A Reform-led council is thought to have become the first in the UK to rescind its climate emergency declaration, a move condemned as “a very dark day” for the authority.
Durham county council, which has had an overwhelming Reform majority since the May local elections, passed a motion to rescind a declaration made in 2019 More than 300 local authorities have declared a climate emergency.
It voted instead to declare a County Durham care emergency, a move described as “cynical and insulting” by the Liberal Democrat councillor Mark Wilkes.
He said there was a financial case as well as an environmental case for keeping the declaration.
Wilkes said the council’s climate action had helped save more than £13m in the last year alone. He added that stopping work on tackling the climate crisis would risk the loss of external funding. It “risked less money to invest in social care,” he said. “This is not an either, or.”
During a sometimes fractious and bad-tempered debate on Wednesday, the Reform council leader Andrew Husband said the authority was now driven by data and common sense.
“During the Roman-occupied era not far away from County Durham, around 45AD, there is evidence of Roman vineyards along Hadrian’s Wall. This is because the Roman period in Britain is known for having a relatively warm climate which would have been conducive to growing grapes. Mind, how the climate has changed,” he said.
Kenny Hope, a Reform councillor, accused the Lib Dems of being in favour of adult and child slave labour. He said the mining of material for lithium batteries was “rife with child slavery” as was the production of solar panels in China.
“I do not believe in child or adult slave labour and I believe the guys on this side of the house also do not believe in it. But I believe the guys on the other side must believe in adult or child slave labour because they have not took that into consideration,” he said.
Darren Grimes, a former GB News presenter, prolific tweeter and now deputy leader of the council, proposed the motion and accused his opponents of wanting to make local residents “colder and poorer … shame. Shame. Shame.”
He said Durham was done “with expensive virtue-signalling tripe” and said the 2019 declaration was “a feel-good” one chasing “net-zero rainbows while the likes of China belch out coal more than Sauron’s Mordor.”
Afterwards, Jonathan Elmer, one of the council’s two Green members, described some of what he heard in the debate as “bonkers”.
He said the vote represented “a very dark day” for the council. “Eighty per cent of the population do believe in the climate emergency and want to do something about it. Durham has an administration that doesn’t. They’ve got a head in the sand, don’t look up approach,” Elmer said.
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Wilkes said he was concerned for his nine-year-old son. “I want to know he can grow up and live in a country and on a planet that is safe. There is a personal aspect to everything, isn’t there?”
On Monday, the energy secretary, Ed Miliband, warned MPs about the climate crisis, saying he would explicitly call out politicians who rejected net zero policies for betraying future generations.
The duration of the Durham council debate was short because of rules limiting it to 30 minutes. A move by Wilkes to have a fuller debate was voted down by Reform.
The rules also meant there was no time for another motion by Grimes to strengthen what he described as free speech protections in the code of conduct for elected members.
Before the debate, about 200 protesters gathered outside county hall with banners and placards highlighting the climate crisis.
“Reform is asking you bury your head in the sand,” read one. “Our children need a healthy world,” said another.