Brown has performed public U-turn on nuclear power, says Greenpeace

The environmental group sent a letter to the Prime Minister last week in response to comments made during Parliament Questions supporting nuclear power despite earlier promises for a full public consultation.

The letter from Greenpeace asked Gordon Brown to “immediately and unreservedly withdraw the government’s decision to support the building of a new generation of nuclear power stations.”

This comes after a ruling earlier this year from a High Court deciding that no Government decision to support new nuclear power stations can lawfully be made before a public consultation has been carried out.

“Brown has ridden roughshod over a High Court decision,” said John Sauven, Greenpeace director. “And, by publicly stating that he’d already come to a decision while carrying out what is now very obviously a sham consultation, he’s acted unlawfully.”

The Greenpeace letter to Gordon Brown said that in his judgment of 15th February 2007, Mr Justice Sullivan gave ‘declaratory relief to the effect that there had been a breach of…expectation to the fullest public consultation on the future of nuclear power; that the consultation process which led to the decision in July 2006 was procedurally unfair; and that therefore the decision in the Energy review that nuclear new build “has a role to play…” was unlawful.’

A statement from Number 10 Downing Street declared: “The government has decided in principle that businesses should be able to build new nuclear power stations…[and] that the final decision will be made after consultation.”

Greenpeace director, John Sauven, said: “Brown said he’d be a different kind of leader, that he’d listen to the British public, but after just a week in power he’s said he doesn’t care what people think about nuclear power, he’s going for it regardless. We thought we’d seen the back of this kind of politics when Tony Blair left office.”

The letter sent last week demanded a reply from Gordon Brown by today, Friday, July 13.

Dana Gornitzki