American agrochemical giant Monsanto paid a public-affairs consultancy up to €200,000 to set up a ‘grassroots farmers’ operation across Europe to oppose a prospective EU ban on glyphosate, Unearthed has learned. Glyphosate is a key ingredient in Monsanto’s signature Roundup weedkiller.

Dublin-based political firm Red Flag Consulting led the pro-glyphosate campaign, quietly launching a wide-reaching PR operation and enlisting the support of thousands of farmers from stands at agricultural fairs in “the eight most important EU countries.”

In contemporaneous reviews seen by Unearthed, sales representatives working at the booths said that their job involved distributing “truth-clarification materials” about glyphosate, and gathering contact information and signatures.

Extremely active

In recent promotional literature Red Flag describes how it “won the single-biggest regulatory and public affairs campaign in the European Union,” using “non-traditional allies” in an attempt to change the positions of eight countries in the EU.

“Red Flag leveraged these efforts on identified targets through media and direct engagement to ultimately change votes in a key committee in Brussels to bring about a win for our client,” one brochure says. The firm would not confirm whether these claims referred to the Monsanto work.

The firm’s campaign was run in tandem with a US consultancy, Lincoln Strategy, that worked on Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

While Monsanto mostly uses Fleishman Hillard for its PR work in Brussels, Unearthed has established that they accepted an approach from Red Flag to orchestrate the influence drive, which was run at arm’s length from the firm.

Red Flag’s other big spending clients include US biotech company Anitox, which has been described as “extremely active” in its support of glyphosate in the EU, and British American Tobacco, according to the EU transparency register.

Voices heard

“Monsanto must have been desperate to use these methods,” Green Belgium MEP Bart Staes told Unearthed.

“If you know your product is safe, you don’t have to use such methods. It really is a scandal. Sadly, this is fully in line with Monsanto’s behaviour throughout the whole glyphosate [relicensing] campaign.”

A spokesperson for Monsanto confirmed to Unearthed that it –  along with a ”coalition of users and manufacturers of glyphosate and other plant protection products” – supported the Red Flag project.

“Thousands of farmers across Europe have supported this initiative and made their voices heard in support of maintaining access to this vital for modern and sustainable agriculture,” the spokesperson added.

Agriculture et Liberte

Red Flag’s contribution to the campaign involved setting up operations such as Agriculture et Liberte in France, described by industry insiders as “a grassroots farming coalition.”

The firm’s CEO, Karl Brophy, said this was not a lobbying exercise.

Instead he told Unearthed Red Flag provided “factual information about the science on glyphosate” to farmers and other individuals who “elected to be educated” and who then “made their concerns known in their own voices and by their own volition.”

Reference to Agriculture et Liberte’s industry support can be found in a bulletin point at the bottom of their website.

But there is no mention of Red Flag – or its industry funding – on the group’s twitter account, which describes itself as “a group of French farmers who have come together to protect our way of life and livelihoods,” nor in its press coverage.

Spin agents

Unearthed has identified similar entities in six other EU countries that appear to be the localised branding in Red Flag’s ‘freedom to farm’ campaign. 

It includes the names Free to Farm in the UK, Liberta di coltivare in Italy, Raum für Landwirtschaft in Germany, Libertad para consultar in Spain, Wolsnosc Dla Farm in Poland and Vrijheid om te Boeren in the Netherlands.

These outfits – which are often registered to Red Flag’s Dublin address and an email account belonging to a Lincoln Strategy staffer – have appeared or are due to appear at 33 events since the start of 2017.

Brophy told Unearthed he does “not recognise a number of the groups you appear to be referring to,” but declined to elaborate. There had been no attempt to conceal the involvement of Red Flag or Lincoln Strategy, he said.

“Monsanto wants it to appear as though farmers are independently speaking out to support continued use of this chemical, when in reality these ‘farmer’ groups are actually little more than pawns in a public relations campaign drawn up by its hired spin agents,” said Carey Gillam, investigative journalist and author of Whitewash, which details Monsanto’s history and the rise of glyphosate herbicides.

Genuine citizens

“It has used these tactics in countries around the world to try to sway public opinion in support of its products, to downplay risks to human health and the environment, and to pressure and harass scientists and lawmakers who Monsanto perceives as a threat. It is well past time that these secrets are exposed.”

Red Flag ran the campaigns with assistance from Lincoln Strategy, whose northern Europe director Daisy Odabasi was quoted as representing Agriculture et Liberte in one newspaper article.

Unlike Red Flag, Lincoln does not have an EU transparency listing. Lincoln’s staff email accounts were used in Red Flag’s campaign as part of its role “providing logistical and operational support to the project.”

A Lincoln spokesperson said all of the firm’s campaigns – including its work in support of clean coal –  “rely solely on sharing information with genuine citizens and encouraging them to make their voices heard on topics that are important to them.”

Health concerns

The effects of glyphosate on farmers and gardeners who come into contact with it have been contentious ever since the World Health Organisation’s agency on cancer labelled the substance “probably carcinogenic” in 2015.

In August, a US court ordered Monsanto to pay $289 million in damages to a groundskeeper who claimed he contracted Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma from using Roundup, a landmark decision that could trigger an avalanche of similar verdicts in further cases.

Health concerns were at the heart of the EU’s apparent reticence to reauthorise glyphosate, although reports from regulatory agencies claimed that the chemical was safe.

Ultimately while the pesticides industry did not succeed in renewing glyphosate’s 15-year license in Europe – it was cut down to five years – a complete ban was averted.

In a lengthy statement supplied to UK news outlet The Independent, Brophy said: “Red Flag is an agency with a number of clients in the food and agriculture sectors and a wide network of contacts in the agricultural community.

Ban glyphosate

“We worked to bring a number of our clients and contacts together in order to help those people who would be most affected by a potential glyphosate ban – the  farmers who produce Europe’s food.”

He added: “We are grateful to several clients for supporting the project.  But it was the farmers who stood to lose most if an activist-led campaign to ban glyphosate – flying in the face of science, the position of all relevant EU regulatory agencies and the position of the European Commission – was successful.  And it was the farmers who responded to the threat.

“Last November, a very large majority of European Union countries voted to re-authorise glyphosate.

“We’re proud to have played a small part in providing the information that was used by many committed individuals to stand up for their livelihoods, their communities and for the future of Europe’s food supply.”

This Article

This article first appeared at Unearthed, from Greenpeace.

American agrochemical giant Monsanto paid a public-affairs consultancy up to €200,000 to set up a ‘grassroots farmers’ operation across Europe to oppose a prospective EU ban on glyphosate, Unearthed has learned. Glyphosate is a key ingredient in Monsanto’s signature Roundup weedkiller.

Dublin-based political firm Red Flag Consulting led the pro-glyphosate campaign, quietly launching a wide-reaching PR operation and enlisting the support of thousands of farmers from stands at agricultural fairs in “the eight most important EU countries.”

In contemporaneous reviews seen by Unearthed, sales representatives working at the booths said that their job involved distributing “truth-clarification materials” about glyphosate, and gathering contact information and signatures.

Extremely active

In recent promotional literature Red Flag describes how it “won the single-biggest regulatory and public affairs campaign in the European Union,” using “non-traditional allies” in an attempt to change the positions of eight countries in the EU.

“Red Flag leveraged these efforts on identified targets through media and direct engagement to ultimately change votes in a key committee in Brussels to bring about a win for our client,” one brochure says. The firm would not confirm whether these claims referred to the Monsanto work.

The firm’s campaign was run in tandem with a US consultancy, Lincoln Strategy, that worked on Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

While Monsanto mostly uses Fleishman Hillard for its PR work in Brussels, Unearthed has established that they accepted an approach from Red Flag to orchestrate the influence drive, which was run at arm’s length from the firm.

Red Flag’s other big spending clients include US biotech company Anitox, which has been described as “extremely active” in its support of glyphosate in the EU, and British American Tobacco, according to the EU transparency register.

Voices heard

“Monsanto must have been desperate to use these methods,” Green Belgium MEP Bart Staes told Unearthed.

“If you know your product is safe, you don’t have to use such methods. It really is a scandal. Sadly, this is fully in line with Monsanto’s behaviour throughout the whole glyphosate [relicensing] campaign.”

A spokesperson for Monsanto confirmed to Unearthed that it –  along with a ”coalition of users and manufacturers of glyphosate and other plant protection products” – supported the Red Flag project.

“Thousands of farmers across Europe have supported this initiative and made their voices heard in support of maintaining access to this vital for modern and sustainable agriculture,” the spokesperson added.

Agriculture et Liberte

Red Flag’s contribution to the campaign involved setting up operations such as Agriculture et Liberte in France, described by industry insiders as “a grassroots farming coalition.”

The firm’s CEO, Karl Brophy, said this was not a lobbying exercise.

Instead he told Unearthed Red Flag provided “factual information about the science on glyphosate” to farmers and other individuals who “elected to be educated” and who then “made their concerns known in their own voices and by their own volition.”

Reference to Agriculture et Liberte’s industry support can be found in a bulletin point at the bottom of their website.

But there is no mention of Red Flag – or its industry funding – on the group’s twitter account, which describes itself as “a group of French farmers who have come together to protect our way of life and livelihoods,” nor in its press coverage.

Spin agents

Unearthed has identified similar entities in six other EU countries that appear to be the localised branding in Red Flag’s ‘freedom to farm’ campaign. 

It includes the names Free to Farm in the UK, Liberta di coltivare in Italy, Raum für Landwirtschaft in Germany, Libertad para consultar in Spain, Wolsnosc Dla Farm in Poland and Vrijheid om te Boeren in the Netherlands.

These outfits – which are often registered to Red Flag’s Dublin address and an email account belonging to a Lincoln Strategy staffer – have appeared or are due to appear at 33 events since the start of 2017.

Brophy told Unearthed he does “not recognise a number of the groups you appear to be referring to,” but declined to elaborate. There had been no attempt to conceal the involvement of Red Flag or Lincoln Strategy, he said.

“Monsanto wants it to appear as though farmers are independently speaking out to support continued use of this chemical, when in reality these ‘farmer’ groups are actually little more than pawns in a public relations campaign drawn up by its hired spin agents,” said Carey Gillam, investigative journalist and author of Whitewash, which details Monsanto’s history and the rise of glyphosate herbicides.

Genuine citizens

“It has used these tactics in countries around the world to try to sway public opinion in support of its products, to downplay risks to human health and the environment, and to pressure and harass scientists and lawmakers who Monsanto perceives as a threat. It is well past time that these secrets are exposed.”

Red Flag ran the campaigns with assistance from Lincoln Strategy, whose northern Europe director Daisy Odabasi was quoted as representing Agriculture et Liberte in one newspaper article.

Unlike Red Flag, Lincoln does not have an EU transparency listing. Lincoln’s staff email accounts were used in Red Flag’s campaign as part of its role “providing logistical and operational support to the project.”

A Lincoln spokesperson said all of the firm’s campaigns – including its work in support of clean coal –  “rely solely on sharing information with genuine citizens and encouraging them to make their voices heard on topics that are important to them.”

Health concerns

The effects of glyphosate on farmers and gardeners who come into contact with it have been contentious ever since the World Health Organisation’s agency on cancer labelled the substance “probably carcinogenic” in 2015.

In August, a US court ordered Monsanto to pay $289 million in damages to a groundskeeper who claimed he contracted Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma from using Roundup, a landmark decision that could trigger an avalanche of similar verdicts in further cases.

Health concerns were at the heart of the EU’s apparent reticence to reauthorise glyphosate, although reports from regulatory agencies claimed that the chemical was safe.

Ultimately while the pesticides industry did not succeed in renewing glyphosate’s 15-year license in Europe – it was cut down to five years – a complete ban was averted.

In a lengthy statement supplied to UK news outlet The Independent, Brophy said: “Red Flag is an agency with a number of clients in the food and agriculture sectors and a wide network of contacts in the agricultural community.

Ban glyphosate

“We worked to bring a number of our clients and contacts together in order to help those people who would be most affected by a potential glyphosate ban – the  farmers who produce Europe’s food.”

He added: “We are grateful to several clients for supporting the project.  But it was the farmers who stood to lose most if an activist-led campaign to ban glyphosate – flying in the face of science, the position of all relevant EU regulatory agencies and the position of the European Commission – was successful.  And it was the farmers who responded to the threat.

“Last November, a very large majority of European Union countries voted to re-authorise glyphosate.

“We’re proud to have played a small part in providing the information that was used by many committed individuals to stand up for their livelihoods, their communities and for the future of Europe’s food supply.”

This Article

This article first appeared at Unearthed, from Greenpeace.

Concentrations of PCBs could lead to the disappearance of half of the world’s populations of killer whales from the most heavily contaminated areas, within a period of just 30-50 years, according to a new study published by Science.

Killer whales – Oscines orca – form the last link in a long food chain and are among the mammals with the highest level of PCBs – polychlorinated biphenyls – in their tissue.

Researchers have measured values as high as 1300 milligrams per kilo in the blubber of killer whales. For comparison, a large number of studies show that animals with PCB levels as low as 50 milligrams per kilo of tissue may show signs of infertility and severe impacts on the immune system.

Declining population 

Together with colleagues from a range of international universities and research institutions, researchers from ZSL (Zoological Society of London) and Aarhus University have documented that the number of killer whales is rapidly declining in 10 out of the 19 killer whale populations investigated.

The species may disappear entirely from several areas within a few decades.

Killer whales are particularly threatened in heavily contaminated areas like the waters near Brazil, the Strait of Gibraltar and around the UK. Around the British Isles, the researchers estimate that the remaining population counts less than 10 killer whales. Also along the east coast of Greenland, killer whales are effected due to the high consumption of sea mammals like seals.

Dr Paul Jepson from ZSL’s Institute of Zoology, co-author and killer whale expert said: “This suggests that the efforts have not been effective enough to avoid the accumulation of PCBs in high trophic level species that live as long as the killer whale does. There is therefore an urgent need for further initiatives than those under the Stockholm Convention.”

The killer whale is one of the most widespread mammals on Earth and is found in all of the world’s oceans from pole to pole. But today, only the populations living in the least polluted areas possess a large number of individuals. 

Food chain 

Overfishing and man-made noise may also affect the health of the animals, but PCBs particularly can have a dramatic effect on the reproduction and immune system of the killer whales.

Killer whales whose diet includes, among other items, seals and large fish such as tuna and sharks critical accumulate PCBs and other pollutants stored at successive levels of the food chain. It is these populations of killer whales that have the highest PCB concentrations and it is these populations that are at the highest risk of population collapse.

Killer whales that primarily feed on small-sized fish such as herring and mackerel have a significantly lower content of PCBs and are thus at lower risk of effects.

PCBs have been used around the world since the 1930s. More than one million tonnes of PCBs were produced and used in, among other things, electrical components and plastics. Together with DDT and other organic pesticides – PCBs have spread around the global oceans.

Through the 1970s and 1980s, PCBs were banned in several countries and in 2004, through the Stockholm Convention, more than 90 countries have committed themselves to phase out and dispose of the large stocks of PCBs.

Research team 

PCBs are only slowly decomposed in the environment. Moreover, PCBs are passed down from the mother orca to its offspring through the mother’s fat-rich milk. This means that the hazardous substances remain in the bodies of the animals, instead of being released into the environment where they eventually deposit or degrade.

Professor Rune Dietz from the Department of Bioscience and Arctic Research Centre, Aarhus University, who initiated the killer whale studies and is co-author of the article, said: “We know that PCBs deform the reproductive organs of animals such as polar bears. It was therefore only natural to examine the impact of PCBs on the scarce populations of killer whales around the world.” 

The research group, which includes participants from the United States, Canada, England, Greenland, Iceland and Denmark, reviewed all the existing literature and compared all data with their own most recent results. This provided information about PCB levels in more than 350 individual killer whales around the globe – the largest number of killer whales ever studied.

Applying models, the researchers then predicted the effects of PCBs on the number of offspring as well as on the immune system and mortality of the killer whale over a period of 100 years.

Jean-Pierre Desforges, a postdoc from Aarhus University, who led the investigations, said: “The findings are surprising. We see that over half of the studied killer whales populations around the globe are severely affected by PCBs.”

Global scale 

The effects result in fewer and fewer animals over time in these populations. The situation is worst in the oceans around Brazil, the Strait of Gibraltar, the northeast Pacific and around the UK. Here, the models show that the populations have virtually been halved during the half century where PCBs have been present.

Ailsa Hall, who together with Bernie McConnell developed the models used by Sea Mammal Research Unit in Scotland, said: “In these areas, we rarely observe newborn killer whales.”

Jean-Pierre Desforges added: “As the effects have been recognized for more than 50 years, it is frightening to see that the models predict a high risk of population collapse in these areas within a period of 30-40 years.”

A female killer whale may live for 60-70 years, and although the world took its first steps to phase out PCBs more than 40 years ago, killer whales still have high levels of PCBs in their bodies.

In the oceans around the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Norway, Alaska and the Antarctic, the prospects are not so gloomy. Here, killer whale populations grow, and the models predict that they will continue to do so throughout the next century.

This Author 

Brendan Montague is the editor of The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from the Zoological Society of London (ZSL). 

NHS patients are being let down by a global health innovation system which fails to deliver the treatments they need at prices that government can afford, according to a new report led by Professor Mariana Mazzucato, director of the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP), in collaboration with STOPAIDS, Global Justice Now and Just Treatment.

The report, The People’s Prescription: Re-imagining health innovation to deliver public value, warns that health innovation is being hampered by a drive for profit and calls for a major overhaul of the system to ensure that more drugs and treatments are developed for critical health needs.

Crucially it addresses both the rate and the direction of innovation.

‘Fundamentally broken’

Although innovation in health is vital for the development of drugs used by the NHS and healthcare systems around the world, the report finds that the current system for developing drugs incentivises high prices and delivers short-term returns to shareholders, rather than focusing on riskier, longer-term research which leads to critically needed therapeutic advances.

The authors warn that the high prices of medicines are causing severe patient access problems worldwide with damaging consequences for health and wellbeing.

The solution is not as simple as demanding lower prices but to understand how the characteristics of the system must be overhauled, from the dynamics of patents which are hurting transparency and collaboration to the ways in which corporate governance hurt innovation.

With the system ‘fundamentally broken’, the report maps out fault lines and recommends new concrete policy actions to deliver public value for the greatest health need.

Last year, NHS England spent £1bn on medicines that had received public investment, while spending on drugs is rising at five times the rate its budget is rising.

Corporate profits

Key points include:

• Research and development priorities are not determined by public health needs. The system ignores diseases – such as tuberculosis – that are most prevalent in developing countries. Meanwhile, more than half of approved medicines in recent years offered no additional health benefits.
• The number of new drugs approved against research and development (R & D) spend has declined from around 40 drugs per $1bn of R & D in the 1950s to less than 0.65 drugs per $1bn spend this century, representing a huge drop in innovation and productivity.
• Pharmaceutical companies are increasingly focused on maximising short-term financial returns to shareholders, rather than funding health advances in the public interest. The 19 pharmaceutical companies included in the S&P 500 Index in January 2017 (and listed 2006-15) spent $297bn on repurchasing their own shares between 2007-16—61% of their combined R&D expenditures in this period. 

 

Professor Mariana Mazzucato said: “The diagnosis looks bleak for the health innovation system; it’s expensive and unproductive and requires a complete transformation. We have a situation now where the NHS is a huge buyer of drugs and the UK government is a significant investor in the development of new treatments, yet big pharmaceutical companies are calling the shots.

“In the year of the 70th anniversary of the NHS, this is an ideal time to take stock and rethink the system with a move towards a model that prioritises long-term public value above short-term corporate profits.”

Huge savings 

As an immediate policy action, the report calls on governments to pursue their legal right to procure affordable generic versions of patented medicines if companies refuse to drop their prices to levels affordable to national health systems such as the NHS. These legal rights are known as Flexibilities within the World Trade Organisation’s TRIPS rules (Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights).

This could mean huge savings for the NHS. For example, evidence shows that the prices the UK pays for some cancer medicines could be reduced by between 75 percent and 99.6 percent if they could be procured as generics.

Intellectual property rules should also be reformed to make vital medicines more affordable and open to innovation, with patents only issued to truly innovative technology.

Long-term recommendations include:

• A mission-oriented approach to improving health outcomes, where governments can set the direction of health innovation by focusing the energy of state, civil society and the private sector on clearly articulated public health goals.
• Changing how corporate governance works; rethinking the role of the public sector and improving the structure of the private sector.
• Better deals through conditionality; governments should be able to negotiate better deals as the main investors in new treatments, instead of rewards being disproportionately shared with the private sector.

 

Strategic decisions

Conditionality would also prevent the public from paying twice for medicines. A treatment for prostate cancer – Abiraterone – was discovered by the Institute for Cancer Research (ICR), which receives 38 percent of its funding from charities and the UK Medical Research Council, and 14 percent from other government funding.

The NHS then spent £172 million on the drug between 2014 and 2016, following five years of negotiations when the price was set just below NICE’s upper limit of acceptable costs. By the end of 2017, Johnson & Johnson had made around £1.9 billion in sales and the ICR had earned just £137 million.

Mission-oriented research and innovation involves strategic decision making in both governments and business through purpose-led missions.

This approach focuses on problem-specific challenges, which many different sectors interact to solve. The focus on problems, and new types of collaborations between public and private actors to solve them, creates the potential for greater spillovers than a sectoral approach.

It was this approach that put a man on the moon, and lay behind the creation of the internet and entire new sectors like biotechnology.

Alternative systems

Heidi Chow, Senior Campaigns Manager, Global Justice Now, said: “A pharmaceutical industry that makes billions in profits without providing the affordable medicines that people need is one of the scandals of our time. It’s easy to feel that there is no alternative, but in fact there are a whole host of alternatives that are already working in a number of countries.

“It is time to scale up what’s working, and drop what’s not so that people here in the UK and around the world can access the effective treatments they need.”

Saoirse Fitzpatrick, Senior Advocacy Adviser, STOPAIDS, added: “We have to face the reality that our current system for developing medicines is not matching people’s health needs.

“If we carry on with business as usual then we are going to end up bankrupting patients and health services with high priced drugs and wasting precious financial resources on copycat medicines which do nothing but add to the pharmaceutical industry’s profits.

“We know there are other models out there, we need governments to work from this evidence base and build an alternative system for health innovation that gives us the medicines people need at prices we can all afford.”

Public health 

Diarmaid McDonald, Lead organiser, from Just Treatment, said: “NHS patients, like those who lead Just Treatment, have had their access to vital medicines delayed or denied because of the unaffordable prices charged by the industry. Sadly these high prices are not going away – they lie at the heart of our current medical innovation system.

“Until governments follow the recommendations in this report and set about creating a pharmaceutical system that puts patients and public health at its core, our health and our health systems will continue to suffer as pharmaceutical profits continue to soar.”

The report was produced with further support from King’s College London, Drugs for Neglected Diseases, Knowledge Ecology International, I-MAK, Medicines Law & Policy, Open Society Foundations, European Public Health Alliance, Innogen, Médecins Sans Frontières, Access Campaign and independent researcher Christine Berry.

This Author

Marianne Brooker is a contributing editor for The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from Global Justice Now. 

Three anti-fracking protesters – Simon Blevins, Richard Roberts and Richard Loizou – were sentenced to 15 and 16 months in prison for ‘causing a public nuisance’ in late September this year. A fourth protester, Julian Brock, received an 18 months suspended sentence after pleading guilty to the public nuisance charges.

The ‘Frack-Free Four’ had been arrested during a ‘month of protest’ in the summer of 2017 that aimed to disrupt exploratory drilling activities at Cuadrilla’s Preston New Road fracking site in Lancashire. The four climbed onto lorries that were delivering part of a drill rig and remained there for up to four days impeding the vehicles’ movement to the fracking site.

Their sentences were overturned, with the judge acknowledging that they were “manifestly excessive”.  It was a huge victory for the anti-fracking movement, and for everyone concerned about the right to protest in the UK and beyond. 

Continued protest

Since the harsh sentencing, people across the country have stood up and spoken out against the ruling.

More than 23,000 people signed a petition for a parliamentary inquiry into the shrinking space for civil opposition against fracking, backed by 1,500 academics – including scientists, policy experts, ethicists, legal scholars and others – who expressed their serious concerns about the excessive punishment and increasing criminalisation of protest in the UK.

Most importantly, the anti-fracking movement has shown that it is not intimidated by the ruling. On October 1st, just days after the sentencing, nine individuals blockaded the same site (now ‘protected’ with an injunction) for three days, by climbing and locking onto two tripods.

In the same week, less than a kilometre away, people lorry-surfed trucks heading for the site.

On October 15th, the day Cuadrilla began fracking operations at PNR and two days before the appeal hearing, four protectors blocked the entrance to the same site once again.  

Cultures of resistance

The prison sentences for the three lorry surfers represented the first jail sentences handed down to environmental defenders for charges of “public nuisance” since 1932. But imprisonment for environmental defenders is by no means new. 

For example, in 1993, seven defenders were imprisoned for 28 days for putting their bodies in the way to stop the building of the M3 highway through Twyford Down. Others were jailed for taking action against the M11 link road in east London and the Newbury bypass.

Yet others have been jailed for protesting field trials of genetically modified organisms or nuclear energy. What distinguished the prison sentences for the anti-fracking campaigners was the length: they were told that would spend almost one and a half years behind bars.

The exceptionally harsh sentencing of Roscoe Blevins, Richard Roberts and Richard Loizou is important for what it signalled, and for the moment at which it occurred. The judgement has shocked many people, but should not come as a surprise when viewed in light of the tensions generated by the government’s backing of fracking, despite rising concerns about climate change and growing public opposition to this highly controversial form of energy production.

Only around 16 percent of the British public support fracking development. The original judgement highlights worrying trends in the suppression and criminalisation of protest and dissent in the UK that particularly affect environmental defenders.

Moreover, the success of the appeal should be seen as a response to the effectiveness of direct action not only in raising public awareness, resisting and stopping harmful industrial developments, but also in creating cultures of autonomy and resistance that constitute a threat to the status quo.

Climate chaos

Unconventional extraction of shale gas or oil through hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, constitutes the frontier of extreme energy extractivism in England. Advocates have praised fracking for ending dependence of foreign (in particular Russian) oil and gas, and the UK government included fracking in its “clean growth strategy”.

However, fracking methods are extremely risky, leading to bans or moratoria in Scotland, Wales, France and Germany, amongst others.

Peer-reviewed scientific studies and testimonies of local residents in fracking areas confirm that the risks to human and ecological health are immense. Well-documented local environmental consequences of hydraulic fracturing include the spillage of methane and leakage of toxic chemicals from drilling wells, contaminated drinking water, radioactive waste and earthquakes (including in Lancashire in 2011). 

In addition, as climate chaos is increasingly felt – the heat wave blistering the UK this summer being one obvious example – the continued reliance on fossil fuels seems ecocidal.

Indeed, the fact the fracking at the Lancashire site was resumed just one week after the publication of a landmark intergovernmental report from the IPCC about the need to accelerate action on climate change by abandoning fossil fuels shows the level of indifference and hypocrisy shown by the government to the threat of climate change and its impact on the world’s most vulnerable people.

Government backing

Fracking is not, as advocates often claim, a pathway to achieving energy security. Nor is it more ‘sustainable’ than conventional techniques of extraction: when including the emissions from fracking production processes as well as consumption, the acclaimed net greenhouse gas benefits disappear.

The development of fracking is incompatible with the 2 degree, let alone 1.5 degree target. It does not promote, but rather hampers a much needed sustainable energy transition and fundamental changes to our political economic system, further entrenching (fossil) capital interests.

Yet, the British government is backing fracking at all costs. In recent years, it has been working hard at the policy level to clear the way for fracking development.

According to the website of the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial strategy: “Shale gas has the potential to provide the UK with greater energy security, economic growth and jobs, and could be an important part of our transition to a low carbon future … and government will ensure the right framework is in place to support industry and local communities as [this] exploration, and in some cases production, moves forward”.  

Amendments to the 2015 Infrastructure Act were made to facilitate drilling without landowners’ consent. After local councils rejected seven out of eight drilling plans in the first months of 2018, the government initiated a set of measures aimed at pushing projects rapidly through the planning system. 

Conflicted interests 

Under plans announced by business secretary Greg Clark, initial stages in the fracking process would be classified as “permitted development”, which means that no local planning application is required.

In addition, fracking sites could be labelled as “nationally significant infrastructure”, which would allow fracking operations to bypass local-level approval. At the same time, the energy secretary announced a few days ago that established health regulations around earthquakes, a frequent effect of fracking operations, might be eroded.

Anti-fracking campaigners have documented that close links to the fracking industry exist at the heart of the British state. This is exemplified by the judge who sentenced the anti-fracking campaigners, John Robert Altham, whose family’s business J.C. Altham and Sons is part of the supply chain for UK-based energy multinational Centrica, which has invested tens of millions of pounds in fracking.

Furthermore, at a time the government was developing its pro-fracking policies, energy industry figures like Centrica chief executive Sam Laidlaw and BG Group director Baroness Hogg were holding senior advisory positions in government.

The consequence of these close ties and patterns of patronage is that the government has systematically prioritised the demands of the fracking industry over the demands of communities, sacrificing local landscapes, human health concerns and the climate. As such, it is simultaneously “fracking democracy”, eroding the basis of any claim the government might have to democratically legitimate policy making by denying space for local public consultation. 

Radical communities

For years, people have been taking action against the fracking industry, in hundreds of local groups across the country, and it has been working.

Environmental defenders have worked with local communities, obstructed every step of the legal process, and have taken direct action when people’s concerns were silenced. They have effectively slowed the growth of the fracking industry, despite the best efforts of companies and their government partners. 

 John, from the radical political theory magazine Aufheben, wrote about the famous anti-road campaign in the early 1990s, which laid the foundation of the ecological direct action movement to which the lorry surfers belong. 

He said: “[B]y adopting direct action as a form of politics, we … look to ourselves as a source of change … Therefore the key to the political significance of the … campaign lies less in the immediate aims of stopping the road and in the immediate costs we have incurred for capital and the state (although these are great achievements and great encouragement to others), and more in our creation of a climate of autonomy, disobedience and resistance.

“Thus, this life of permanent struggle is simultaneously a negative act (stopping the road etc) and a positive pointer to the kind of social relation that could be: … a community of resistance.”

Extractivist ideology

The harsh sentencing of Simon Blevins, Richard Roberts and Richard Loizou should be read as a backlash against the widespread and growing resistance to fracking, and as the latest example of the increased stifling and criminalisation of dissent in the UK to make way for such dangerous extractive industries.

The sentence was so absurd that it was quickly overturned, only hours into the appeal hearing. Yet, we need to stay alert. The continuation and intensification of extractivism lies not only at the heart of the industrial system, but also at the heart of modernist ideology and the state-system.

Extractivism involves not just the mining of (fossil) resources, but also ways of controlling people by force, fear or by capturing the “hearts and minds” of the population so that they never think to question the claims made by powerful proponents of harmful extractive technologies. 

Charm offensives are increasingly difficult in countries like England, where the “industrialisation of the countryside” and ever more extreme extraction processes have become increasingly unpopular with the public. As a result, powerful alliances between fracking companies and the British government are resorting to increasingly repressive legal means, aggressive policing and erosion of local democracy.

The trend is visible in developments like the granting of injunctions to pre-empt protest and protect profits; government efforts to associate opponents of fracking with political extremism and domestic terrorism; the increasingly militarised policing of protesters; and harsher punishments and compensation payments given to environmental defenders charged with minor crimes such as aggravated trespassing.

Structures of power

All this is taking place while government itself continues to erode one of the key tenets of ‘democratic’ legitimacy upon which this country’s political system is alleged to rest: meaningful public consultation.

Ecological direct action against extractivism represents a threat to the state, because it questions the very ideology of the state and its belief in growth.

Many anti-fracking protectors demand radical changes that would undermine this ideology, calling for ecological justice that represents a rupture with the current concentration of economic/political power and the structures that uphold this power, and that facilitate the ecocide we are witnessing. 

More importantly, however, direct action challenges the role of the state to trigger and manage social change, empowers and creates autonomous and disobedient populations, and, in an example like fracking, arguably represents the public’s only recourse in the face of the erosion of so-called democracy.  

These Authors  

Andrea Brock, Dr Amber Huff, Dr Judith Verweijen, Professor Jan Selby, Professor David Ockwell, and Professor Peter Newell are researching the political economy of energy, resources conflicts, development and extractivism at the University of Sussex.

David Henderson was a fellow of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) where he is valued as an eloquent and modest advocate of radical free market capitalism. But, his engagement with climate scepticism “came about in an entirely unplanned and fortuitous way.”

The former head of the economic division of the state-funded international Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) was, in April 2003, spending his retirement busily devising a book which he planned to call False Consensus: Dark Visions and Collectivist Remedies.

Henderson wanted to attack scientists and environmentalists for their “failed prophecies of doom”, which he would contrast with “the actual record of economic performance” in order to make the face for free market capitalism.

Castles in Australia

He proposed writing the book with Ian Castles, the retired head of the Australian state’s Bureau of Statistics – living in Canberra, Australia – who he described as a “kindred spirit” and fellow classical liberal. The book synopsis made no mention of climate change and neither man had any interest in the subject.

By happenstance, Dr Rajendra Pachauri (pictured above) visited Canberra in his new role as chairman of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) the following July. Pachauri was seen by some as ExxonMobil’s pick after Dr Bob Watson was removed from the post. 

Castles was invited to the Canberra event and decided to use the meeting to raise his concerns with the climate panel on how the third assessment report from 2000 was “technically at fault” in the way that it compared the gross domestic product (GDP) of different countries.

Castles believed the method used by the IPCC to compare the GDP of different countries in the third assessment report was fundamentally flawed. He persuaded Henderson to join his cause and “these two strange old gentlemen” became the Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau of climate scepticism.

Mistaken inferences

Henderson recalls: “We argued that in consequence [of the error] these growth projections for poor countries were biased upwards: and we inferred from this, though we were mistaken, which it took us some time to realise.”

The two men were invited to present at IPCC events and encouraged to engage with the scientists writing the reports but, after some months, Pachauri failed to respond to their almost impenetrably technical letters.

Henderson was frustrated and insulted by the lack of concern paid to his statistical analysis and came to question the panel’s processes and climate findings more fundamentally. He sent his criticisms to his close friend Clive Crook, then deputy editor of the Economist, who published an article that “put our arguments better than we had put them ourselves”.

Political agenda

Henderson then sent the entire correspondence with Pachauri to Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen, the editor of Energy and Environment, which has become the house journal of the climate sceptics with a reputation for publishing papers that do not meet the basic scientific standards.

Boehmer-Christiansen would explain her general editorial practice some months later: “I’m following my political agenda – a bit, anyway. But isn’t that the right of the editor?”

Henderson conceded that “few editors would have acted as she did.”

Purveyors of disinformation

Pachauri appears to have assumed that the publication of letters in a notoriously sceptic journal was a hostile act.

He called a press conference during the Conference of the Parties (COP) held in Milan in December 2003 and, according to Henderson, “said that we should be classed as purveyors of disinformation.”

The two men continued to lobby the IPCC to amend its statistical analysis and, in doing so, became unwitting heroes of the sceptic movement.

“Ian and I had chiefly focused on economic and statistical aspects of the work undertaken and published under IPCCauspices. But as time went on, our involvement broadened in ways that we had neither planned or anticipated,” Henderson explained.

IPCC foe

Henderson soon discovered the complaints about the IPCC and statistical critiques of the climate science set out by McIntyre and McKitrick.

He became convinced that “their writings, and later those of David Holland, not only placed in question widely accepted and influential results of IPCC-related work in climate science, but also exposed serious professional flaws in the conduct of that work.”

Had Pachauri been less combative and, instead, established whether Henderson had in fact discovered a statistical flaw, then perhaps the old IEA fellow may not have become one of his most able and determined foes.

Henderson passed away on 30 September 2018 aged 91. Myron Ebell of the ExxonMobil funded Competitive Enterprise Institute, wrote: “I had the good fortune to work with him in the climate debate for over a decade and also when the Competitive Enterprise Institute in 2004 republished his The Role of Business in the Modern World, originally published by the Institute of Economic Affairs in London.

“I shall miss him, as will Fred Smith, Iain Murray, Marlo Lewis, Ivan Osorio, and all of us at CEI who had the pleasure to work with him over the years.”

John Henderson, his son, wrote on the Global Warming Policy Foundation website: “A great mind he was also a wonderful family man and will be much missed by his son John, sister Jane and four grandchildren.”

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. A version of this article first appeared at Desmog.uk.

There is a complete lack of public policies in place to ensure the food sector is part of the solution to climate change, a new report from the Changing Markets Foundation and Mighty Earth has revealed. 

In many EU countries and in the US, meat consumption is more than double the recommended levels for healthy diets.

However, the report – Growing the Good: The Case for Low Carbon Transition in the Food Sector – argues that government policies universally support unsustainable agricultural production systems dominated by intensive meat and dairy farmers and producers.

Global emissions 

In contrast, the report highlights positive market trends, notably the growth of plant-based foods and ground-breaking innovation in meat alternatives.

The number of vegans and vegetarians is also growing rapidly and many more people, particularly among the younger generations, are reducing their meat intake.

Instead of fuelling such societal trends, politicians are succumbing to pressure from meat producers by introducing new legislative measures aiming to restrict market growth for alternatives, such as the recent French ban on terms like ‘vegan burger’.

Nusa Urbancic, Campaigns Director at the Changing Markets Foundation, commented: “The lack of public policies in this sector is alarming.

“If meat and dairy consumption increases as forecast, there will be almost no room within the total allowable global emissions budget for any sectors other than agriculture by 2050. 

“The window of opportunity to address climate change is closing, while its consequences are already being felt. This year’s droughts resulted in food price increases and even more public subsidies to this polluting sector – mostly to finance feed imports.

“Unsustainable bail-outs should end, and governments should instead finance the transition towards a low emissions food system with more environmentally friendly farming methods and healthier diets for all.”

Sustainable models 

Animal agriculture is responsible for around 16.5 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, equivalent to the emissions from combustion of all transport fuels. The sector is also responsible for a third of potent methane and nitrous oxide emission.

A managed reduction in demand for meat and dairy could increase humanity’s chances to stay below 1.5°C temperature increase and avoid climate the ‘cliff edge’ as highlighted by the last week’s report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Low carbon transition in the food sector is also crucial to reduce the pressure on land. Currently, 70-80 percent of agricultural land is dedicated to animal agriculture, either directly for grazing or to grow increasing quantities of feed. Reducing the number of animals is key to put this land to use for reforestation, climate sequestration and also to more sustainable farming methods.

Anahita Yousefi, Mighty Earth campaigns director, said: “The complete absence of public policies to promote a shift towards plant-based diets means that this critical dietary shift is left to the whims of the market and personal choice.

The public is being forced to foot the bill for environmental impact of animal agriculture and the market is being denied opportunities for more sustainable models of food production and healthier diets.”

Key recommendations 

Bérénice Dupeux, policy officer for agriculture at the European Environmental Bureau (EEB), said: “This report is yet more evidence that to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees, the agriculture sector needs to significantly reduce meat and dairy production to reduce overall emissions – just as many other industries are doing.

“The number of extreme climate events is increasing. As this summer’s droughts showed us, we cannot afford to pour money into continuing the type of agriculture that is exacerbating climate change and leave environmental ambition to good will. Given the immense scale of the problem, our political leaders cannot turn a blind eye on climate change and they must address it within the current reform of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy.

“Farm ministers and MEPs have a moral obligation to put the rights of future generations first.”

The Changing Markets Foundation has drafted a series of recommendations to governments around the world to ensure that food production plays its part in the low carbon transition:

1. Updating climate targets to include the mitigation potential of animal agriculture and to reflect the 1.5 degree temperature increase pathway.
2. Updating fiscal policies to reduce meat demand and consumption. So-called meat taxes have been recommended by several reputable institutions, as tax on goods deemed to be unhealthy and/or damaging to the environment.
3. Establishing implementation strategies for dietary guidelines for the shift to healthier diets including the reduction of animal products.
4. Shifting subsidies away from polluting intensive animal farms and addressing negative externalities of animal agriculture.
5. Incentivising the production of diverse and underused protein crops, such as pulses, for human consumption.
6. Funding the research and development of plant-based and other meat alternatives, such as clean meat.

 

This Author 

Brendan Montague is editor for The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from the Changing Markets Foundation. 

The video How Wolves Change Rivers, narrated by George Monbiot, begins with the sentence: “One of the most exciting scientific findings of the past half-century has been the discovery of widespread trophic cascades. A trophic cascade is an ecological process which starts at the top of the food chain and tumbles all the way down to the bottom”.

The video progresses with the marvellous description of the reintroduction of wolves in the Yellowstone National Park in the United States in 1995. Wolves are believed by many to be sanguinary animals (causing much bloodshed).

However, as they indeed killed some of the deer and coyotes, they also provided means for rodents and birds of prey to have their way in the local ecosystem. Systems thinking can reveal the unanticipated role of wolves as ecosystem engineers.

Rejuvenating forest 

The significant and unsuccessfully managed populations of deer were blocking the flux of energy in the local food chain.

By changing the behaviour of the deer that started avoiding certain parts of the park, wolves offered trees a chance to increase their size by five times in a short period, attracting many species of birds.

Beavers came too, feeding on the trees and managing their growth by building aquatic dwellings also used by hundreds of other creatures such as muskrats, otters, ducks, fish, amphibians and reptiles.

Bears were feasting on the increasing number of berries. Surprisingly, the behaviour of the rivers also changed – they meandered and eroded less, narrowed channels, increased numbers of pools and riffle sections that are great wildlife habitats.

The rejuvenating forest stabilised river banks, and less soil erosion occurred. Astonishingly the wolves not only restored the Park’s local ecology but also changed its geography.   

Today’s story is, unfortunately, a degenerative one. An incredibly biodiverse ecosystem is systematically shattering because of a species that ignores its interconnectedness with the whole web of life.

Agricultural expansion 

I was born in Brazil, the fourth biggest emitter of global warming gases, and perpetrator of severe deforestation. This is done in the name of profit: corporations cut down trees, contaminate soil and water, consume the majority of hydric resources and frequently run their activities on slave work.

The meat industry emits the same volume of global warming gases as all the cars, trucks, planes and ships of the whole planet together, and in countries such as Brazil, it is directly related to suspension in the rights of workers, indigenous peoples and other traditional communities.

Apart from areas for grazing cattle, the increase in soy production is driving agricultural expansion – essential for the highly profitable and poorly assessed activity of producing meat. 

The world’s 1.5 billion cattle are frequently vilified. A single animal produces more than a hundred various polluting gases, more than 100 kg of methane per year and consumes about 990l of water to outcome a litre of milk. Moreover, their manure causes “dead zones” in the ocean.

To get to know the issue in depth, it is necessary to understand its broader context. 

Interconnected web

What would ‘How Wolves Change Rivers’ look like if we were to blame the deer? We would probably focus on their adverse effect and miss facts that open the doors to more systemic perspectives. 

The delicately interconnected web of relationships of the Amazon rainforest took some millions of years to reach its current state.

A large tree’s daily job is to pump up about 1,000 l of water to the atmosphere, where water encounters plant produced substances that facilitate its condensation and assures abundance in rain formation. That means that like ocean algae they “seed clouds” while the whole forest is the releasing agent of 20 billion litres daily – a number that exceeds the Amazon river’s water flow by 3 billion litres.

Besides, the forest keeps the moving air humid and like a biotic pump sucks damp air above the sea back to the continent thus maintaining rains under any circumstances. The air currents carry all the water released into the atmosphere to the interior of the continent, forming a flying river.

Other services include the prevention of desertification by delivering humidity, stabilisation of the water cycle and determent of climatic events, such as tornados.

Extending limits

None of this is possible if the cattle becomes a substitute for trees – the result is a long-term blockage of ecological flows caused by the absence of the fundamental functions that plants perform, indicating their significance for the planetary climate system. Plants exist in an intimate relation to the water cycle, as well as to the carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus cycles at local and global levels.

Deforestation leads to extreme weather events, loss in biodiversity, habitats and the degradation of near and far environments, sooner or later. For instance, the meat consumption increase in Germany threatens South-American ecosystems, since two thirds of the soy fed to livestock in the European country comes from Brazil.

Unfortunately, we are not encouraged to learn the stories that lie behind what we consume. We can start to change this by expanding our education beyond the limits of linear causation – eco-systemic thinking ought to be thought in schools. 

An outrageous environmental debt is neither transferred to the final consumer, not paid with money – we all pay it with the loss of human lives, malformation of foetuses, human intoxication by heavy metals, chronic diseases, cancer and the destruction of the very fundamental conditions for all life on the planet.

The so-called “business as usual” strategy destroys commons, often irreversibly.

Cause for optimism

The meat industry must be watched closely by civil society. While committing to be more responsible and transparent in their operations, giants like the Brazilian JBS must adopt production models based on the circular economy if they want to avoid being regulated by the government.

It might be challenging to grasp the interrelatedness of all life on the Earth in a world where nature has been commodified.

The overlooked disruption of local water cycles caused by environmental degradation can be compared to the failure of the circulatory system in the human body; we are failing the blood vessels of our extended body, the planet Earth.

Despite this, we can be optimistic because we carry the potential of being wolves, which means creating a niche for other species and giving life back by being who we are. Who knows which rivers we will change? 

This Author 

Rafaela Graça Scheiffer is a Brazilian biologist who recently concluded her MSc in Holistic Science at Schumacher College.

People believe that manufacturers are still using too much packaging and that it’s not always clear what can and can’t be recycled, a recent study has shown. But becoming plastic free or just reducing the amount of plastic used in the UK is not getting any easier. 

An online label manufacturer surveyed more than 3,000 people aged over 18 asking them what frustrates them most about recycling to find out what irritates people the most about recycling in the UK.

They found the biggest issues were: manufacturers using too much packaging (39 percent), not knowing what you can and can’t recycle (24 percent), lack of local recycling options (11 percent), and the fact the onus has been put on the consumer and not manufacturers (11 percent).

Inconsistent and unresponsive

The majority of people are frustrated with the amount of packaging manufacturers use.

Many respondents commented on the fact that lots of products come in packaging that isn’t currently recyclable, and manufacturers still use black plastic that cannot be recycled for food products despite complaints from consumers.

The research showed that a lot of people struggle to know what can and can’t be recycled and that this varies around the country because different councils recycle some packing that others don’t, meaning that you need to search to find the correct information for your area.

The feedback showed a lot of people feel that councils are guilty of not providing enough local recycling options and many argue that items which are sent for recycling actually end up in a landfill or shipped abroad.

Following on from this survey, Seareach asked respondents what they thought would be useful solutions to the current recycling situation in the UK.

Shifting the onus

The survey found that people most wanted: recycling at supermarkets for all packaging (68 percent), consistent and understandable labelling (67 percent), councils to be more transparent about recycling (65 percent) and apps to scan barcodes for recycling info (38 percent).

The study showed that a lot of people want to be able to recycle where they buy their items – at the supermarket – and better labelling that makes it clear what can and can’t be recycled, along with consistent recycling systems across the country.

Consumers also wanted to see a change in what materials can be recycled, such as wrappers and foil packaging, and an end to foil-plastic hybrids that can’t currently be recycled.

People also want to see the onus on manufacturers and councils to help consumers recycle. Ideas suggested include: more recycling points in towns and cities, different bins for recycling on the high street like in cities such as Toronto adopted in the UK, and more or better options for people living in flats and sheltered accommodation to have more recycling bins which are easily accessible for disabled and elderly.

Complete ban

Respondents saw technology as a tool to help people recycle more and more efficiently, and supported the idea of apps that can scan product barcodes that also show how to recycle the packaging and where. 

Speaking about the in-depth study on recycling, Stuart Jailer of Seareach said:“The feedback we got from this study was eye-opening with a huge amount of ideas people have and what they want to see in the UK.

“Everyone wants to be able to recycle effectively, however, they find this increasingly harder to do despite numerous campaigns on plastic and pollution. Improved labelling, more places to recycle various packaging types and ways to utilise technology were key points people wanted to see changed.

“A lot of people were concerned that even though we sort our packaging at home, once it gets to councils, we don’t know that it’s getting properly recycled. Instead, people worry that a lot of it is heading to landfills or being shipped abroad.

“Consumers want to have more transparency and also want to see manufacturers actually being proactive about the problem, with many people sick of the onus being on the consumer. It would be good to see a complete ban on unrecyclable packaging and a reduction in non-essential plastic products.”

This Author

Marianne Brooker is a contributing editor for The Ecologist. This story is based on a press release from Seareach.

Fifteen leading organisations working with migrants have written to the Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, to express deep concern over hundreds of cases of MPs reporting their constituents to the Home Office’s immigration hotline  for immigration crime.

The letter, which has been signed by the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, Doctors of the World and Bail for Immigration Detainees among others, describes the revelation as a “fundamental breach of trust” which leaves many migrants fearful of approaching their MP.

Home Office figures uncovered by a parliamentary question show that 723 people have been reported by MPs for immigration enforcement since the government’s ‘hostile environment’ policy was introduced in 2012.

Right to confidentiality 

Despite migrants often having “nowhere to turn” for help with immigration cases following years of legal aid cuts, the advice groups say they can no longer recommend people approach their MP for support unless the MP has signed a pledge promising not to report them to the Home Office.

The ‘MPs not Border Guards’ pledge was launched by Migrants Organise, one of the signatories of the letter, and campaign group Global Justice Now in the summer. It has been signed by more than 100 MPs from all political parties, including shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott.

Satbir Singh, chief executive of Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, said: “Everyone has  the right to seek advice from their MPs in a confidential and safe environment.

“Parliament must clarify whether passing constituent data to immigration enforcement breaches data protection. It must also  explain to the country, under what circumstances is this practice taking place?  MPs should not be taking it upon themselves to act as “border guards”, betraying the trust of their constituents and perpetuating a culture of hostility towards migrants.

“Have we not learnt  anything from the scandal and tragedy of Windrush? MPs acting as border guards puts highly vulnerable people at risk, driving them further underground and into the shadows.”

Hostile environment 

Akram Salhab, campaigns and advocacy officer at Migrants Organise, said: “The demand that MPs represent all their constituents equally is a basic principle of how Parliament works. Sadly, this is yet another pillar of our democracy that has been sacrificed at the altar of the Government’s Hostile Environment policies.

“Many of our members are now afraid of approaching their MPs lest their reaching out for support be used to detain and deport them.  All political parties, whether in Government or not, can end this practice today by instructing their MPs not to share their constituent’s data for immigration enforcement purposes.”

This Author

Marianne Brooker is a contributing editor for The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from Global Justice Now.