One of the biggest recipients of direct farm subsidies in the UK is discreetly controlled by a Malaysian tycoon who acted as a middleman in one of this country’s biggest aid controversies.

The South Pickenham Estate Company, which farms some 6,500 acres around South Pickenham Hall, in Norfolk, received £439,739 through the Common Agricultural Policy’s controversial “basic payment scheme” last year, placing it among the UK’s top 50 claimants of basic payments.

Since the company was formed in the early 90s, it has been owned through offshore companies based in the Cayman Islands and latterly Jersey that do not disclose its beneficial owners.

But an Energydesk and Private Eye investigation has found that the company is controlled by the Malaysian businessman Tan Sri Dato’ Seri AP Arumugam. Tan Sri Arumugam is best known in this country as the man who acted as go between for the British and Malaysian governments in a deal that became known as the Pergau Dam affair.

Energydesk’s investigation has also found that the first directors of the company after it was formed – in 1993, the same year that the Pergau dam affair came to light – were David and Jim Prior. David Prior – now Lord Prior of Brampton – is a junior minister in the Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy.

His father Jim Prior – who was also a Lord – was a former minister in Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet, who went on to become chairman of GEC, one of the British companies closely involved in the Pergau affair.

The news comes after Energydesk revealed that Billionaires and aristocrats last year scooped up an even greater proportion of the UK’s biggest farm subsidy payouts.The farm business owned by Brexit-backing billionaire inventor Sir James Dyson is now the biggest for-profit recipient of direct EU farm subsidies in the UK.

Pergau dam affair

The Pergau dam affair has been described as Britain’s biggest aid scandal. It came about after the Thatcher government in the late eighties made a secret agreement to provide aid funding to Malaysia in exchange for a commitment to spend £1bn on British arms.

This agreement put pressure on civil servants to approve aid funding for the Pergau hydroelectric dam, despite concerns that the project was hopelessly uneconomic. In 1994 the aid agreed for the project was declared unlawful in a landmark high court case.

AP Arumugam’s role in the Pergau dam affair is documented in a 2012 book by Tim Lankester, who was himself the senior civil servant in charge of UK aid when the affair broke.

Lankester writes of Arumugam: “He was a close confidant of Dr Mahathir [Mohamad, the Malaysian prime minister] and his unofficial adviser on defence procurement. He was therefore a key player on the Malaysian side in respect of both the £1bn defence deal and the Pergau project. He was also well known and had easy access to Mrs Thatcher’s office. In effect, he was the go-between for Dr Mahathir via Charles Powell with Mrs Thatcher.”

On top of this, he was the Malaysian representative of GEC – a British company that was a principal subcontractor in the Pergau project, and which also had an interest in the defence deal – and a minority shareholder in its Malaysian subsidiary.

Cayman islands

The South Pickenham Estate Company was formed in 1993 to manage the estate after it was bought by Cayman Islands company Parmar Ltd. Lord (David) Prior and his father were the first directors of the company. He remained on the board until 1996, before becoming Conservative MP for North Norfolk from 1997 to 2001. He entered government after being made a lord in 2015.

Last year Lord Prior was made a junior business minister by Theresa May, and his responsibilities now include Companies House, the Land Registry, and industrial policy as it relates to the infrastructure and defence industries.

South Pickenham has always been owned through offshore companies that obscure its beneficial ownership, albeit its current directors include two of Tan Sri Arumugam’s children. However, earlier this year it filed a document at Companies House identifying its “persons of significant control” as a family office in Jersey and “Aru Packiri”. Aru Packiri is a contraction of AP Arumugam’s full name – Tan Sri Dato’ Seri Arumugam a/l A Packiri – under Malaysian Indian conventions.

Subsidies

The company first emerged as one of the UK’s biggest recipients of direct farm subsidies in an Energydesk investigation last year, which found that it was paid £486,363 in 2015 under the name of its now defunct sister firm Palgrave Farming Company. The EU’s “direct” subsidy system – which is now known as the “basic payment scheme” – has attracted criticism because it largely rewards landowners for simply owning land, rather than paying farmers to invest in environmental or other “public good” measures.

Energydesk has repeatedly contacted South Pickenham director Charles Whitaker about our findings, but he has declined to give any comment about the company’s ownership. In 2016, he did provide this statement about the farm, noting that it operated over 6,500 acres of arable and grassland in addition to a large forsestry area which produces firewood and woodchip for biomass heating systems.

He added: “In addition and importantly, the farm has a large environmental stewardship scheme which encompasses the whole estate and in particular the grassland water meadows, field margins, hedgerows, and delivers habitat management across the organic and conventional production areas of the farm to promote and protect wildlife habitats in keeping with Natural England’s Stewardship objectives, while at the same time seeking to allow necessary commercial crop production.”

This Author

Crispin Dowler is an investigations reporter for Greenpeace, and former bureau chief at Heath Service Journal. He Tweets at @ChrispinDowler

Feathers and fur have adorned the fashions of the human race for as long as we’ve existed. A sign of power, status, wealth, and worn for any number of religious and cultural reasons, fur for so long has been accepted in cultures across the globe.

Worn on state visits and for ceremonial dress, both the Pope and the Queen have been pictured wearing mink and other furs; Native Indians wore feathers in their headdresses and the Edwardians wore hummingbirds in their hats.

But we’re not, as the Edwardians were, killing rare and beautiful animals for study, and we’re not having to wear fur for a lack of alternative clothing, so why are we still, in the 21^st century, allowing unnecessary cruelty to animals for the sake of fashion?

The debate on the ethics of fur rages on and at the fourth annual summer school of the Oxford School for Animal Ethics, campaigners, academics, theologians, barristers and scientists came together to speak on the multi-faceted topic of animal fur and the ethics surrounding it.

The need for this forum is because the fur market continues to thrive – largely driven by the “couture” fashion houses who continue to fuel the demand for “luxury” items.

A quick Google search shows you can buy a chinchilla fur coat from Dior, setting you back in excess of £10,000 and you can buy a fox fur pom-pom from Fendi for around £300.

There are still consumers who want to wear beautiful animal furs, but lambasting the wearer with offensive slogans and throwing paint over those who choose to buy fur products is no longer an effective way to demonstrate the need to stop this cruel practice.

Of the five models who posed naked in the original 1994 “I’d rather go naked than wear fur” campaign ad for the charity PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), four have since worn fur, with Naomi Campbell regularly snapped wearing it.

Mink, rabbit, lynx, chinchilla, fox, dog and cat and even hamster fur is all used in the fashion industry, and 85% per cent of that fur is farmed.

But ending this is not about trying to change fashions, rather about education and creating a shift in culture.

In the paper delivered by Dr Savithri Bartlett, Senior Lecturer University of Winchester, and Professor Noël Sweeney, Visiting Professor, University of Winchester, entitled Animals Do Not Have an Artificial Personality the idea of animals having rights is explored.

We have the Human Rights Act, the Animal Welfare Act, but at present no Animal Rights Act.

Strange then, they argue, that we allow robots to be given artificial personalities, and even a river in New Zealand, (Whanganui River), which now has its own legal identity giving the same rights as humans owing to its significance to the Maori people.

As soon as animals are given their own rights, an artificial personality, we will no longer be able to persecute, to control, or to use them for our own means.

The barbarism involved in the production of fur for fashion

Connor Jackson has created a documentary on fur farming, Klatki, where he follows the practice undercover to show the lengths the industry will go to in order to hide the barbarism involved in fur production.

In 2016 the UK imported £26 million worth of fur, showing that the industry has gone global. Only by exposing the level of cruelty and showing people what lies beneath the fashion will change ever come about.

Not too far away from the Edwardian fashion of wearing hummingbirds, in Brazil every year at Carnival time ostrich, geese, pheasant and peacock feathers are paraded in their hundreds of thousands, on the costumes of dancers and performers.

A Carnival Queen could be wearing up to 4,000 ostrich feathers on her costume alone, vibrant in colour and beautiful to watch, but at the cost of the ostrich’s quality of life, which will have been stripped of its feathers twice a year, and left to live in misery, sunburnt and distressed for up to 13 years.

In his presentation It is not fun for everyone: Feather in Brazil’s carnival parades. A comparison with the fur industry, Dr Carlos Frederico Ramos de Jesus, coordinator of the Animal Law Study Group at São Paulo University, Brazil, compares the use of artificial feathers with that of real feathers. Why, he asks, are more carnival participants not moving over to artificial feathers, which cost far less to buy and are cruelty-free?

He raises the case of the Carnival entrants “Águia de Ouro Samba School” who in February this year used artificial feathers in the parade and teamed up with Brazil’s main animal rights activists. (Although they scored highly in the “costume” category, they were let down by their music.) Dr Carlos highlights that although bringing the topic of animal rights to the carnival may have caused them to get a lower mark, they have now opened the gates for more entrants to use artificial feathers. Especially considering more than 19 tonnes of feathers are used in the carnival, with each group using 750kg, at an average cost of $330 per kg.

As consumers we have to be careful of the messages that the fashion industry and the fur industry as a whole perpetuates. It is far from glamorous, it is far from beautiful, far from ethical and far from “green”.

Kimberly Moore, Attorney at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP, and Board of Directors at the Fur Free Society warns against the practice of ‘Greenwashing’, where fur companies make claims that purport the practice of producing fur to be ‘natural’, ‘sustainable’, or ‘green’. Using vague terms the false claims can be twisted into messages so the consumer believes it’s ok – even environmentally beneficial to buy fur.

When you consider that chemicals used to treat fur include formaldehyde, chromium, aluminium, lead, ammonia, chlorine and ethylene, and that 90% of people who live in certain areas of India near the tanneries, are expected to die before the age of 50, the reality is far from green.

In Nova Scotia, lakes close to the mink industry areas have been seriously degraded by the use of these chemicals and blue green algae flourishes; mink carcasses thrown out from the fur farms in Russia pile up and pollute rivers, and the fur trim on children’s coats contains high levels of dangerous toxins, according to Dutch research carried out for the Fur Free Alliance last year.

The fur industry is anything but green. It is still barbaric and it is still going strong. It’s not ok to wear hummingbirds in our hats, just as it’s not ok to wear a mink coat.

But if people can’t see what’s going on behind the fashion, they’ll never know to change their choices.

• The Fourth Annual Oxford Summer School on Animal Ethics 2017 was run by the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics and was held at St Stephen’s House, Oxford from July 23-26.

This Author

Laura Briggs is a regular contributor to the Ecologist. Follow her here:

@WordsbyBriggs

The colourful demonstration was organised by environmental action group Reclaim the Power as the finale of a month of “rolling resistance”. 

On Preston New Road, a busy through-way between the Northwestern cities of Preston and Blackpool, a farmer named Allan Wensley has leased land to energy company Cuadrilla in an extremely contentious move, paving the way for fracking to take place in the area. 

That was the plan anyway. Since the British company began work on the site on 4 January, local people, with support from activists outside the area, have done all they can to thwart Cuadrilla’s activities.

People power and direct actions involving blockading the road in ‘lock-ons’ so vehicles cannot enter the site and ‘surfing’ lorries to prevent them from delivering supplies means that business has not been as usual for the fracking company. 

In a fight that began in 2011, Lancashire residents have been saying ‘no’, a lot. In 2015, they convinced Lancashire County Council that they should refuse planning permission to Cuadrilla.

But while last year’s results of the EU referendum saw democracy strictly adhered to, the council’s decision was overturned in October by communities secretary Sajid Javid, after an appeal from the company. 

More than 300 people joined the carnival last week. Any more than 100 pedestrians in the road and the gates to the site must be closed. The road has been reduced to a single lane. Most drivers honk and wave their support. 

Unease at the school gates

Keith Butcher is one of a number of people wearing a bright yellow t-shirt with the words ‘Respect existence or expect resistance’. On his back is printed ‘The Desolate North’, referring to a group whose original aim was to transform an old gate-house in Scotland into an eco-living community.

Those plans got put on hold when Cuadrilla came to Preston New Road. Now the group donates money and offers support to the struggle in Lancashire instead. 

“Maddison goes to the local school, St Nicks. It’s less than a mile down the road”, says Keith, a local business man who owns a tattoo parlour and fancy dress shop in the area. Maddison is seven-years-old.  

Keith and his family live a mile and a half away from the site and he has been coming to Preston New Road for five years, since Maddison was a toddler.

“She’s heard us talk about fracking and we watch coverage on the news, but when I ask teachers at school about it, they say they’ve been told not to discuss it with the children”. He doesn’t know who has given this order.

“I asked the headmaster if they’d done any health and safety checks related to the fracking site. When they do anything in schools, they’re supposed to do health and safety checks, aren’t they? He told me that it’s not in his remit”.

Keith has spoken to parents online over the past few weeks to try to get a group together, urging the local schools to make plans to protect their children. He says about six parents at Maddison’s school are involved but he doesn’t want to push people.

“There’s another school in Kirkham which is even closer than St Nicks, about half or three quarters of a mile away from here. The wind mostly comes in from the sea, so it’ll be blowing chemicals from the site towards the schools. It’s a big issue.”

Six or seven years ago, when Keith first started looking into fracking, he considered getting a job in the industry. Now though, things couldn’t be more different. 

“I’ve been here all my life, born and bred in Blackpool, but I’ll be honest with you, we’re considering moving up to that gate-house.”

In between the circus tricks, the pedal-powered sound system, the face-paints, the speeches and the world record attempt at the longest conga – eight miles from Blackpool Promenade to the festival – are many stories like Keith Butcher’s.

Local people who have been on the roadside and in the courts fighting central government and the greed of multinational companies for the past six years, for the sake of their health and their children’s, for the local environment and for the communities around the world affected by climate change.

Cuadrilla, the risk taker

Several people tell me they are worried about what will happen after July, when Reclaim the Power end their month of actions; the recent surge in numbers has boosted energy, morale and publicity.

But one member of Frack Free Lancashire tells me that there are 48 anti-fracking groups in the county alone. And she’s hopeful that many groups and individuals who have come during the last few weeks will pledge their support for the months ahead. 

The final week of July has brought both good and bad news. In an underhanded tactic that has been widely reported, a drilling rig was delivered to the Cuadrilla’s site early on 27 July via a convoy of 30 lorries.

The delivery, at 4.45am, was in clear breach of planning permission regulations that state that no vehicles should enter the site outside of working hours. As a result, Lancashire council is considering action against the company.

On 25 July, three lorries carrying supplies to the site were stopped outside Maple Farm by campaigners sitting in front of the them and blockading the road before ‘lorry surfers’ scaled the vehicles between 8-11am.

Some 72 hours later, one of the haulage companies affected, L & M Transport, released a statement saying that they would “never knowingly work for Cuadrilla or any agents involved with Cuadrilla or the fracking industry again”. 

Cuadrilla operated at a £3.4 million loss in 2016 and continues to lose money as contractors pull out and work is delayed. 

“Cuadrilla are high risk takers – with people’s health and safety and now they’re risking their money too”, says Barbara Kneale, a consultant in occupational medicine who lives in Leicestershire and has travelled to join the resistance for the weekend. 

“I have taken an oath to protect people’s health, but for this site there have been no reports into how public health is going to be affected. If you have robust regulations, then fine, but there are none. You’ve got to take action, haven’t you?”

This Author

Lydia Noon is a freelance journalist and has written for New Internationalist and openDemocracy. You can follow her on Twitter at @lydia_noon.

I grew up one kilometre from the edge of a brown coal mine and surrounded by many others. I remember staring in awe and fear at this massive hole, scared of getting too close after hearing stories of people buried alive because they walked along the unstable mine walls.

My family lives in the Lausitz region of Germany once home to 30 brown coal mines. Situated between Berlin and Dresden, the region has been shaped by this industry for over 100 years. It was the German Democratic Republic’s energy powerhouse – its Latrobe Valley – with coal mining the largest source of jobs.

That changed with Germany’s reunification, when the economy restructured to a market approach and most of the mines were closed. The only major industry was gone, leaving the countryside punctured with massive holes, and the community with big questions about how to make the region viable again.

The Latrobe Valley in Victoria, Australia, is starting to face similar changes. Hazelwood power station and mine shut down a few months ago and the world is moving away from fossil fuels. People are asking the same questions we did in Germany 15 years ago: how do we transition to a more diverse and sustainable economy, while continuing to provide jobs for local workers? What do we do with the dangerous pits left behind?

The same solutions are put forward too. Engie, the owner of Hazelwood, is proposing to fill all or part of the mine pit to become a lake and recreation area. The inspiration comes from the Lausitz, but some of the key challenges of this solution seem not to be given enough attention.

In my early teens, as I watched these massive mines around our house fill with water, I got excited about the prospect of living in an area renamed ‘Neuseenland’, meaning the land of new lakes. But while I was able to enjoy summer days swimming in some of these flooded mines, the process of filling them with water has been very slow. Many have already been filling up for 10 or 20 years, and are still a long way from being safe.

This is in a region of Germany with plenty of water. The huge pits could be filled with combinations of diverted waterways, groundwater access, rainfall and large amounts of reprocessed mining water, transferred from other nearby operating mines.

These water sources are not available to the same extent in the Latrobe Valley. To give a sense of scale, it would take more water than is in all of Sydney Harbour just to fill one of the brown coal mines. Where will all this come from? What are the downstream impacts of taking this much water? Would a lake be safe for the public to use? The Hazelwood inquiry into mine rehabilitation identified these looming challenges, and the Victorian government has created a rehabilitation commissioner and an advisory committee to start finding answers, but right now we just don’t know.

Then there’s the environmental contamination. In the Lausitz, mining had already polluted the waterways with high amounts of iron hydroxides, calcium and sulphates. Flooding the mine pits spread this pollution even further, degrading local ecosystems. Increasingly salty waterways now threaten drinking water supplies to Berlin and surrounds and make water management more expensive. Mining companies are the biggest users of water but don’t even have to pay for it.

For local communities, other major consequences include rising groundwater flooding basements, cracking building structures and shifting the ground.

Landslides are a real worry. In the Lausitz in 2009, a 350-metre wide strip of land – including buildings, a road and a viewing platform – slid into the adjacent pit lake, burying three people. In 2010, in an area where the former mine surrounding was regarded as very stable and settled, 27 hectares of forests sank into the earth. This will come as no surprise to people of the Latrobe Valley, where the Princes Highway was closed for eight months in 2011 due to landslides related to the adjacent Hazelwood mine.

There have been many more such incidents in the Lausitz, and the risk prevents whole areas from being accessed, which were used for farmland, wind farms, industry or forests. Yet when the Lausitz is promoted as the poster child of mine rehabilitation through flooding, many of these challenges aren’t mentioned.

Community consultations on the future of the Hazelwood mine will begin in September. So far, the community has expressed many ideas other than filling the mine pit with water but these remain ignored. Engie is unwilling to release the full list of rehabilitation concepts they considered before settling on the pit lake solution. This makes it difficult for the community to understand the recommendation and weigh it up against alternatives.

Before more planning proceeds on the assumption that a pit lake is the only option, the lessons learned from the experience in the Lausitz should be aired and discussed in the Latrobe Valley. It’s important to avoid the potential negative consequences of flooding mine pits as best as possible from the beginning, and to make sure the mine owners pay for the precious water they are taking, like everybody else does.

Most of all, the community needs to have a bigger say in what happens to retired mine pits. Like me, the children of Morwell, Moe and Traralgon in Victoria will grow up surrounded by massive, dangerous holes in the ground. Their families have the most at stake in what happens, so they should have the loudest voice in shaping the region’s future, not the corporate mine owners who shaped its past.