Labour Could Lose 50 Seats Over North Sea Oil

Welcome to Navara Live. Coming up tonight as Burnham proicates um Dale Vince comes on the show um to give his case um for new drilling in the North Sea with some caveats. Um very interesting interview, not one I was sort of expecting to be making. Dale Vince on why uh Rosebank and Jack Door might make sense. Um also Ulles is proving its worth in the lungs of the capital's children. Some good news for you there. Um, a jury returns no verdict on all charges against um, seven defendants in the Elbert Systems break-in. Um, this one really, really interesting because the jury had an interesting question to the judge. I'll be speaking to Steven Mefen about that in the second part of the show. So, after a record-breaking summer of heat waves, Andy Burnham appears set to approve a new gas field in the North Sea. Um, the Telegraph on Monday reported that sources close to Burnham say he was minded to approve a new Jacko gas field and the report said no decision had yet been made about the Rosebank oil field. Um, Andy Bernham was asked about Rosebank and Jack Door today. >> I think we just need to get this in obviously in some perspective. The country cannot stop using oil and gas anytime soon. there's a a transition uh that um has to be gone through. Uh so that's just the reality of it. Um the question is you know how do we go about that uh transition? And there is a legitimate question to say could um could we speed up that transition uh to clean energy via using uh what reserves we've got? >> There's a curious argument. He's saying we can use the reserves. So I suppose sort of implicit there is get more oil from Rosebank and get more gas from Jack Door. Um but by getting the fossil fuels and presumably burning them. I mean what else you going to do with them? We will speed up the transition to net zero. Slightly confusing argument. Remember also emissions are cumulative. So if we emit them now um but still get to zero by 2050, the carbon still stays in the air, right? Which is why sort of people make the strong argument keep it in the ground. But it's not like let's just go gung-ho for now and then we'll get it down, you know, by 2035 or whatever. Everything that goes into the atmosphere now will stay there for a bloody long time, especially the carbon methane. Um, not quite so long. Um, I think this sounds a little bit like he wants to have his cake and eat it. Now, I think we we might have mentioned on the show before that there are some similarities, I think, between Andy Burnham and Boris Johnson. So both city mayors that became prime minister, both people who really like to be liked, both people not particularly associated with committing to particular policy positions. Um so somewhat fluid um both personable, both sort of, you know, happy enough to talk to people. Now hopefully um the comparisons end there. Obviously I'm not saying Andy Burnham is the new Boris Johnson, but there are some similarities. I think um someone who or a group who have sensed an opportunity are the Green Party. So they've released new analysis which they say shows Labour could lose 50 seats if they approve new oil and gas. Now this is internal analysis um shared by the Greens with the Guardian um based on Friends of the Earth research which showed 55% of the public wanted climate action to quote unquote go faster. Um and then they mapped this onto Labor Green marginal seats. Now from my reading of the Guardian piece I'm not sure how scientific this sounds. Um they do though have a point that Labour approving new fossil fuel extraction after a summer of heat heat waves um will will definitely piss a lot of people off understandably I think. Um and that includes a bunch of musicians. So 200 musicians including Tom York, Romy and Brianino have urged Andy Bernham to reject North Sea drilling. Um someone who has come around to the idea of approving new new oil and gas in the North Sea though is Dale Vince. Now, Del Vince is the founder of the green energy firm EOTricity and he's been a donor to just stop oil, the direct action group and the Green Party since 2023, he's been a significant donor to the Labor Party. Now, back in April, Vince told the Times that allowing new North Sea drilling would be a betrayal. But on Monday, um he surprised Fisel Islam when he said this. >> I have a different position perhaps than the one you expect me to have. Um there's a way that we can make sense of this North Sea puzzle. we can actually bring our bills down which we we can't at the moment unless we do this one thing which is price control the North Sea. At the moment the global market sets the price and it doesn't matter how much we make here. We pay the global price if we price control it like we have our retail energy sector. We can actually save money and that makes more sense of the North Sea and it would make more sense of Jack Door and Rose Bank. >> Oh right. So, I mean, have you changed your position? Because it did appear that you were against it fairly recently entirely on the the reopening of oil and gas from your social media. >> The way things are and the way things have been, it doesn't make sense. The argument that we can save money by drilling is nonsense. And what President Trump just said on your show, by the way, is just the height of stupidity. The North Sea is not one of the biggest finds. It might have been 60 years ago. Now, it's got barely anything left. But that's a slight digression. If we price control wholesale energy across the board like we have retail, we have to do this to reform our energy system. If we do that, we pave the way to make sense of of Rosebank and Jack Door new drilling sites that are already licensed because we can save money. And then this secondary argument that's being made for new drilling that if we're going to use fossil fuels, we might as well make them here as to bring them from from abroad. That makes more sense and comes to the four. We will use fossil fuels for a number of years to come and it makes sense to make them here. If we can also save money here and create some jobs, I'm up for it. >> So Fisam looked very surprised at us because I don't think Dale Vince had sort of publicly expressed that he'd had a change of heart before that interview. So Fisam thought he was going to interview someone who was against oil and gas exploration and then sort of got this sudden surprise. Um so what the hell has gone on? Um, well, I caught up with Delvin Vince earlier today. Um, and begun by asking him why he'd U-turned on North Sea oil and gas drilling. >> Uh, well, I haven't. That's a very simple, easy question and answer. >> Just to clarify that. So, I've I've been looking at this today. Obviously, I can't remember off the top of my head everything you've ever said, but I looked up today this quote from the Times in April, which you said um, of the Labour's pledge to stop oil and gas licenses. You said it attracted an awful lot of support. I argued for it amongst green voters and just stop oil supporters. The way to stop oil is to vote Labor because they've got a manifesto pledge. So is that >> if if you were saying before that you don't support it and now you do. Is that >> I'm not saying I do. I'm not saying that I do. That's and that's the key to this. It's been misrepresented, misreported in the media. What I said back then, uh I stand by those are the circumstances. If you recall perhaps uh we were coming off the back of a Tory administration that had issued hundreds of new licenses and were threatening to issue hundreds more uh and had turned oil and gas drilling into a kind of um a cultural war weapon uh ready for the impending election and it was simply the case that the only way to stop that was to vote Labor. Very simple. Yeah. I was against new drilling absolutely didn't think we need it. Didn't think it made any sense. couldn't help us bring our bills down. And that was the most important part for me apart from the, you know, the carbon bits and the need to, you know, make a move to get off of fossil fuels and the kind of global need to at some point draw a line under new drilling and that kind of stuff, right? Then the circumstances of the day. Um, what I said on News Night, which kicked this all off, was that government should take control of North Sea oil and gas prices. that we should no longer allow global markets to set the price that we pay for our own oil and gas. We've done some modeling that shows we could save 10 billion pounds a year if we did that. We'd also be able to protect the jobs that we have there and the investments that have been made. We could maximize extraction of the reserves that we have left, excuse me, which are dwindling really quite fast now. Maybe there's 10 years left according to the oil and gas authority. Uh but we can basically put an arm around the North Sea uh protect them from uh global price shocks because as our fields decline in production they become less economic and increasingly vulnerable to price shocks in the global pricing system. So there's a lot of good things could come from this and optically it's about putting an arm around the North Sea using the same mechanism we use for green energy for let's call it brown energy uh and putting them on an equal footing but we get to save 10 billion pounds. we get to end windfall profits in the North Sea and have some really major economic boosts from it because energy bills drive inflation and bank lending rates. >> So, you made two arguments as far as I understood it on News Now, which is that you wanted the government to introduce price controls on North's oil and gas so that it wouldn't be sold um or or it wouldn't be priced according to international markets. Basically, whatever Britain wanted to buy, it could do so at a set price, which would maybe give the oil and gas extractors 2% profit or whatever. some a bit like how we sort of manage the distributors um within the country, >> the retail suppliers, not the distributors. >> Sorry, the retail suppliers. >> The distributors are making 40%. That's another story, >> right? Um but your second argument is that if this were all to happen, you would be okay with licenses being granted at Rosebank and and Jackor. That's correct. Um am I right? >> Not not completely. Rosebank and Jacko have licenses. What they don't have is planning permission. So they sit in a kind of no man's land between Labour's election pledge of no new licensing uh and you know this place where a lot of people are where we should have no new drilling they are licensed they could go ahead they lost the planning permission on appeal uh due to ironically I suppose in some ways them not having taken into account the impact of the burning of the product the oil and gas they were going to produce I think the government are able to give them planning consent uh and I think they might be minded to. So what I was saying was that if we have this price control in the North Sea, our existing operations, the benefits of that, they're huge in fact to our country and to the top cause of the cost of living crisis, energy bills, that's that's something very valuable. They would at the same time, this would at the same time, sorry, this situation would change the view of Rose Bank and Jack uh unavoidably because the argument put forward by the proponents at the moment, the first argument is that we can save money if we make oil and gas here, we can get cheaper oil and gas. Now, that's false unless we price the oil and gas ourselves. So, if we have a system whereby we do that, that argument um it makes sense. We could save money by allowing Jackor or Rosebank and the secondary argument which is that we're going to use fossil fuels for a decade or two to come. Why don't we make them here? That comes to the four. That's what I was saying. It could make sense. It could be a way for the government through this minefield really pulled uh by left and right on this issue of these two really rather small projects that aren't really going to move the dial on much uh but have become kind of toemic and are having attention way beyond their merits in terms of their their scale. >> There's two things I'm a bit confused about. One is it seems to me the opposition has somewhat changed unless the reporting sort of back in April was really incorrect because this this Times article is all framed on you pushing back against Jack Door and Rosebank specifically saying it would be a mistake but maybe you feel misrepresented by them back then. All I think all you're missing is the fact that the circumstances have changed and I'm saying if we do this big thing if we change how we price oil and gas in the North Sea fundamentally and it's not a small thing and most people have missed that and have just focused instead on am I doing a U-turn but I'll take that because if we if we impose price control on the North Sea I mean it's it's massive and it actually actually is and um Rosebank and Jack I'm less I'm less worried about them in that context because we've got price control on the North Sea less worried. >> So, so how would the price control work? It sort of explain what the mechanism would be. >> Yeah. So, it's um something we're using green energy called a contract for difference and essentially using a system like this we set the price that a generator call it wind farm maybe could be now an oil or gas producer we get we set the price that they receive. Now, they go about their business selling their electricity or oil and gas to whomever they want to. And this is the key to this. People say, "Oh, but a lot of that stuff gets exported." It doesn't matter. The CFD will do the job for us. They're allowed, let's call it, £50 a barrel in the in the North Sea. Um, they may sell it on the international markets for 100 during a crisis, but the 50 excess comes back to the country. So, in effect, we've only paid 50. D, sorry, you know, at risk of asking you to repeat yourself, just could you clarify exactly what a contract for difference is because I know this is quite a confusing concept. >> Basically, it's a mechanism whereby we bring new projects into the world by by guaranteeing the price for every unit of electricity currently, but we could use it for oil and gas. And if the market goes above that price, uh the generator pays that to the center. If it goes below that price, the center tops up the generator. So it fixes price, minimizes risk and lowers cost. >> This this is basically um sort of in advance we say we will guarantee to buy x number of barrels of oil um or quarts of gas at this price. Um and you have to sell it to us at this price or if you sell it to someone else you have to give us the difference. >> Uh yeah there's no us in this in terms of being a buyer. um we just limit the uh the price that the generator or the oil and gas producer can receive or can keep. Um and so I mean the way it works is there's a market price for electricity in our country that's also driven by the price of gas. That's a different issue which we also need to tackle. But let's say um an onshore wind farm might have a CFD I don't know for 5 p a unit of electricity. if the market's at seven or eight or you know I think we're we're at 10 plus quite often at the moment um they might be receiving that that enhanced income which would turn into a windfall profit if the CFD wasn't in place and the excess money returns to the center uh something called the lowcarbon company or something like that that runs the CFDs. Now in a different circumstance when the market price falls below the 5p the center the low carbon company whatever it's called gives money to that wind generator to top them up to the 5p these guys have a business plan to spend in the case of offshore wind you know billions of pounds on uh on hardware and in their business plan they have a set price that's guaranteed by this mechanism which allows them to reduce the the profit margin considerably because they haven't got to build in risk for bad years. They never have a bad year through the pricing of energy in the market and that's how that works. So you're topped up when the market is below you and you give back when the market is above you. >> I mean to me it seems like a good idea. I suppose the cynic and we would suggest that Andy Burnham might be thinking brilliant Del is going out onto the media giving me cover for approving new licenses or planning permission um in the North Sea. However, down the line I'm going to say, "Oh well, you know what? The price caps it was a bit too difficult. We're just going to let them sell on the open market and we'll get a bit of tax revenue from, you know, if we introduce a new wful wful tax or whatever." Are you are you worried about that? that he says, "Okay, I'll take the cover, but I'm not going to go for this um, you know, relatively radical policy that Dale Vince is proposing." >> Well, no, I'm not worried. Um, the cover, to the extent I'm offering it, is predicated on uh price controlling the North Sea. Without it, everything I've said about Rose Bank and Jack Door falls away. They only make more sense if we have reform of the oil and gas sector in terms of price control. So, I'm not worried, but I'm also not worried because I think Andy Bernham's that kind of person and he's very interested in this idea. He is looking to be bold and intervene in energy bills, the biggest driver of the cost of living crisis, which I think is, you know, one of his top priorities as prime minister and rightly so. Um, I'm not worried >> and sort of the legal mechanism here because contracts for difference for renewable companies as far as I understand is voluntary, right? They can say we'll either sign the contract for difference or we'll take the risk and just sort of sell it to the open market every time we as we produce it. But most of them go for the contracts for difference because as you say they've got this very high upfront fixed cost and they want to reduce their risk. What happens if the oil and gas companies just say we don't want to sign these contracts for for difference? You're impinging on our property rights. >> Well, it's not their property. It's our property. The oil and gas is Britain's and we license them to extract in our North Sea. So, we change the rules of the game. It's as simple as that. Now, let me tell you a couple of things that will help you see this in a different light. Um the Tories introduced the price cap into our retail energy sector for suppliers. Um they introduced it over the heads of all of the people in the game at the time and there's about 60 energy companies. Most of them were foreignowned either privately or by the state. Um and they had imposed upon them a 2% profit margin which is you know pretty keen in in any industry. And they just got on with the job. They didn't have a choice though. They didn't have a choice. Government changed the law, made it so. Second thing I'll tell you is that um Liz Truss in her one month of uh brief power, she did one thing, one incredible thing. The tries saw this problem. Um we flagged to them the link between the price of gas and the price of green energy. Um, and they could see something called legacy green, which are green projects, green energy projects that are not in the CFD because they came out of earlier rounds of support like renewables obligation, that kind of stuff. She passed a bill called the Energy Prices Act, which enabled the government to do two things. One was break the link between the price of gas and the price of all other electricity in our country, which is, I say, a different topic, but it has profound impacts on our energy bills. And the second thing was she the the bill uh allowed the government to impose a CFD on legacy green generation which makes up about 20% of the power on our grid today. Um so it's not something that a government can't conceive of and it's it's something that a conservative government did conceive of uh but didn't implement. So I don't think really there's any problem morally, legally, politically with Andy Bernham doing this. And finally, I mean, obviously given the heat wave, we've been doing lots of interviews with climate scientists over the summer. Um, a recent interview I did with Simon Lewis, who's been at sort of lots of the cops, very involved in in climate negotiations really. Um, his big argument was to say that Britain actually does have some claim to be a climate leader and that job is going to be made much harder if we renew licenses or give out new licenses for oil and gas extraction in the North Sea. And my understanding you know as as you've said sort of in toto sort of this is going to be fairly marginal concretely in terms of how much emissions will be released from these particular sort of extra bits of fossil fuels but is there not the argument that politically symbolically this could be really significant and it's just therefore not worth it >> yeah I think they have become uh powerful symbols they have for both sides of this argument for people that say we need to get real about net zero, realistic about net zero. You know, we can't afford it, it's pushing up the cost of living, that kind of stuff. There's a lot of fallacy in those arguments. You know, green energy, for example, is not driving up our bills. But that's different issue. There's a there's a strong lobby on one side saying we have to get real about net zero and and and care more about people's cost of living problems and therefore we should drill in the North Sea because we can save money. As I said before, that's not true, but it would be under this new regime. And on the other side, you've got people, yeah, making the case, look, you know, leadership is important. There's no doubt about that because there are also people in our country, as you'll know, that say we only make 1% of global emissions. Why are we bothering? We can't make a difference to net zero. Reform is saying that just this week, actually, uh, Richard Ty, I think probably. Um, and so it's a it's a divided and divisive issue. I see that materially these two projects if they both went ahead and I have a feeling that it might only be one of them but it's just a gut feeling because uh Jack door is is primarily a gas producing project that's a tieback which um is another nuance uh in the industry whereby it's not a new site being drilled from above at least but from below it's drilling horizontally from an existing gas field to one that's very nearby. Uh, I got a feeling that one might go ahead. The infrastructure is all built. It could produce gas sometime this winter. And there's a good argument for it. If we can also make gas that's cheaper than the global market. The um global emissions won't go up because of this because it'll displace gas that we're currently bringing in. And you know, there's there's truth in the argument that the carbon footprint of LNG that we're bringing in rather than produce gas from our own North Sea, that's higher. So global emissions are higher because we don't use the gas on our doorstep. There's there's truth in that argument as well. So it's a right old kind of um puzzle of pieces and I think that price capping the North Sea will bring huge cost of living benefits to our country and enable Labor to perhaps pick their way through this minefield, let's say, uh of uh new licenses versus new drilling versus tiebacks in the North Sea. And these two projects that sit in no man's land but have become so important despite their relative tiny size. Jack door will make enough gas in its entire life for Britain for one year. That's how big it is. >> Uh Dale Vins, thank you so much for coming on the show. Always appreciate your perspective. I like it because I can never quite predict what you're going to say, which I like in a guest. So um thank you for coming on. >> That was great fun. Thank you. London's ultra- low emission zone or ULES has been a political lightning rod since its introduction in 2019. Um the policy which charges polluting cars to drive in London was always dismissed as a war on motorists by its detractors and the tries have long used it as a stick with which to beat London Mayor Sadi Khn. When he was prime minister, Rishi Sunnak found the time to attack Khn for his plans to expand Ules. And in the 2024 mayoral election, the Tory candidate Susan Hall had opposition to Ules as a key plank of her campaign. Um, in the end, thankfully, the war on motorist framing was not enough to save the careers of either Sunnak or Hall. Um, and I say thankfully because a new published study um, shows just how important Ulles has been. The BBC report that scientists have been stunned by children's lung recovery in ultra low emissions zones. Um they write this in the study researchers recruited 6 to 9year-olds attending primary schools in London's ultra low emission zone and followed the same children for 5 years comparing them to similar children in terms of socioeconomic background physical activity and ethnicity in Luton. Children in the study had annual lung function and capacity tests in the year before ULES came in and for four years after. Initial results showed children's lungs in London was smaller in capacity than those in Luton, which is less polluted than London but has a similar mix of pollutants. At the end of the study, the children's lung capacity reached near identical levels in both groups. Um the effects also seem pretty substantial. So in London, the proportion of children whose lung capacity was deemed clinically impaired fell from 14% to 9% after the ULES was introduced. So that's massive. Um in Luton they also fell but from 9%. So it's already lower there because they have less traffic I suppose and it went down to 7%. So that fall they said might be because Luton also introduced some measures to tackle air pollution but just not policies which were as dramatic as the ULES scheme in London. Um to discuss these findings and whether the lung the lungs sorry of young Londoners are on the mend I spoke to Dr. Laura Jane Smith a consultant respiratory physician at King's College Hospital. >> So today is a really exciting day for uh air quality research. Um the publication of the chills study is a a huge landmark really in moving forward our understanding of the impact of public health interventions and particularly around clean air. Obviously this is sort of a scientific study where they've compared young people in London and young people in Luton and it's sort of a bit of a natural experiment because obviously there's Ules in one place and not the other. I suppose anecdotally have you seen children's lung health improve since Ules was introduced. You are a you know a respiratory physician in London. So you might expect some sort of feed through to to be there in your profession. >> Yep. So I'm a respiratory doctor. I see clinics every day. I see patients every day in my clinic um who are fighting for breath. I look after adults rather than children. Um but they experience the same thing. They'd give anything for a few more mills of lung capacity. And although they can't recover their lung capacity like the children in this study, which was what was so amazing about the results, um that ul is still helping them breathe better and reducing the risk of a major flare up that could land them in hospital. And certainly they tell me that, you know, things are not as bad as they were a few years ago. That doesn't mean there's not more work to do and particularly with the um heat waves recently that makes air pollution worse. So they've been suffering. But this is a huge step forward um in committing to improve our air and improve our health. >> I didn't realize that actually. So it's the case that if a child if the air gets better while they're still in development, their lungs can actually repair. Whereas if you're an adult, your lungs won't sort of repair, but your condition will just be triggered less often. >> Exactly that. So human lungs actually keep growing until the age of about 20 25. So longer than most people expect and after that we all very gradually lose some lung function and there are several things that can speed that up. Smoking being an obvious one but air pollution exposure being the biggest one um that we're also can change. Um and we knew from earlier research that polluted air was linked to smaller lungs. Previous studies had shown that children in London had lower lung capacity than comparator groups. And we also know that smaller lungs increase your risk of uh poor respiratory health as adults. But what this has shown is that not only did the children's lungs continue to grow at a normal rate after ULES was introduced, but that they actually caught up, which was really unexpected certainly by me and by many of the researchers. So actually at the end of the study, the children in London who'd had less lung capacity um had caught up with the children in Luton. So it's a huge win. >> Forgive my ignorance. Um but sort of just to explain sort of how asthma for example which is I suppose is the condition which most of our audience will will have heard of how it comes about. Is it the case that if we didn't have any pollution and no one smoked there would be no asthma? Is it is that something that would be possible? >> Sadly not. Um asthma is a complex condition. There are a number of different things that contribute. Some of that is in our genes. Some of that is what we're exposed to both before we're born and then after we're born. It's essentially an overreaction of the immune system to certain things that trigger it. So, if no one smoked and there was no air pollution, we'd have much less asthma. Um, we'd have much less severe asthma. We'd have many fewer deaths from asthma, but we would still have some asthma >> in general because I know air pollution sort of in most of the country, most of the world is sort of been improving. Obviously, it can always improve more, but is this one of the sort of areas of healthcare where it's seeming like sort of the line is going in the right direction or are there still lots of sort of challenges we need to be aware of? >> Obviously, this study shows that things have been going in the right direction in London and that's really because of quite bold action. I mean you will probably remember back in 2019 when ul was being introduced there was huge huge push back and we have to give all credit to Sadi Khan and the mayor's office for really pushing through and acting on the evidence and not being swayed by the loudest voices. Um this shows that public health interventions on clean air work but that we have to be bold because actually this study showed uh in the time frame of this study which was four years the uh Luton also brought in some um interventions to try and reduce air pollution but they didn't bring in you know a huge intervention like the like the clean air zone and so there was some improvement in Luton but it was much much less and what we know is that when we if we want to see big um improvements in health then we have to make big policy changes. We have to make big changes in the environment in which we live. >> And is is your message that the whole of the UK should become an ultra- low emission zone or I suppose just a builtup areas or what would you sort of propose where should we go from here? Let's say >> I think uh there's lots of places we could go and we should go. You know, this should really spur us on to say not only did we know this was the right thing, but we now have evidence to show that we can materially improve children's lives. a whole generation of children will instead of growing up with stunted lung growth and storing up health problems for years into adulthood. We've now given them the opportunity to really start life well. There are lots of things that we still need to work on in London. That would particularly be phasing out domestic wood burning which is still a big contributor to air pollution in our cities and then we need to act on lots of things. So other aspects of road pollution, uh diesel cars are still all over the place. um having cheaper and accessible public transport and really just getting off fossil fuels which is what we need to do for the climate crisis as well and that will improve our health really very quickly as we've seen in this study just four years made a dramatic difference and we need to take that further. >> Dr. Smith, thank you so much for for joining me. Really really really um interesting stuff. I've learned a lot. >> Okay, I'm glad I'm glad to be of help. Now, I knew there would be a comment saying, "Stupid question, Michael, when I asked the one about asthma." But, I mean, I would like to say I was just sort of asking a stupid question in case anyone in the audience didn't know, but I also actually didn't know, so maybe it was a fair enough comment. In late June, eight defendants alleged to have been involved in a Palestine action break-in at an Elbit weapon site near Bristol stood trial at the Old Bailey in London. Um Ian Sanders, William Plasto, Alexandra Herbik, Toto Hocha, Hannah Davidson, Ulia Brigadova, and Maline Norman were all charged with violent disorder and criminal damage in relation to that action. Um despite none having been present at the Elbert site when it happened. Um William Plau was acquitted of the violent disorder charge during the trial. Um today though the jury has returned no verdict on all the remaining charges against the seven meaning it was unable to find them guilty of of anything of any of the charges. Um the prosecutor in the case had alleged that the seven so sort of part of what's known as a filter 25 helped plan the action. So, they weren't there, but they're saying they were the allegation was that they were involved. Um, and that they compiled an equipment list, undertook undertook, sorry, reconnaissance, um, purchased items used by others, and coordinated the break-in and its filming. Um, all seven had previously been charged with aggravated burglary as well, but were formally acquitted of that charge in February this year after a jury cleared the six activists who actually broke into Elbert, or who were actually alleged to have broken into Elbit, I should say, um, of that charge during their first trial. Now, in this latest court case, um all defendants denied any wrongdoing and after 37 hours of deliberation, the jury was unable to find the seven of them guilty of anything. It means that the case found it collapsed. There might be a retrial. We don't know. Now, according to the Filton Defense Committee, during that deliberation, this is the key bit, the jury also asked the court whether the defendants would be sentenced as terrorists if they returned a guilty verdict. Now, the judge, we understand, replied that it was a matter for him to consider and not for the jury to worry about. But the fact the jury thought that was a relevant question really is notable. So, back in June, a judge sentenced four Palestine action activists who had been found guilty of criminal damage at the Filton site as terrorists. Now, that was after he found a terror connection in their offenses. So, the judge found that, but during that trial, the jury had not been informed that that could be a possibility. and reporting restrictions at the time meant it could not become public knowledge that defendants might be sentenced as terrorists if they returned a guilty verdict. Now, we speculated at the time that the jury might have felt more than a little deceived by that, right? So, they thought they were finding um these defendants guilty of criminal damage or whatever it was, but it turns out that what they had condemned those people to ultimately was terrorism, even though they didn't know at the time. Um, so could it be that members of this particular jury read about that prior case and are now refusing to play ball? Um, Steven, you are our resident expert on Palestine action and actually all things legal. You're much better at this than me. You're more sort of you're better at the details. Um, what's happened here? Is this the case that the jury have fought? We've seen in the past that you asked a jury to find if this person was guilty of criminal damage and then afterwards, unbeknownst to us, you slapped on a terrorism element to it and they went to prison for much longer than we could have imagined. >> I mean, I think that's that's potentially really really likely. I mean, it was very widely reported um after the the guilty verdicts had been handed down in the original um Filton case of the to the four of them of criminal damage that the judge was going to consider a terror connection. And at that same time, reporting restrictions were lifted, which meant that um it could be revealed that, you know, that had been known about throughout the trial by the defendants, for example, but not by the jury. In fact, people were not allowed to talk about it um either in public or in or or in the court. Um, and obviously there's a connection between that case and this case. Um, you know, so that could that's plausible. But I think what the jury what I actually find interesting about the jury asking this question is that I think it indicates something very crucial to justice in this country, which is a breakdown of trust between juries and the judiciary. You know, it's now the case that a jury understands that it's possible that in some cases they could be asked to find someone guilty of a particular ordinary criminal charge only to find that what they've done is through their decision sentence them to much longer and much harsher terms in prison because independently of that decision, the judge find it finds a terror connection. And you know, it's not it this is not something that nobody ever thought about. I mean, lots of times on this show, I've talked about a House of Lords debate that happened um at the time that the law that involves terror connections um of for for for you know, lesser crimes came in, which was around 2020. um where this liberal democrat lord was saying, you know, we're going to have this situation if we apply this in this country where juries will just be deceived about what it is that they're doing when they think they are earnestly hearing a case which has a particular limited charge with a particular sentence attached to it. >> Um and so that's one consequence of um what what might happen here. There's another interesting consequence I think um which is to do with something that I don't know if you've ever heard of this before. It's called Hoffman's Bargain. >> Oh god, I've never heard of that before. >> Okay, so in 2003 um five people broke into the Fairford air force base ahead of um you know shock and in the beginning of the Iraq war where there were American B-52 jets. Um, two of them broke in at one on one occasion and they managed to slash fuel uh, you know, pipes on fuel on fuel supply uh, lines. They managed to u break equipment and and um, you know, meters and dashboards and things like that. On another occasion, two people tried to get in and and they were caught. And then a third person, a fifth person rather, tried to get in and he was carrying petroleum mixed with with uh very washing liquid and a box of matches cuz he planned to set the wheels of the of the B-52s on fire. Um now that case uh was a case of direct action where you know at that point there was a lot of uh suspicion uh not unfounded suspicion that the war that Britain was go about to undertake with the US was illegal and so they tried to use as a defense that uh they were actually trying to stop an illegal war before they even got into the criminal courts. that was heard by appeals courts and eventually even got to the house of the house of lords where one K star um represented one of those Fairford activists um in trying to push through the idea that stopping an illegal war was a legitimate legal defense for the the criminal damage. Now the House of Lords decided it wasn't. There was a lot of political pressure at the time as well because the attorney general certainly did not want to release the legal advice he'd received over u the Iraq war. Um, so the House of Lords found that they they they couldn't use this defense. >> Sorry to interrupt. This is so if anyone's Why was this going to the House of Lords? That's because the Supreme Court didn't yet exist and that used to be the highest court used to be the House of Lords. >> Quite right. Exactly. I should have I should have said that. >> So anyway, in the House of Lords, they decid they they they declined to allow them to use this this offense of um the illegality of the Iraq war. And in in the ruling that came out from the lords who were involved, one of them, Lord Hoffman, sort of described what he took to be a kind of pact between direct actionists and um the the state, which was that, you know, direct actionists, you know, could display um through, you know, criminal damage or crimes their conscience um on on the one hand, but on the other hand, uh the courts would be lenient on the condition that those were admitted what they'd done. They were open to the fact that that what they they had done it for these reasons of conscience and they didn't you know they weren't afraid of declaring that and that is a kind of bargain that has sort of more or less stood although it's been diminished of late but it's now totally diminished. So in the Filton 4 trial, one of the things that the judges said, the judge said there in his sentencing once he'd found the terror connection was that he held it against them that they hadn't admitted to what they'd done, that they hadn't just said, you know, I admit to criminal damage. I mean, they admitted to all sorts of things, but they didn't admit to the charges. But of course, if you know that there's a terror connection hanging over your head, >> why would you admit to anything? Because you're not just admitting to the charge. Just as the jury is not just finding you guilty of the charge, you're admitting to something much greater that you are in some way not guilty of a terrorist crime but connected to terrorism which carries aggravating factors. And you know why would anyone admit that? What? So that bargain is completely out of out of thrown completely out of the window in that case. Um so yes two broken bargains I think. one indicated by this question between jurors and the judiciary and the other a much more fundamental bargain around what the proper way to treat direct actionist is in this country. >> And so this case ended with sort of no verdict. Um which presumably means the Crown Prosecution Service might try and have a retrial. >> Yeah. Um, and I suppose is there a way that they can sort of try and have a jewelry that doesn't know about all this terrorist connection stuff or is it is this because this is a widely known news story. I don't think they can block someone because they've, you know, read the guardian or whatever. Um, so this this could potentially make it very difficult to charge Palestine action or or at least get them convicted because there'll be someone on the jury who says, "I'm not quite sure about what's going on here." >> We just don't know. And it's true, but you know, they just don't know. Um and I think that that yeah will will make it um more more more difficult. Um I mean it seems like without without a doubt. >> The other the other thing that keeps um sort of shocking me whenever I read it is these people they they haven't been found not guilty or at least of all the charges. So they there's been no verdict. So they're not cleared yet. Um but they they might be and they've already spent a really long time in prison. So some of these people which so they're char they weren't there. They're charged with maybe having some involvement in the planning of this action and they've been in prison for over 12 months many of them although they're out now aren't they? But they've spent a lot of time in prison. >> Yeah they were so many many of them were were bailed when the first Filton 6 um trial collapsed uh when the aggravated burglary charge was was um when when they were all formally acquitted of it. Um but yes they spent the ones the seven who the juries have had has found no verdicts on today spent between I think 15 and 18 months on remand in prison. Um and not just you know and they were also all um you know arrested during dawn raids by counterterrorist police and you know like if you read some of the reporting on the trial like you know the charges put to some of them are that they they cooked a meal for one of the people who who broke into into the the Elbert site or that they gave one of them who was acquitted a lift somewhere. You know really the the you know obviously I'm you know the whole the whole I haven't been following the whole case. have just been reading reading bits of the reporting today. Um it it's you know it's there are other reasons why the jury it seems might have been doubtful about about um these charges. >> Um let's look at another well it's not a court this is a decision coming up isn't it? Because on Friday um we will see a judge considering whether there is a terror connection in another Palestine action case. So, five activists here were found guilty of criminal damage in July. And that was after causing an alleged £200,000 worth of damage to a Barclay's bank branch in Burnley in August 2024 when they sprayed the storefront with red paint and splintered some windows. Now, I know lots of people looking at the damage, was that really £220,000? But anyway, they've been found guilty of the criminal damage. Um, however, in that case, the question of whether there was a terrorism connection was raised by the judge himself. interestingly unprompted by the prosecution. So sort of the the the defendants were found guilty. The prosecution hadn't even mentioned it and then the judge thinks maybe there was also some terrorism going on here. Um that was again after the convictions were secured. Um so what's going on here? I mean how big a difference would it make if presumably these I mean I imagine they're already in custody. Are they these ones if they've been found guilty or >> No, I think I I I'm not sure. I think they're on they're on they're on bail pending sentence. >> And how big a difference would it make here if the judge does decide there was a terrorist connection? >> You know, it's like it's actually really impossible to say because there are so many factors that go into sentencing and then go into the level of aggravation caused by a terror connection if one is found. But there are some things that you know certainly are true that you know if you're if terror connection is found in your in in in your offense then you're subject to uh monitoring for a really long time once you've finished your sentence. You're also having to report things like new relationships, new phone numbers, moving home for a serious period of time. um if you're in custody um you're treated within the the prison complex or prison system as someone who has a terror conviction which means that you're treated very differently from the general population in lots of ways you know it's a very significant thing to find and I think one of the really interesting things about this is that you know the terror act when it talks about criminal damage um in relation to when it's defining terrorism it's serious criminal it's serious criminal damage and the question here is whether you know in the Filton for case I think it was estimated around a million pounds or something like that. In this case, we're talking about, you know, a fifth of that. Um, what counts as serious is >> I think we've talked about this before on the show where there was a there was a debate in the House of Commons when the terrorism act was first being passed where there were MPs who had sort of objected to criminal damage being included as possible terrorism. And then I think whoever was speaking for the government said look we clearly can think of sort of um scenarios where attacking property could be terrorism. Think about if they attacked the electricity infrastructure for example or you know poison the water supply. that they were making the argument like no there there it is possible that you could have property damage that looks like terrorism and that is true but now they are >> a shop front >> a shop front that that's not terrorism >> shop with spray paint and and and splintered windows you know that's um nobody imagines that that is an could could possibly be an act of terrorism >> yeah and maybe now that is undermining these cases because juries are thinking well I don't want to find them guilty of criminal damage if I think that they could end up then being called a terrorist because it doesn't make any sense >> yeah Um, brilliant. Thank you for that update. I'm always so enlightened when you come and tell me about the latest in these court cases. Do my best. >> I learn about Palestine action. I learn about how the legal system works. I love it. >> Our final, it's not really a story sort of before we go. Um, as you'll know sort of from watching our coverage over the past week. Um, there's been lots of sort of consideration, reflection going on um about the the tragic um passing of of Jason Arday um and how Navara did or didn't report on that um in the runup to it. and also people's social media behavior and obviously you heard from Aaron Bastani yesterday. Um I know Steven you've been going through some emails that have been sent to us um which you've said lots of them are sort of very thoughtful and interesting and you wanted to talk about them a little bit now. >> Yeah I do. Um yeah, so I've been going through complaints that we've received um about our courage, our coverage through um the inbox. Um and these are some of the most sort of beautiful considered, careful, but also really critical emails um that I think I've ever read. Um I'm taking um significant time to compose equally um thoughtful and careful um responses to them. Um if you have emailed uh you will get a reply. It is just taking me some time to to to go to go through them all and and really put put together answers that I think are uh going to be satisfying to to the issues that you raise. And I'm also not going to be deflecting some of the issues that you raise either. Um, and I think through like reading these emails, you know, a couple of themes have arisen and you know, I think probably maybe not, but probably we're coming to the end now of this kind of on air uh reflection, this practice of reflection over what what our coverage was like. Um, but that doesn't mean that it's going to be the end of it because um where there were going to be many discussions through our editorial processes amongst you know the the team here at Navara. Uh there's also going to be I'm sure discussions in our chapel which is the union here at Navara because there are many many workers here who you don't see on screen um of all kinds who also have views about what has happened um and that will be a space where where that will be discussed as well and some of the issues that you know just to draw out some themes that have have come up in the mailbox you know there are questions about you know whether our coverage really adheres to um our editorial code um where we describe our three core values as a commitment to emancipatory politics, honesty, and integrity with self-reflection. Uh there have also been uh questions raised around um our claim to do fact-based journalism. not not necessarily um attacks on you know saying that stuff that we did was non-factual but rather the question of you know there are lots of facts and what which ones you give prominence to and which ones you don't is also part of telling a journalistic story and there are questions about how these two things intersect together as well I think that's all uh really really wonderful emails and I I really really thank you for sending them in and I think what I found in them is a kind of like critical grace um which I think is really in short reply and and I thank you for it. But another thing that has come up is of course um some of you may know a piece that that I wrote um a cult and um I would like to say something about that. Now I've I've uh written it down. I don't want to get it wrong. Um, so I want to start by offering, you know, my really very serious sincerest apologies to Professor Jason Aldiday's family, his friends and supporters for this piece that I wrote. I also want to apologize to you, our audience. Um, and I wish I could apologize to Jason, but but that sadly is is is not possible. In the week before Jason Arde tragically died, um, I wrote a cortado. That piece contained many failures of judgment. and I I want to list them in in some detail here. The first is that I was led by the tone of the cortado which is supposed to be ironic and spiky rather than by the topic which really required um sincerity and care. And this showed I think a failure on my part to respect Jason's humanity as a vulnerable man at the center of um a media onslaught. The point of the piece that I wrote ultimately was to try to argue that even if the allegations around elements of of Dr. to our day's personal biography were true. The unending coverage just wasn't in any way warranted in the light of other currently urgent stories as well as previous stories about much more serious and actual deception of the British public. I also in that piece pointed out the terrible consequences that the story would have inevitably for other black scholars who who remained seriously underrepresented in academia. But my my second failure and a real one real failure was that in trying to make those points I really gave far far too much weight to the allegations being made around Jason and as a result I I treated them and I treated him glibly, frivolously and and callously. My third failure was that I attributed the cause of the media onslaught to it being the so-called August silly season. I think that was lazy and it was benal and it meant I dodged the harder topic of discussing the racist animous behind much of the obsessive reporting uh which was at that point I think obvious damning is is that the week before I'd written about the farright exploiting events in Seut to spin racist conspiracy theories to their audiences. So somehow I was able to recognize when this was happening abroad but not at home when the target was someone who was in in more than one way nearby to me. So as I said we at Navar are currently having conversations um excuse me both internally and in public about our coverage of this story. I believe that my contribution in the cultardo was of no value at all indeed of negative value. On Monday, Ash published a reflective piece on the racism that fueled the campaign against Arday. And she ends it by saying this. If, as Andy Bernham says, Jason Arde's death is a moment for reflection, I can't say say I'm wholly comfortable with what I found in the mirror, a journalist who's just as capable of callousness as anybody else. Now, an image in the mirror is a fleeting image. The image of me also as a journalist capable of great callousness is now permanently on the page. It's one that I can't escape. And I think that's right. I think that's a necessity to ensure that I never make such grave and irresponsible errors of judgment again. And I hope one I hope that it will allow me to help others also to avoid them in the future. And I want you to know that I really value little higher than my genderistic reputation and the trust of our audience. I know that it's now very damaged and all I can do is my best to rebuild is it. So this is only the beginning of a personal apology. The rest will come, I hope, in the quality of my work as we go forward. >> Thank you for that, Steven. And I mean as I mean as it's very very clear to all of our audience, this is something you've been thinking like incredibly, you know, seriously about and that you feel very deeply and, you know, thank you for being so so open there. Um, we we're going to wrap up tonight's show. Um, we'll be back tomorrow, of course. Thank you so much for for watching. For now, you've been watching Nvar Media. Good night.