We’re going to court

Democracy for Sale is battling government to release important documents about controversial Whitehaven coal mine - and a former Tory minister is helping us

Former Conservative energy minister Chris Skidmore has weighed in on Democracy for Sale’s side to call for the release of a confidential document that paved the way for the green-lighting of a contentious coal mine.

For more than a year, we have been trying to force the government to publish the evidence and rationale provided to minister Michael Gove before he gave the go-ahead to build a new “net zero” coal mine at Whitehaven, in Cumbria. 

Skidmore is acting as a witness in a court case brought on behalf of Democracy for Sale that challenges the continued government secrecy around the granting of planning permission for the Whitehaven mine. The case is due to be heard later this summer. 

Today, Skidmore, Gove’s former ministerial colleague, called on the government to publish the documents immediately. 

“Accountability and transparency must be at the heart of all decision-making processes in the future, particularly when it comes to delivering on our own Net Zero commitments,” he told Democracy for Sale.

"There is no such thing as a new Net Zero coal mine and ministers simply shouldn’t have been allowed to abuse the terminology of Net Zero by claiming something that was palpably false,” added Skidmore, who authored a landmark report on Net Zero before resigning over Rishi Sunak’s backtracking on key climate targets.

The incoming Labour government has already made it clear that it wants to halt the Whitehaven coal mine. 

Angela Rayner, Gove’s successor as secretary of state for housing, communities and local government, chose not to defend the Whitehaven decision from a legal challenge by Friends of the Earth and South Lakes Action on Climate Change that was heard last week.

But WCM Resources, the mining firm given the planning permission, continued to claim in the High Court that Whitehaven would be a “unique net zero” mine. WCM is headquartered in Sussex but controlled by EMR Capital, an international private equity firm with a base in the Cayman Islands. 

Last year, Democracy for Sale used access to information laws to ask for the publication of the ‘ministerial submission’ given to Gove before he approved the mine. The ministerial submission sets out the evidence and rationale for approving the mine. 

Democracy for Sale has now launched legal proceedings at the Information Tribunal under the Environmental Information Regulations after the government refused to release the document. 

We are being represented by Peter Lockley of 11KBW and Sahil Kher from Kingsley Napley.

Numerous experts and politicians have previously castigated the previous Conservative government’s decision to grant a licence to the Whitehaven coal mine.

The chairman of the government's official Climate Change Committee branded the coal mine’s approval an "absolutely indefensible" decision that “would damage the UK’s leadership on climate change”.

Lord Adair Turner called it “climate vandalism and economic incompetence on a scale difficult to believe”. 

The government’s own research later found there was “high certainty” that the steel industry’s transition to green energy would mean there will be no demand for the coking coal that the mine is supposed to produce.

It has also emerged that the inspector who recommended the Whitehaven mine’s approval “is a former miner who has spoken of his anguish at pit closures.”

The future of the mine is now in serious doubt after Rayner spoke of an “error in law” during the approval process. But the “need for full transparency and accountability around the extraordinary decision” remains strong, Skidmore said. 

The ministry for housing, communities and local government declined to comment on the record.

And finally…. An update on some politically-connected public appointments of the past: back in January, Democracy for Sale wrote a series of stories about Simon Blagden, a major Tory donor who was a senior figure at Fujitsu UK during much of the Horizon Post Official scandal.

After leaving Fujitsu, Conservative culture minister Nadine Dorries made Blagden chair of Building Digital UK (BDUK, a public body that then gave almost £400 million in government contracts to a broadband company that Blagden had been a paid lobbyist for directly before being appointed to BDUK.

Our digging forced the government to publish Blagden’s register of interests - which it had inexplicably not done before. Private Eye recently alleged that he had misled government over his role in the Post Office scandal. Now Blagden has resigned.

Democracy for Sale also noticed that Tory Lord James Wharton has stepped down as head of the Office of Students. All of which leaves us wondering what will happen to all the other Tory-connected appointees in government? And will Labour establish a statutory watchdog to end the practice of parties rewarding cronies and donors with public jobs? We will keep watching….

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