Four Greenpeace activists have been arrested after ending their hours-long protest on the roof of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Yorkshire home.
The campaigners were detained by North Yorkshire Police on Thursday afternoon after scaling the grade II listed manor house in protest over what they called Mr. Sunak’s new fossil fuel drilling “frenzy.”
Police were “managing the situation” after being called to the family home in Kirby Sigston, near Northallerton, at around 8 a.m. after the activists climbed the roof while the Prime Minister, his wife, and children were on holiday in California.
The climate campaigning group draped the country house in oil-black fabric to “drive home the dangerous consequences” of the prime minister’s announcement of new drilling licences for the North Sea.
The group returned to the ground at about 1:15 p.m. and were being spoken to by officers before being loaded into the back of police vans.
In a statement, North Yorkshire Assistant Chief Constable Police Elliot Foskett said two men and two women had been arrested on suspicion of causing criminal damage and public nuisance.
“Shortly after 8 a.m. this morning we responded swiftly to reports of protest activity at the prime minister’s North Yorkshire address,” Mr. Foskett said.
“There was no threat to the wider public throughout this incident which has now been brought to a safe conclusion.
“The prime minister and his family were not at the address at the time of the incident.”
Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden, who is standing in for Mr. Sunak during his holiday, told the protesters to “stop the stupid stunts.”
A former deputy chief constable of North Yorkshire Police said it was a “major breach of security” as he called for an “investigation into how this has been allowed to happen.”
Mr. Sunak—MP for nearby Richmond—this week unveiled plans to “max out” the UK’s oil and gas reserves by granting more than 100 new licences for extraction in the North Sea.
He also hinted that the UK’s largest untapped oil field, Rosebank, to the west of Shetland, could be approved despite fierce opposition from environmental campaigners.
‘Peaceful Protest’
After scaling the house with ladders, the four activists unfurled the black fabric and brandished a banner demanding “no new oil” as they urged Mr. Sunak to “be a climate leader, not a climate arsonist.”Protester Alex Wilson, who lives in Newcastle with her partner released a video message from on the roof of Mr. Sunak’s house.
“We’re all here because Rishi Sunak has opened the door to a new drilling frenzy in the North Sea while large parts of our world are literally on fire.
“This will be a disaster for the climate,” the climber, originally from East Yorkshire, said.
On the ground, Greenpeace UK climate campaigner Philip Evans defended the action at the prime minister’s family home.
He said the group had knocked on the door when they arrived and said, “This is a peaceful protest,” but there was no answer.
Asked whether it was intrusive to target someone’s home, Mr. Evans said: “This is the prime minister. He is the one that was standing in Scotland going to drill for every last drop of oil while the world is burning.
“He is personally responsible for that decision and we’re all going to be paying a high price if he goes through with it. It is personal.”
North Yorkshire police said they had been “responding to reports of protest activity.”
“Officers have contained the area and no one has entered the building,” a statement added.
Peter Walker, who stepped down as the force’s deputy chief constable in 2003, said he was “absolutely astonished” the protesters gained access to the house, as he called for an investigation.
He told LBC radio: “It is clearly in my view a major breach of security. If free access is being granted to that property, people who wanted to do much more serious things would be able to leave devices or booby traps or something like that, and I really think this is a major failing, and it grieves me to say it because it’s my old police force that has failed.”
Green Tory Criticism
Mr. Dowden defended the government’s environmental policies as he criticised the protesters.Speaking on a visit to Able Seaton Port in Hartlepool, he said: “I think what most people would say is ‘can you stop the stupid stunts,’ actually what they want to see from the government is action.”
He said: “That’s what you’re seeing here today, the world’s largest offshore wind farm being built right here, creating jobs. But at the same time, we’re going to need in the coming decades oil and gas as part of our energy mix.
“The question is do we produce it here, where we get more tax, we create more jobs, or do we do what the Labour and others say which is say ‘no more investment in our North Sea oil and gas?’”
Alicia Kearns, the senior Tory who chairs the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, said the action was “unacceptable.”
She said: “Politicians live in the public eye and rightly receive intense scrutiny, but their family homes should not be under assault.
“Before long, police will need to be stationed outside the home of every MP.”
Campaigners, opponents, and leading green Tory MP Chris Skidmore all criticised the move amidst climate change concerns.
Billionaire global investor Andrew Forrest has even suggested he could pull out of the UK if ministers follow a “clickbait cycle” rather than displaying “proper leadership.”
But Mr. Sunak dismissed the criticism as he was warned watering down policies to tackle the climate crisis is on the “wrong side of modern voters.”
Speaking to broadcasters a day after the announcement, the prime minister insisted fossil fuels must be extracted in the UK on the way to net zero by 2050.
“I think it’s evidently more sensible to get that from here at home,” he said.
“Why? It’s better for our energy security because we’re not relying on foreign dictators, better for the economy because it supports hundreds of thousands of jobs. … And it’s actually better for carbon emissions because if we have to ship that energy here from halfway around the world it would have three or four times the carbon emissions by the time it got here.
“So any which way you look at it, what we’re doing is the right thing for the country, it’s the pragmatic thing,” he said.
Tory MP Chris Skidmore, who led the government’s net-zero review, said the move was the “wrong decision at precisely the wrong time, when the rest of the world is experiencing record heatwaves.”
