Former government net zero tsar Chris Skidmore has called on the new Labour administration to immediately publish the evidence and rationale provided to ministers before they approved a new “net zero” coal mine in Whitehaven, Cumbria.

Former Conservative MP Skidmore, who authored a landmark report on net zero in 2023, is acting as a witness in a court case brought on behalf of Democracy for Sale that challenges the continued government secrecy around the granting of planning permission for the Whitehaven mine. The case is due to be heard later this summer. 

“Accountability and transparency must be at the heart of all decision-making processes in the future, particularly when it comes to delivering on our own net zero commitments,” Skidmore told Democracy for Sale.

“There is no such thing as a new net zero coal mine and ministers simply shouldn’t have been allowed to abuse the terminology of net zero by claiming something that was palpably false,” added Skidmore, who resigned as a Tory MP in January 2024 over former prime minister Rishi Sunak’s backtracking on key climate targets.

Skidmore has urged the new government to release the evidence given to his former colleague Michael Gove before he gave the go-ahead to the project, which is the UK’s first deep coal mine in more than 30 years. 

The proposed mine would extract 2.8 million tonnes of coking coal a year from under the Irish Sea to produce steel, emitting an estimated 220 millions tonnes of greenhouse gases over its lifetime.

The mine has become a political flashpoint in discussions over the UK’s commitment to reach net zero by 2050. In 2021, the International Energy Agency concluded that any new fossil fuel extraction was incompatible with global decarbonisation targets.

Since being elected on 4 July, Labour has signalled that it wants to halt the coal mine. Angela Rayner, Gove’s successor as secretary of state for housing, communities and local government, chose not to defend the scheme from a legal challenge by Friends of the Earth, and South Lakes Action on Climate Change that was heard last week.

The future of the mine is now in serious doubt after Rayner spoke of an “error in law” during the approval process. But the “need for full transparency and accountability around the extraordinary decision” remains strong, Skidmore said. 

WCM Resources, the mining firm given the planning permission, continued to claim in the High Court that Whitehaven would be a “unique net zero” mine. WCM is headquartered in Sussex but controlled by EMR Capital, an international private equity firm with a base in the Cayman Islands. 

WCM Resources claims that the mine will be built and run using green transport and electricity, and that constructing the mine in the UK will substitute coal mined in other parts of the world.

However, the government’s own research has said there is “high certainty” that there will be no demand for the coking coal set to be produced by the mine, due to the steel industry’s transition to green energy.

Last year, Democracy for Sale used access to information laws to ask for the publication of the ‘ministerial submission’ – the evidence and rationale for approving the mine – given to Gove before he approved the scheme.

Democracy for Sale has now launched legal proceedings at the Information Tribunal under Environmental Information Regulations after the government refused to release the documents. 

Numerous experts and politicians have criticised the previous Conservative government’s decision to grant a licence to the Whitehaven coal mine.

Tory peer Lord Deben, the former chairman of the Climate Change Committee, which advises the government on its net zero policies, branded the coal mine’s approval as “absolutely indefensible”. He said the decision “would damage the UK’s leadership on climate change”.

Lord Adair Turner has called it “climate vandalism and economic incompetence on a scale difficult to believe”. 

The Times also revealed that the inspector who recommended the Whitehaven mine’s approval is a former miner “who has spoken of his anguish at pit closures.”

The Department for Housing, Communities and Local Government declined to comment on the record.

This article was originally published on the Democracy for Sale Substack