The Court of Appeal is today considering an application by the government to charge 109 Insulate Britain supporters injunction costs of £508,000, while presenting no evidence that they breached the M25 injunctions. [1]
A group of Insulate Britain supporters, named on the injunctions, is attending the court, but have no legal recourse or role in the proceedings. They have asked for a letter to be read out by David Crawford to the presiding judges Dame Victoria Sharp, Sir Julian Flaux and Lord Justice Lewison. [2]
An initial judgement was made in May 2022 by Justice Bennathan, who granted the government costs of £580,000 to be sought from 133 Insulate Britain supporters listed on three National Highways injunctions. Only 24 of the named individuals have actually been found guilty of breaking the injunction and they have been ordered to pay minimum costs of £3,000 each. However, no cost order was granted against a further 109 people, many of whom did not break the injunction. National Highways Ltd, a government agency, is today appealing this judgement.
The 24 injunction breakers have already been found guilty of contempt of court and were given immediate or suspended custodial sentences and court costs of up to £7,500 each. If the appeal is successful today they may also face additional costs of £1,400.
109 people have not been found guilty of breaking the injunctions and no evidence has been presented that they intended to do so. If the government is successful in their appeal, they may also face costs of up to £4,360 each.
The ordinary people caught up in this overblown legal process do not individually or even collectively have enough money to challenge the injunctions and legal aid is not available for these defendants. Meanwhile lawyers acting for the government are charging up to £243 per hour to pursue Insulate Britain supporters through the courts.
Indigo Rumbelow, 28, from London said:
“I have already been ordered to pay £5,000 in costs to our government for breaking an injunction that was trying to stop us sticking up for people dying needlessly of fuel poverty. Last month, that was raised to £8,000 in my absence.
“The government knows that they are failing people in this country and around the globe. They have failed to keep the vulnerable safe from freezing to death in their own homes, just as they are failing to keep the country safe from climate disaster. Instead they are imposing ‘bully boy’ authoritarian measures to shut up anyone who is prepared to declare that the emperor has no clothes.
“We ask the judiciary today to understand that they are being used to try to put fear into the hearts of those who are prepared to stand up and speak the truth, and to see that they should refuse to prosecute everyday people acting to protect their lives, the lives of their families and all we hold dear.”
Jules Mercer, 72, a mother of 4 and grandma of 8, and a retired occupational therapist.
Jules joined Insulate Britain in September 2021, during the second wave of roadblocks across the M25. She said:
“The world has changed so much since I was a child in the 50s. And now our government is becoming increasingly desperate and controlling. It seems they are either too stupid or too scared to do what needs to be done in 2023.
“Supporters of Insulate Britain have been banned from talking about fuel poverty or the devastating effects of carbon emissions in court, which is ludicrous and makes a total mockery of British justice. Under British law people have the right to defend themselves and their families through peaceful civil resistance.
“These injunctions are dangerous tools being used by the government to shut down peaceful resistance. They may hide behind the fiction of National Highways as a private company, but make no mistake this is the government that is increasingly ignoring reality and the unnecessary suffering of ordinary people.”
ENDS
Press contact: 07762987334
Email: insulatebritainpress@protonmail.com
High quality photos and video footage available here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Kucq-NfhnZLGJWwLx1HX03cWR7M9Y2-m
Website: https://www.insulatebritain.com/
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Notes to Editors
[1] Insulate Britain is a campaign group that is calling on the UK government to put in place policy and funding for a national home insulation programme starting with all social housing by 2025, and create a meaningful plan to insulate the entire UK housing stock by 2030.
Further information about Insulate Britain and our demands here:
https://insulatebritain.com/
Technical Report on home energy efficiency here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jt5FI-kinEXoqZtPDrCvnAVQ2EFn8Aea/view
Insulate Britain ‘Blue Lights’ policy: our policy is, and has always been, to move out of the way for emergency vehicles with ‘blue lights’ on.
[2]
Letter to The Court of Appeal at The Royal Courts of Justice
from Insulate Britain
We are in extraordinary times; we are facing an existential crisis, like no other that has been faced before. That is the extinction of humanity.
In 2021, Sir David King, former Chief Scientific Advisor to Government, said publicly, with reference to an increasingly likely and rapid destabilisation of climates:
“We have to move rapidly. What we do in the next 3 – 4 years, I believe, will determine the future of humanity.”
Your Honours, we have come here today to plead for justice, which, we believe, we are being denied.
We are people drawn from many walks of life, including clergy, builders, scientists, carers, teachers, Local Councillors, artists, engineers and GPs. We are united in our passionate desire, even at this late stage, to slow down the imminent climate catastrophe that threatens all human and much other life on earth. We wished to draw attention to: (1) many thousands of annual excess winter deaths from hypothermia due to cold homes and (2) significant levels of harmful carbon dioxide emissions from use of energy to heat homes. Both of these damaging problems could be tackled effectively by implementing an urgent Government programme of home insulation, starting in the poorest homes.
Acting out of this passion, we interrupted the traffic on roads supervised by National Highways Ltd during 2021, in order to confront the Government’s criminal inaction and to engage the public in understanding better the severity of the crisis.
We believe that we had the right and the duty to act as we did on behalf of those who are suffering so grievously from climate change now and on behalf of future generations.
The specific concerns we bring before you today are as follows:
1. The Injunction placed on the strategic road network by National Highways Ltd has had the effect of stifling lawful protest, a precious right that is enshrined in law in this country. We are bearing witness in public to the fact that use of civil injunctions in this way is removing our human rights and preventing ordinary people from taking action to try to right a grave wrong.
2. 24 of us have been found guilty of contempt of court. We have been given immediate or suspended custodial sentences. We have been subjected to enormous court costs, amounting to at least £7,500 for most of us. We have been threatened with unlimited fines and the distraint of our assets.
3. 133 of us are threatened by National Highways Ltd with an extortionate Costs Application, even though 109 of us have not broken the injunction and no evidence has been presented that we intended to do so. In light of the worsening cost of living crisis, if this were to be approved, then it could force many of us and our families into hardship.
4. All of us are also being tried in the criminal courts for taking action peacefully, according to our Convention Rights. The roads do not belong to National Highways Ltd, they belong to the people and are a legitimate site for peaceful protest and assembly.
5. It is impossible for us to appeal against the injunction, as the costs of doing so would be prohibitive. As ordinary members of the public, with modest incomes, we are not on an equal footing when faced with the vast resources of National Highways Ltd. We believe that these injunctions are being used to silence and intimidate people who dare to speak out and protest. These protests were about matters that will ultimately impact every person in this country. They will see break down of the very law and order that our judiciary is here to uphold.
6. We and our families have had our privacy invaded by having our personal details, including our home addresses, publicised by National Highway Ltd on its website. This was an illegal data breach by National Highways Ltd, which potentially endangered us and our families, and caused mental distress.
7. Soon after our initial protests, we became aware that The Government intervened, instructing National Highways Ltd to seek a Court Order for an interim injunction. As a result, some of us were tried for contempt in The High Court, so that we could be subjected both to imprisonment and draconian court costs, grossly above what we have received in the Criminal Courts. We do not understand how this activity could be compatible with a just treatment of people, an expectation that is our right; a right which we all hold dear. We look to Your Honours to uphold this right.
We put it to The Court that far from being criminals, we are public-spirited people, prepared to take costly action to do all that we can to avert or, at least, slow down an imminent climate catastrophe which will affect us all. We accept penalties which we incur for our actions but we are not prepared to be subjected to plain injustices of civil prosecution and threat of outrageous and unjust Costs Orders for civil injunctions which have been instigated by The Government.
We believe that we have a duty to draw the public’s attention to the way that The Government, via a limited company, in the form of National Highways Limited, is taking further action against us.
This abuse of civil law, as we see it, brings the whole civil legal framework into disrepute. We urge The Court to put a stop to this manifestly unjust action, which plainly aims to try to punish further peaceful, public-spirited people whose aim is simply to try to protect all life.
Insulate Britain, at The Royal Courts of Justice.
2023-02-16