Key events
Greenpeace UK climate campaigner Philip Evans accused Rishi Sunak of being a climate arsonist as police arrive at the prime minister’s North Yorkshire home where activists have draped black fabric over the manor house.
Evans said:
We desperately need our prime minister to be a climate leader, not a climate arsonist.
Just as wildfires and floods wreck homes and lives around the world, Sunak is committing to a massive expansion of oil and gas drilling.
He seems quite happy to hold a blowtorch to the planet if he can score a few political points by sowing division around climate in this country. This is cynical beyond belief.
More North Sea drilling will only benefit oil giants who stand to make even more billions from it, partly thanks to a giant loophole in Sunak’s own windfall tax.
Police are at the North Yorkshire home of Rishi Sunak after it was scaled by Greenpeace activists, a No 10 source said.
Greenpeace activists have climbed to the roof of Rishi Sunak’s mansion in protest against his new drilling “frenzy”.
The campaigners have draped the prime minister’s manor house in North Yorkshire with an oily-black fabric to “drive home the dangerous consequences”.
They took the action as Sunak and his family are away on holiday in California.
Sunak has announced this week plans to “max out” the UK’s oil and gas reserves by granting more than 100 new licences for extraction in the North Sea.
Greenpeace said:
The police are in attendance.
We make no apology for taking the right approach to ensure our energy security, using the resources we have here at home so we are never reliant on aggressors like (Vladimir) Putin for our energy. We are also investing in renewables and our approach supports 1000s of British jobs.
Oliver Dowden says asylum seekers will be housed on the Bibby Stockholm barge ‘in the coming weeks’.
Oliver Dowden said asylum seekers will be housed on the Bibby Stockholm barge “in the coming weeks”.
The plans to move migrants on to the barge, docked in Portland on the Dorset coast, have been beset by delays, with government sources suggesting the first arrivals may not be on board until next week.
The plan is to move more than 500 adult male asylum seekers to the Bibby Stockholm, which will save the government the cost of putting them up in hotels. Aside from major doubts over whether it is a fit place to house potentially traumatised people, serious questions have been raised over whether the vessel is even safe.
Campaigners have called the government’s plans cruel and inhumane. One local authority whistleblower has said it has the potential to become a “floating Grenfell”. And the Fire Brigades’ Union has said it considers the vessel a “potential deathtrap”.
Asked about the plans, the deputy prime minister told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:
We have to undertake a number of inspections and other measures to make sure that these vessels, and this vessel in particular, is suitable and ready.
But I am confident that in the coming weeks we will have people on those barges.
Dowden added on the Bibby Stockholm:
We are confident that we will be able to address all of these concerns, I’m absolutely certain of that, and I’m absolutely certain we will be able to get people on this vessel in the coming weeks.
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