Barrister fined £5,000 for contempt of court over leak of Heathrow Airport expansion ruling

An activist lawyer found in contempt of court for deliberately leaking a Supreme Court judgment on the expansion of Heathrow Airport has been fined £5,000.

Tim Crosland, director of environmental campaigning organisation Plan BEarth, broke the customary embargo on the court’s ruling last December, revealing the outcome in advance of the official hand-down.

He called the action “an act of civil disobedience”, and told judges today he believes going to prison would be “a tiny price to pay to get the truth out there”.

The Attorney General brought proceedings against Crosland - who remains unrepentant and claims he was “blowing the whistle” - with Lords Lloyd-Jones, Hamblen and Stephens today finding the qualified barrister in criminal contempt of court.

At a hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice, Crosland was spared a spell in prison as judges punished him with a £5,000 fine.

Lord Lloyd-Jones called his actions “deliberate and calculating”, having the effect of interfering with the court’s proceedings.

The judges concluded there is “no such thing as a justifiable Contempt of Court”.

The Supreme Court was poised last December to decide whether the government’s approval for airport expansion had been unlawful, in light of its commitment to tackling climate change.

The judges ultimately concluded that the Paris agreement that ministers had signed up did not prevent them giving the green light to the Third Runway.

Ahead of today’s hearing Crosland argued: “The Government knew the consequences of breaching that limit would be devastating for all our young people, for the global south, and they kept that information away from public view in order to smooth the progress of the £14-billion project to expand Heathrow Airport, and so I decided to blow the whistle.”

Aidan Eardley, for the Attorney General, told the court Crosland had refused to remove his embargo-busting statement from Twitter, and the news then “spread like wildfire”.

Mr Eardley said Crosland had shown “willful defiance to the authority of the court”.

Crosland, representing himself, said he believed the information on climate change “was being deliberately suppressed from the public domain”, and he sought to use the “spotlight of publicity” by leaking the judgment to highlight it.

He concluded: “My sole intention was to counter the Government’s interference with the democratic process, by the deliberate suppression of vital information concerning the dangers of Heathrow expansion.

“The Attorney General prosecutes me for highlighting the Government’s dishonesty and climate hypocrisy in the year of Cop26.

“It’s the classic case of retribution against the whistleblower by those attempting to conceal their own guilt.”

Court judgments in the Supreme Court and High Court are traditionally circulated in advance to both sides in the dispute, to allow for corrections and amendments that might be needed.

The lawyers are bound by a duty to keep the ruling confidential until it has been formally “handed down” by judges.

Crosland sent a statement to the Press Association in advance of the Heathrow ruling. In sentencing today, the judges called his protest a “futile gesture” as the ruling was published online by the court less than 24 hours later.

He could have been punished with up to two years in prison for contempt.

Read More

British Museum experts help return rare smuggled sculpture to Libya

Portugal holiday bookings ‘through the roof’ as gov reveals green list

Travel bosses criticise ‘cautious’ approach to foreign trips