA denied the allegation. Undercover recordings yet showed IEA director Mark Littlewood claiming Shanker Singham, the director of the international trade and competition unit at the IEA, and his team speak with environment minister Michael Gove “every three or four days, along with David Davis, Boris Johnson, Liam Fox”.

Party affiliate

Singham is a close advisor to former Brexit Secretary David Davis and Baker, who have both pushed back against Theresa May’s Chequers plan.

While the IEA’s first briefings have already attracted plenty of media attention from across the political spectrum, it is worth noting that the think tank has deep connections with parts of the press.

Christian May, editor-in-chief of City AM, is also a member of the IEA’s advisory council.

At the time of his appointment in 2015, City AM was understood to want to adopt a more eurosceptic tone, according to the Guardian. May came from the PR industry and had no senior editorial experience before his appointment.

Between 2008 and 2009, May was the director of operations at the Young Britons’ Foundation, a controversial Tory party affiliate which made the news after one of its alumni Mark Clarke was accused of bullying young activist Elliott Johnson, who took his life. Clarke denied the allegations.

Think tank

The group’s radical views previously earned it its reputation as a “Tory madrasa” used to teach young Conservatives the “dark arts” of politics.

A 2013 annual meeting of the Young Britons’ Foundation, attended by May, also included a number of people with connections to the Tufton Street network. This included Steve Baker, Taxpayers Alliance founder and former chief executive of Vote Leave Matthew Elliott, Brexit Central editor Jonathan Isaby, and ConservativeHome founder Tim Montgomerie.

May is not the only connection City AM has with the IEA. Kate Andrews, newly appointed associate director at the IEA, also writes a fortnightly column for the paper.

Last week, City AM broke the story that David Davis is to write a foreword to a 140 page “Alternative Brexit Plan”, which is due to be published this week and will make the case for a Canada-style trade deal.  

According to City AM, the proposal is being coordinated by Singham, of the IEA, and in collaboration with at least one another think tank and a City law firm.

Director of research at the IEA Jamie Whyte has also written four controversial columns for The Telegraph since July 2017 — including opposing the plastic straw ban and how “turning Britain into a tax haven would make us all richer”.

Vote Leave

Matthew Elliott, former chief executive of Vote Leave and editor-at-large of Brexit Central, is a regular columnist at City AM. Elliott is also the co-founder of the TaxPayers’ Alliance that advocates for a low-tax society and has been pushing for deregulation post-Brexit.

Despite Elliott’s prominent role in pushing for a hard-Brexit agenda, City AM fails to identify his political affiliations in his short biography on the paper’s website. Instead, it reads: “Matthew Elliott is the senior political advisor to Shore Capital.”

Shore Capital is a London-based private equity firm. Besides regular and significant donations to the Conservative Party, the Shore Capital Group donated £50,000 to Vote Leave, then headed by Elliott.

Founder of Shore Capital and former chief executive Howard Shore is an outspoken Brexiteer and columnist for the Telegraph. He donated nearly £50,000 to the Conservative Party since 2012.

Last month, in his City AM column titled “Economic optimism is battling the Project Fear no-deal panic”, Elliott listed “project fear stories” about what would happen in the case of a no-deal Brexit — making the case that the economy was showing positive signs despite the Remainers’ threats.

Kamikaze Brexit

“With the good economic news to counter the more extreme scare scenarios, the threat of a no-deal Brexit is — so far — having as much impact as the first iteration of Project Fear in 2016,” he wrote.

City AM did not respond to DeSmog UK’s request for comment on how the paper discloses affiliations to lobbying and political groups in time for publication.

Allister Heath, editor of the Sunday Telegraph and former City AM editor, helped Elliott co-found the TaxPayers’ Alliance back in 2004 along with his sister Florence Heath, who subsequently married Elliott.

In his latest column for the Telegraph, Heath defended his views for a low-tax society, attacking Theresa May’s “ridiculous Chequers” plan” and accusing the government of handling a “kamikaze Brexit strategy” by endorsing a soft Brexit.

Free trade

The Economists for Free Trade (EFT) is a campaign group pushing for a “no-deal” Brexit while arguing that the adoption of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules would be “the very best” option for the UK.

The group claims to be a coalition of independent economists despite having strong ties to Brexiteer Conservative MPs, right-leaning mainstream media and some well-known climate science deniers.

The group publishes reports on a range of topics related to Brexit with the aim to demonstrate the path from “project fear to project prosperity”.

An EFT advisor and climate science denier Matt Ridley quoted figures from another EFT member, Michael Burrage, in his Times column titled “We’ve nothing to fear from a world-trade Brexit”  to support his argument that a no-deal Brexit may benefit the UK. Yet, Ridley did not declare his own affiliation to the group.

Ridley is also an advisor to the UK’s climate science denying group the GWPF but does not disclose his affiliation to the organisation in his columns.

Scare tactics

Graeme Leach, CEO and chief economist at Macronomics and a member of EFT, writes a weekly column for City AM.

In his City AM column dated 16 August, Leach compared Theresa May’s Chequers’ plan to the Monty Python’s  “Dead Parrot” sketch. “Whichever way you look at it the Chequers agreement is dead,” he wrote.

“We are staring at a no-deal Brexit in the face” he said, quoting the EFT research which claimed that for the UK to thrive after Brexit, the country had to be outside both the single market and the customs union. Unlike the others, Leach disclosed his membership to the group in the column.  

Sunday Telegraphs columnist Liam Halligan is also a member of the EFT.

In a column in July this year titled “No deal is looking increasingly likely and that’s just fine”, Halligan argues that “many MPs fear ‘no deal’” because of “unchallenged scare tactics of ‘professional Remainers’”. Nowhere in the piece did Halligan disclose his membership to the EFT.  

Leading economists

His column echoes some of the arguments used by his colleague and the convener of the EFT, Edgar Miller, who wrote a column for the Telegraph arguing “Don’t worry about the Brexit negotiations, no deal is better than what we have now with the EU”.

The column sets out some of the work the EFT have done to show the UK would be better off trading under WTO rules than remaining in the EU.

Roger Bootle, founder of the Capital Economics and also a member of the EFT, is another Telegraph columnist described by the paper as “one of the City’s leading economists”. Bootle’s short biography on the Telegraph’s website does not disclose his affiliation with the pro-Brexit group.

The Telegraph did not respond to DeSmog UK’s request for comment in time for publication.

According to Electoral Commission data, Bootle donated £200,000 to Vote Leave during the referendum campaign.

Slamming what he described as Theresa May’s “Brexit disaster” and advocating a full break-up from the EU, Bootle wrote in a column called “What business leaders know about Brexit … and what they don’t” in which he claimed the business community had warned against a hard-Brexit because “business people are short-minded”.

Partisan media

The Tufton Street network boasts a growing presence in the new media sphere.

Tim Montgomerie, former columnist at The Times, co-founder of Conservative Home and editor of UnHerd is a key example.

In an 2010 interview with the New Statesman, Montgomerie described himself as a climate change “sceptic”, adding: “I’m sceptical about policy. We should do green things, but only when they have other benefits. […] I’m much more worried about Iran than about global warming.”

Montgomerie, a hardline Brexiteer, is an advisor to the EFT and has been close to Elliott and the Taxpayers’ Alliance since the group’s launch in 2009.

That year, in a Conservative Home post, Montgomerie described the Taxpayers’ Alliance as being part of a growing “conservative movement” and wrote that he had given a joint presentation with its co-founder Elliott at a conference at the Manning Centre in Ottawa.

Regular fixture

The political blog Guido Fawkes has also recently strengthened its ties to the Tufton Street network.

Hugh Bennett, former deputy editor at Brexit Central and correspondence officer at Vote Leave, and Tom Harwood who led the student Leave campaign joined the Guido Fawkes as news editor and reporter.

Both seem to get on well with Darren Grimes, former deputy editor at Brexit Central and recently appointed digital manager at the IEA. On separate occasions, Grimes tweeted pictures of friendly encounters with Bennett and Harwood.

Grimes — founder of BeLeave, the grassroot campaign used to channel money to Vote Leave — was fined £20,000 and reported to the police after the Electoral Commission found evidence of the Vote Leave campaign breaching electoral spending rules.  

Another regular contributor to both City AM and the Telegraph is Ryan Bourne.

Bourne is the chair for the public understanding of economics at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank based in Washington DC and co-founded by the fossil fuel magnate Charles Koch who has played a significant role in funding climate science denial in the US.

The Cato Institute has long spread disinformation about climate change.

Through these links, the voices of a select network of pro-Brexit lobbyists and campaigners have become a regular fixture of the UK’s mainstream press — often without columnists declaring their interests.

This Article

This article first appeared at Desmog.uk.

‘Plastic attack’ battle lines are being drawn. This Saturday (15 September 2018) thousands of frustrated shoppers in more than 100 towns and cities across 20 countries plan to stage mass protests at supermarkets against harmful packaging. 

They have declared it to be World Plastic Attack Day. These peaceful protestors are gearing up to give back all throwaway, avoidable, single-use plastic to supermarkets.

Plastic attacks have become a worldwide movement after they went viral on social media this year. Thousands of protestors have taken part so far around the world.

Collective power 

Their actions have been shared on social media and the news, sparking many copycat protests, and now through a Global Plastic Attack Facebook group, which is acting as a hub to publicise events worldwide.

Shoppers will exert their growing collective power to drive change, while raising awareness about the severe impacts of plastic pollution. 

The campaigners will stand at shop entrances and ask everyone who shops to buy their goods and then, en masse, rip off all the plastic that they believe is not necessary, collect it all up in trolleys, record the content and politely hand it back to the shops.

Alex Morss, one of the campaigners, said: “Teams stand outside each store and invite all shoppers who agree, to join in, so we will easily involve at least 200 or more shoppers per hour at each store, obviously multiplied by a large number of stores and repeated events”.

She added: “The public is being fully supportive, and so are the shop floor staff. Volunteers collect up everyone’s plastic waste in trolleys, photograph and analyse it to see which brands and stores are the worst offenders, before presenting it back to the shops.

“We have calculated that a nation the size of the UK could easily fill more than ten thousand trolleys per hour with avoidable single use plastic wrapping – and typically half of what gets ripped off is not even currently recyclable.”

Plastic footprint

Ms Morss, from the Bristol-based community group OnebyOne Conservation, one of the network of groups behind the plastic campaign, added: “One of the world’s biggest mountains is a plastic one – a giant almost everlasting symbol of disgrace.

“The moment plastic leaves the shop door, it is out of sight and out of mind for supermarkets but a very long-term burden for the world. Research has shown the vast majority of it never gets recycled.

“Taxpayers, wildlife and the environment pay the costs, not the stores. Despite all the publicity in recent times and higher awareness than ever, there is still very little regulation to make massive producers and sellers of plastic-wrapped goods behave in a more environmentally responsible and sustainable manner. And there is no transparency about the full extent of their plastic footprint.”

The Global Plastic Attack Facebook group has 8,000 supporters. They share news, videos and photos demonstrating that very often the single-use plastic mentality is not the only option, and often not justifiable using the excuse of food waste, which has been argued by some commentators who have defended some uses of plastic packaging.

The food waste argument for using plastic was widely challenged by a report published by the EU Institute for Environmental Policy this year, which showed food waste has increased as plastic usage has gone up, and that food waste and sustainability are often not the crucial reasons for the chosen packaging.

Demanding change

The plastic attackers have criticised the abundant use of non-essential plastic used for marketing or bulk-buy-driven reasons, the widespread use of non-recyclable containers and wrappers, the avoidable single-use mentality, the commonplace wrapping of ‘organic’ vegetables in plastic when non-organic are not, as well as “over-packaging” on many items.

They say other sustainable alternatives are viable – and that often no wrapping would work fine, as is seen in many green grocers, organic and smaller independent stores.

The campaigners encourage shoppers to bring their own reusable containers and bags, and paper or biodegradable food composting bin bags for loose groceries. They point out these are being used anyway for kitchen food bins, so they are not an extra burden on the environment.

Belgium campaigner Christophe Steyeart who co-hosts the Global Plastic Attack Facebook group, said: “Shops cannot ignore so many thousands of their own customers telling them they are sick of unnecessary plastic. Wake up businesses, the world is demanding change.

“When people, the customers, change their way of buying and consuming, the industry must comply. Politicians will soon start thinking about their voters, and need to create laws so waste can be banned as much as possible. All parties must listen!”

Taking responsibility 

Fiona Edwards, from Keynsham Plastic Re-action, whose early video of a plastic attack has had more than 18 million views on social media, said: “We have demonstrated without doubt that our actions have overwhelming public support.

“It seems that people have been unwillingly purchasing all this plastic along with their food, and now they realise they have a choice, and can make their voices heard. They don’t have to be complicit any more.”

The World Plastic Attack Day network of campaign groups have teamed up with World Clean Up Day for 15 September. Many campaigners will also be doing litter picks and highlighting the vast volumes of plastic waste that end up in the environment.

World Cleanup Day spokeswoman Tina Urm said: “Scientists are predicting that by 2050 we’ll have more plastic than fish in our oceans. The problem is not just mismanaged waste ending up in our nature, waterways and oceans. It’s about the fact that only 9 percent of the plastic ever produced has been recycled.

“The production of single use plastics is only increasing, while half of the world’s population doesn’t have any access to a proper waste management system. This is the wake-up call we desperately need – both for producers and businesses to take responsibility and for people who can influence the big picture with their everyday choices.”

Keep it clean

The current Plastic Attack campaign was started this spring by small numbers of frustrated shoppers in the Bristol UK area, who teamed up with like-minded groups around the UK, Belgium and across Europe, sharing videos and photos on social media and quickly spreading the idea around the world.

They say their protests are always polite, law-abiding events, with no littering and no obstruction of checkouts, and everyone shopping is invited to take part. Stores are told in advance and asked to accept back their waste. 

A group of researchers and experts has also been working under the wing of the Let’s do it! Foundation to create The Keep It Clean Plan. The Plan garnered support and input from many other NGOs working on sustainable management of waste.

It embeds the principles of the zero waste strategy and practice, and consists of recommended actions for businesses, governments, citizens and NGOs to implement specific steps that will help to tackle the global challenge of mismanaged waste.

Research suggests only about one tenth to one third of plastic packaging that could be recycled actually gets recycled. In the UK, an estimated one million tonnes of throwaway plastic goes to landfill, incineration or ends up in the sea or as litter in the environment each year.

This Author

Marianne Brooker is a contributing editor for The Ecologist. This story was based on a press release from World Cleanup Day. For more information, visit the website for the action here. 

A flight tax, doubled environmental spending, subsidies for electric bikes and low-emission cars, a new climate law, and a proposal that tripled the cost of European emissions allowances: Sweden’s Green Party has been busy in its first-ever period in government.

The latest issue of the Resurgence & Ecologist magazine is out now.

“It’s a massive list if you compare those results with what has been achieved by previous governments when it comes to climate and environment,” says Fredrik Hannerz, until recently special adviser to the country’s climate minister, Isabella Lövin. 

“They have actually achieved a lot,” agrees Roger Hildingsson, a researcher at Lund University. “In terms of greening Swedish public administration and environmental policy, they have been very hard-working.” 

Braving ridicule 

Looking at the media coverage, however, you wouldn’t know it. The Greens have been hammered in the press almost since the day they took office on 3 October 2014 as the junior partner in a Social Democrat-led government. In the election scheduled for 9 September this year, they will find out just what price they have paid for their place in power.

When the Swedish state power firm Vattenfall sold its German lignite coal mines and power plants two years ago, rather than seeking to end the use of that fossil fuel, it was seen as a catastrophic climbdown, earning the party leadership the annual Greenwash Award from the pressure group Friends of the Earth. The future of the lignite mines had been such an important part of the 2014 campaign that Lövin and Gustav Fridolin, the party’s spokespeople (co-leaders), braved ridicule by brandishing chunks of coal in TV debates. 

“When you put yourself on these high horses, the higher you ride the harder you fall,” Hildingsson says. “From a green, ecological point of view, I would say it’s the worst failure for the party.” 

Hannerz argues that the Vattenfall affair, along with the party’s failure to stop an airport expansion and a ring road around Stockholm, involved “a miscommunication of what could be achieved”. 

“The party should have been much more strategic early on and realised that these things were not possible to stop,” he says.

Losing support

The price has been heavy, with the party losing roughly half of its 20,000 members and about half of its support among the electorate for this, a humiliating climbdown on immigration, and a scandal over a minister’s alleged Islamist and Turkish fascist connections. 

Hannerz argues that many Green voters have not understood the limited power that comes with the party’s 25 seats in parliament, given the 112 held by the Social Democrats. 

“Many people didn’t understand what big sacrifices it would entail,” he says. “The party has been in opposition for such a long time.” 

He also thinks environmental pressure groups and NGOs have not given the party the sort of outside support that the Social Democrats can rely on from trade unions, tending to criticise it rather than celebrate its successes.

Axel Hallberg, co-spokesperson for the Young Greens, agrees that it has been difficult to keep his members on board. 

“The immigration policy changes in 2015 were extremely tough, especially for the Young Greens, but when you now look back from my perspective after four years, I think it’s obvious now that we have been able to make incredible changes,” he says.

Greenhouse emissions

Hallberg hopes that the new owners of Vattenfall’s former coal mines will never develop them now that the ‘Swedish Proposal’, which will see millions of tonnes of unused EU emissions allowances cancelled annually, has tripled the carbon price. 

In exchange for the Vattenfall climbdown, the party got the Social Democrats to agree to buy and cancel 300 million kronor (£25 million) -worth of EU emissions allowances a year, one of more than 50 different reforms the party lists as achievements. 

Others include changing Sweden’s carbon tax to make it increase with inflation, overseeing a rise in petrol taxes, and bringing in subsidies to help local municipalities and industry invest in climate-friendly projects. 

Hannerz thinks the most significant change is the Climate Policy Framework committing Sweden to bringing net emissions of greenhouse gases to zero by 2045; António Guterres, the United Nations Secretary-General, described it in April this year as “probably the best programme in the world in relation to climate action”. 

The framework includes a climate law that will force future governments to report every four years on their progress towards the 2045 goal and outline the policies they are introdu­cing. It’s a hugely significant change and it wouldn’t have happened without the Greens – but very few Swedes know about it. 

Flight tax

“We’ve been so focused on getting things done and ticking things off our very long list that we haven’t focused very much on communicating those results,” Hannerz admits. “Maybe we could have halved the list of policies and doubled the effort on communicating those policies, but that’s not the way the Green Party worked.”

This started changing this year, with policies such as the flight tax that came into force in April as a major concession from the Social Democrats. 

Hildingsson believes the tax has helped the Greens differentiate themselves, particularly from the economically liberal Centre Party, which targets green voters but opposes the flight tax and was nominated for this year’s Greenwash Award as a result. 

With Swedish public opinion swinging over the past year from opposing the flight tax to supporting it, the Greens have been campaigning in the run-up to this September’s election on a promise to increase it by between 60kr and 400kr (£5 and £35) per person per flight. 

For ordinary Swedes, the most visible green policy has been the subsidy of up to 10,000kr (£850) for those who buy an electric bicycle. This has been very popular, with 33,000 people applying for it in its first month of operation this May.

Symbolic politics

“Opponents criticise it for being cost-inefficient, symbolic politics, and it might well be that, but as part of telling a story it is significant,” Hildingsson says. “One way to illustrate what a low-carbon society looks like is to say, ‘We will have more electric vehicles.’” 

It’s not unusual for a junior coalition partner to get a battering in government, as the UK’s Liberal Democrats would tell you after their experiences in coalition with the Conservatives from 2010 to 2015. But the Greens in Luxembourg, also in coalition recently, are projected to win the same share of parliamentary seats in this year’s election as they did in 2013. 

The Finnish Green League even managed to increase its share of the vote in 2015 after a period in coalition, partly because, unlike their Swedish neighbours, the party’s ministers resigned when it didn’t get its way over a new nuclear power station. 

Carl Schlyter, one of a rebel faction of Swedish Green MPs, argues that the Swedish party should have threatened to leave over Vattenfall’s coal.” If you’re dealing with old-fashioned power politicians from the Social Democrats, you must be willing to sacrifice your ministerial positions in order to achieve your objectives,” he maintains.

Political party

But Hannerz thinks this misunderstands what the Swedish Green Party is for. “This is not a pressure a group. This is not an NGO. It’s actually a political party, and a political party needs to be united in order to achieve results,” he argues. 

“Why didn’t we leave government? Because the main focus has been on achieving results. We have always seen that we can make more of a difference if we are still in. And we have.” 

This Author

Richard Orange is a freelance journalist based in Sweden. This article first appeared in Resurgence & Ecologist magazine. The latest issue is out now.

Future historians interested in establishing how Britain became a chief cheerleader of scepticism only 30 years after Thatcher led the world on climate change science and policy will have to pay close attention to the morning of 1 January 1993.

It all began at the offices of the free-market think tank the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) in Lord North Street (pictured). Here, historians will discover that it was John Blundell, a diehard Thatcherite and the IEA’s new director general, who undid this part of Thatcher’s legacy.

Almost as soon as he arrived in Westminster to head up the IEA, Blundell called the young, erudite Roger Bate into his new office and “challenged” him to establish a new Environment Unit within the institute.

The IEA would form a specialist department to bring together economists, philosophers and other academics to better analyse and offer a counterweight to environmentalism. The initiative was inspired by founder of the Koch-funded Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) Fred Smith‘s work in the United States.

New Ideas

Blundell was keen to introduce new ideas and methods during his first 100 days as director general. But he also had a profound and instinctive desire to challenge the ever-growing popularity of environmentalism, which he assumed to be merely a new mask for communism.

“Socialism survives, however, by transmuting itself into new forms,” he wrote some years later. “State-run enterprises are now frowned upon, but the ever-expanding volume of regulation – financial, environmental, health and safety – serves to empower the state by other means.”

Blundell strongly believed that environmentalists were “not remotely interested in improvement.” He wrote: “The idea of a new, improved, kinder, gentler capitalism is utterly alien to them.”

“They want to tear it down and destroy it…the ‘environmental movement’ is simply a means to an end, the outright destruction of business, the total demise of capitalism…appeasement has never and will never work.”

‘Reasonable’ reports

As Blundell’s new recruit, Bate began planning a major conference in London that would be attended by academics and leaders from British businesses about to be strangled by environmental regulations.

His work with Smith was also used as the basis for a new publication attacking the science of climate change by strongly emphasising any uncertainties. He knew exactly the right person to help produce a professional and reasonable-sounding polemic: Julian Morris.

Morris completed a masters in Environment and Resource Economics at University College London (UCL) before going to Cambridge University to study a Masters in Philosophy in Land Economics. He said: “I attended one or two IEA lectures while I was at UCL and met John after one of those.”

“Roger asked me to co-author a paper on global warming with him in late 1993. I was working as an econometrician in Frankfurt when I wrote my sections of that paper. I was subsequently commissioned by the IEA to write a paper on desertification. While I was writing that paper, I was hired by the IEA as a research fellow.”

Mark Pennington, a young academic who reacted strongly against the teaching of Marx at university, would also write reports for the think tank.

A member of the IEA’s academic advisory board, Pennington recalled: “[Blundell] felt that in the US there were some organisations or some of the think tanks in the US like the Cato Institute and the CEI who had a previous record of exposing what they saw to be junk science….and there wasn’t anything similar in the UK, and therefore the Environment Unit could play some role in that.”

Inform the Public

Bate was also responsible for raising cash for this new unit. He sent the programme for his new outfit to his friends at the tobacco company Philip Morris.

“We aim to bring balance to the often highly politicised discussion and, most important, to inform opinion leaders and the general public,” it read.

The unit would publish and hold public events attacking government intervention relating to “recycling, eco-labelling, land use regulations, private wildlife conservation, water and air pollution, transport policy, desertification, population and environmental education”.

The Environment Unit, sounding almost like a public relations company, boasted that “its research and authors have been featured in all of London’s major newspapers and have received international coverage.”

At first, the IEA listed its donors in the briefings sent to potential future funders; although these were not made public. These donors included British Petroleum (BP), the Esso oil company and the US-based Earhart Foundation.

Sceptic Risk

Richard Ritchie, a parliamentary lobbyist and advisor to BP, was in close consultation with Blundell during the earliest days of the environment movement. He recalls that oil companies, even at this early stage in the debate, were in fact reluctant to support a climate sceptic outfit, concerned at the risk to their finely tuned public relations campaigns.

Blundell was shocked after working for Koch in America that the oil corporations would not come out fighting against the green lobby and for free-market capitalism.

Ritchie told me: “He couldn’t understand why oil companies weren’t prepared much more openly to support the IEA on this issue.  Exxon challenged the science of climate change.”

“Now actually, I personally and BP corporately were never quite sure whether that was the right thing to do and there were various aspects of this. Firstly, I felt that BP challenging the science of climate change was rather like a tobacco company challenging the science of cancer – even if we were right, people wouldn’t listen to you.”

He added: “I didn’t feel that the IEA had any expertise on the science. They were perfectly entitled to draw attention to the fact that there was a scientific debate but I don’t think that they had any sort of intellectual heritage for saying the science is wrong.”

“I kept saying to John Blundell and I said it to Roger and all the rest I said look, why don’t you concentrate on the fact that there is a free market response to climate change if it is happening?”

“Rather than deny that it’s happening … what really worried me about the climate change debate, and still does, was that it became the left-wing economic, left-wing economists who’d lost the battle over price and income controls had lost the battle over regulation saw this as a way of starting the battle again.”

“It was their excuse for regulation, their excuse for price controls, their excuse for new taxes. And that’s exactly what’s happened.”      

Science vs Economics

A serious split started to emerge within the IEA on the issue of climate change with the trustees themselves divided about whether the Environment Unit should attack the science or instead admit there was a problem emerging and devise free-market solutions.

Pennington thought the science of climate change was reliable: “There was always an internal debate on the advisory committee about the extent to which the IEA should be questioning the science. Wasn’t the best thing to say, let’s accept that climate change is happening and that it may have a human component and therefore to say what would a market based approach recommend?”

“There was always a bit of tension [between] people who thought this was the most appropriate route and the overview which was that some of the science in the area was being politically motivated, was being politically manipulated. I know Julian Morris was quite keen on that sort of approach.”

He added: “I’m not sure there is a market solution, I am not sure that there’s any solution to climate change, that was my personal view.”

Oil Funding

Linda Whetstone, Antony Fisher’s daughter and IEA trustee, on the other hand, believed they should challenge the science but confirmed they were seriously concerned that if the public were to discover that the IEA was funded by oil while pumping out the main sceptic publications available in Britain, it could damage their reputation.

Whetstone is adamant that the money was not the motive: “It doesn’t matter whether it’s climate change or anything else, we basically don’t think governments are the solution to a lot of these problems, all we think that there are other better solutions”.

She added: “There were a time when if you dared challenge climate science some people treated you as if you were an absolute pariah, whereas now I think those who do challenge its effects are regarded well, they’re listened to.”

Blundell was just about able to carry his trustees with him, and the Environment Unit set about the task of spreading the sceptic gospel across Britain with verve and gusto.

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist, founder of Request Initiative and co-author of Impact of Market Forces on Addictive Substances and Behaviours: The web of influence of addictive industries (Oxford University Press). He tweets at @EcoMontague. This article first appeared at Desmog.uk. 

Bird news travels fast on the east coast of England. Today, a stilt sandpiper has been spotted, a bird not seen in Lincolnshire since 1965.

Twitchers stream to the RSPB reserve at Frampton Marsh. Opening hours are extended. The charity warns visitors not to speed in their cars. “No bird is worth causing an accident for!” they tweet.

This is the edge of the Wash, England’s biggest site of special scientific interest (SSSI), otherwise known as a site protected by law for biodiversity reasons.

Loudest bird

This vast bay is laden with habitats: mud flats, open water, salt marshes, freshwater marshes, brackish lagoons, shingle structures, sandbanks, chalk cliffs, gravel pits.

It is, in the words of the government, “one of the last truly wild areas in Britain”, and “an established area for scientific research and monitoring.”

But the government’s conservation body Natural England hasn’t monitored most of this SSSI, nor the one on the North Norfolk coast immediately next to it, for eight or nine years.

It’s not unusual here to see creatures that are rarely seen elsewhere in the UK. There are marsh harriers (now rarer than golden eagles in the UK), water voles (the most rapidly declining mammal of recent years) and bitterns, Britain’s loudest bird, which almost became extinct in the UK in the nineties.

Climate change

Data now shows that almost half of England’s best wildlife sites haven’t been monitored by the government in the last six years, as national guidelines dictate. 

The Wash is home to the largest state-owned nature reserve in England. Other parts of it are privately owned, alongside one RSPB nature reserve at Snettisham.

The lack of monitoring is less of an issue along the Norfolk coast, where several conservation charities manage most of the landscape, but without government oversight, they are increasingly being left to regulate themselves and pick up where government intervention is lacking.

Meanwhile this landscape, and the crowd of habitats it is home to, is changing.

No county in mainland UK is more at risk from climate change than flat, low-lying Norfolk. The tide is steadily retreating and eating away at the habitats.

Declining populations

On the border of Norfolk and Lincolnshire, the Wash, is home to the UK’s most important wetlands, one of England’s largest common seal populations and is a site of international significance for wintering birds.

Every year, up to half a million flock here on their annual migration to feed. When the tide pushes them off the mudflats, they take to the air in conjunction, swooping together in a vast spectacle.

Many of the birds on the Wash and Norfolk coast are thought to be in a state of national decline including ringed plovers, curlew, oystercatcher, dunlin and redshank.

The declines are thought to be partly down to climate change but local conservationists have more immediate concerns.

When parts of the two sites were last assessed, Natural England noted issues with people and dogs disturbing breeding birds, overgrazing, scrub invasion, and declining populations of seals, redshank and brent geese, which it said are “a serious cause for concern”.  

Better state

“Things are changing all the time,” says John Badley, manager of the RSPB reserve at Frampton Marsh.

“Without the monitoring and the management, there could be real concerns for some of those important species that are the reason why the Wash is designated in the first place.

We absolutely have to keep on top of what’s going on because without the knowledge we will not be successful in making sure we keep the Wash as an SSSI”

A Natural England spokesperson told Unearthed: “England’s sites of special scientific interest are essential to protect the very best examples of our precious natural heritage and wildlife for generations to come. 

We are committed to safeguarding these unique areas of England, which is underlined in the government’s 25 Year environment plan, as we work to make sure we leave our environment in a better state than we found it.”

Mudflats

Some of the declining bird species were identified as an issue for the Wash in a study commissioned by Natural England in 2014, but it did not capture data itself.

The literature review largely references data from 2011 and recognises that “there is a wealth of information” that it does not capture, including long-term data on habitat change or drivers related to human activity.

While the RSPB and other conservation organisations on the coast here monitor the sites they own, the vast majority of SSSI sites are owned privately or by government.

Badley is concerned that a lack of data could be causing problems on the Wash:

“As we don’t know what’s happening with the extent of mudflats we’re not in a position to know whether we need to try to do anything about it – such as to allow or create replacement habitat – and whether this might be contributing to the declines of any of the important species.”

Mediterranean gull

It’s not just birds that are feeling the temperature rise.

Jeff Price is a senior researcher at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia. Last year, he completed a case study on Norfolk to identify which species would find the area uninhabitable by rising temperatures.

His modelling showed that 15 bird species, eight mammals, three amphibians, two reptiles, 11 butterflies, 180 moths, seven dragonflies, 12 bumblebees, 14 grasshoppers, 11 shieldbugs, two ferns, one orchid and one tree could be wiped out by a 2C temperature rise. A far smaller number of species could find the area more habitable.

“It’s a wake up call that we need to be monitoring these species,” he told Wired in April.As a result of climate change, intensive farming and urbanisation,  more than one in ten of the UK’s wildlife species is threatened with extinction, making it “among the most nature depleted countries in the world”, according to a major report published in 2016.

Ray Kimber is a local who has been birdwatching here for 52 years.

“We’ve seen huge increases in some birds and huge decreases in others,” he tells me. “Back in the 1970s I stood on our east bank and watched hundreds of turtle doves migrating through here.I saw my first mediterranean gull in the 1980s….we had 56 pairs breeding this year.”

Storms

Kimber was also here to witness the storm surge of December 2013, the highest in England for 65 years. Homes collapsed, hundreds were evacuated and roads were submerged amid the flooding.

The Met Office later concluded that although there was “no definitive answer” as to the cause of the UK’s extreme storms that winter, “all the evidence suggests there is a link to climate change”.

The flooding damaged freshwater habitats, swept away 80-90% of the sand dunes on some parts of the coast and destroyed bird hides on a reserve. Dead trees still litter the sand, killed by saltwater intrusion from the storm and brought down further by the Beast from the East earlier this year.

Only one in 73 of the units on the Norfolk coast SSSI have been monitored by Natural England since the storm; most were last assessed in 2009 or 2010.

The habitats are recovering and a local crowdfunding campaign has helped raise money to repair the damage, but there are concerns that as these events become more frequent, neither nature nor local resources will be able to keep up.

“If we destroy natural habitats, it affects all of us,” says Kimber “It’s not just the wildlife. It’s people’s wellbeing. It’s affecting our own way of life. It will be a very sad thing if just through lack of money the whole Norfolk coast disappeared. It would be a loss to millions of people, a whole load of important wildlife species not just birds, but plants, insects, mammals – things that are nationally rare. 

This Article

This article first appeared at Unearthed, from Greenpeace.

The government is failing to monitor almost half of England’s “most important wildlife sites”, putting them at risk of fly tipping, pollution, water contamination, invasive species, and the unchecked impacts of a changing climate.

Of the 4,126 sites of special scientific interest (SSSIs) currently in existence, 47 percent have not been examined in the last six years, as is required by national monitoring guidelines, according to data released by the environment department this summer.

Natural England, the government agency responsible for monitoring, has faced significant budget cuts in recent years. 

Budget cuts

A source inside the body told Unearthed that “we just don’t know what the condition of the best habitats in the country is anymore” and warned that the body could be open to legal challenges because staff are making decisions based on old data.

The news comes eight months after Theresa May launched the government’s 25 year environment plan, which promised to “not only conserve but enhance” protected areas.

A spokesperson for Natural England said that the body is committed to safeguarding these areas.

Most of the Wash, England’s biggest SSSI, and the North Norfolk coast adjacent to it, have not been monitored in eight to nine years, despite the region being home to many threatened species and one of the most susceptible parts of the UK to the changing climate.

Co-leader of the Green party Caroline Lucas, who requested the data through a parliamentary question, accused the government of neglect and called on them to reverse budget cuts to Natural England.

Cross-party MPs and environmental NGOs have since called for a new watchdog “with sharp teeth” and funding to enforce environmental law post-Brexit.

The EU has launched several infringement procedures against member states for failing to take measures to conserve protected areas. The power to do so in the UK would cease after Brexit.

‘Huge cause for concern’

SSSIs afford legal protection to the UK’s most significant areas for wildlife, plants, geological and physical features, including many areas within national parks and nature reserves. The vast majority are owned by government or private landowners.

As well as iconic parts of the Lake District, Exmoor and the Pennines,parts of SSSIs within the South Downs around Beachy Head and the Seven Sisters have not been monitored for 10 years, while those inside Cornwall’s Lizard peninsula and St Michael’s Mount were last monitored in 2011.

These sites were then recorded as in “favourable condition”. But parts of Lake District, Exmoor and the Pennines were found to be “unfavourable”.

A source inside Natural England who spoke to Unearthed on condition of anonymity said that the “hundreds of small sites”, which are often privately owned, are of greater concern because local people in areas that receive a high public footfall will often flag problems directly with them.

Potential problems that could be missed through lack of monitoring range from illegal fires and fly tipping to invasive species and peatland drainage or pollution, which can kill wildlife or contaminate water sources.

The source added: “We could be missing all kinds of things that might have been going on for years. We just don’t know what the condition of the best habitats in the country is anymore.”

The lack of monitoring also means that decisions about the type of work or activities that are permitted on sites – which could disturb threatened species – are now being made using old and often outdated data, they told Unearthed.

“There’s a big risk that if we have to make a decision on a wildlife licensing issue – such as for culling, handling or disturbing the habitats of protected species – and the data we are using to grant it is out of date, that we could be challenged legally.”

Unfavourable, declining

Although the stipulation to monitor every six years is not a legal requirement in itself, the national guidelines are the product of a requirement to monitor from the Environmental Protection Act 1990. Unearthed now understands that the government is no longer committed to this target.

The source added: “It is a very bleak picture…The morale among staff is abysmal. How are we supposed to manage the country’s most important wildlife sites without monitoring their condition?”

The RSPB told Unearthed the lack of monitoring is a “huge cause for concern.”

More than one in ten of the UK’s wildlife species is threatened with extinction, making it “among the most nature depleted countries in the world”, according to a major report published in 2016.

When the government’s 25 year environment plan was launched by the prime minister in January, it set a new target to restore 75% of protected sites to favourable condition, meaning that all features for which the site is designated should be meeting minimum standards to be conserved.

The proportion currently in favourable condition stands at 39%; but this figure is now partly based on old data.

A further 55% are reported to be in “unfavourable recovering” condition, which means that a plan is in place to aid recovery, but does not mean the plan is funded, being implemented or being effective. The remaining sites are reported to be in an “unfavourable – no change” or “unfavourable declining” condition.

Ten years ago, a quarter of sites had not been monitored within six years, compared to almost half today.

RSPB’s head of site conservation Kate Jennings told Unearthed: “There are bound to be loads of things going wrong because of a lack of monitoring – pollution events, fly tipping, overgrazing, the spread of invasive species – but we generally don’t know what they are until the monitoring gets done.

“SSSIs protect the most important wildlife sites in England and so it’s vital that they are properly protected and restored to provide strongholds and refuges for habitats and species. The fact that so many of the sites are going unchecked is a huge cause for concern, especially at a time when we know that many are in trouble. We need a huge step change in action.”

Budget cuts

Natural England’s annual budget is now close to half what it was a decade ago. In 2017/18 it was £112m, down from £200m in 2006/7, its chairman Andrew Sells told parliament in December.

Lucas told Unearthed: “The government cuts that have resulted in almost half of our precious Sites of Special Scientific Interest not being assessed for at least six years are a glaringly false economy. These beautiful places and unique habitats are irreplaceable. It is short-sighted and downright irresponsible for the government to neglect them. Ministers must urgently reverse cuts to Natural England’s budget and expand its specialist team.”

The agency is also expecting to see a drop in EU funds, according to its annual report. It states that it received £22m in EU funds last year, but that these are not used for statutory work.

At least 75 Natural England staff are currently being moved to DEFRA on secondment, Unearthed understands. It’s thought that they are being moved to work on Brexit.

Documents leaked to Unearthed two years ago revealed that the agency was planning to rein its regulatory duties and was looking for funding from the business it assesses as it anticipated budget cuts of up to £30m by 2020.

Questions have since been raised about the independence of Natural England, which in the last couple of years has lost its own press office. Its communications are now run by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

The House of Lords issued a report last year warning that “successive reductions to its budget have limited its ability to perform key functions….and will, ultimately, lead to Natural England becoming unable to fulfill its general purpose.”

A Natural England spokesperson told Unearthed: “England’s sites of special scientific interest are essential to protect the very best examples of our precious natural heritage and wildlife for generations to come. 

“We are committed to safeguarding these unique areas of England, which is underlined in the government’s 25 Year environment plan, as we work to make sure we leave our environment in a better state than we found it.”

This Article

This article first appeared at Unearthed, from Greenpeace.