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Hi John,
We told them so – and it’s happened. The UK has just been sued via corporate courts, for halting a coal mine.(1)
We’ve been calling on the government to scrap Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) trade rules for years, to stop exactly this eventuality: fossil fuel companies suing us over necessary climate action.
The now-abandoned Cumbria mine, the UK's first new major coal mine in decades, was railed against by environmental campaigners. It was quashed by the UK’s high court last year, ruled unlawful due to its climate impacts.(2) At a time when we should be rapidly leaving fossil fuels behind, stopping it was so clearly the right call.
But because the UK hasn’t removed corporate courts from its trade deals, foreign investors have the power to threaten it in secretive tribunals, and pass the losses from their dirty, outdated projects onto the taxpayer. This has to be a wake-up call.
With the risk now realised before their eyes, can you help us tell the government to finally scrap corporate courts?
Tell the UK: call time on corporate courts ([link removed])
The West Cumbria Mining company is using the UK-Singapore investment treaty to sue the UK government, enjoying its chain of holding companies and ultimate owners registered overseas in Singapore to make use of corporate courts.
To add to the scandal, the lawyer representing them is former attorney general Geoffrey Cox – a sitting Conservative MP lined up to make a killing for helping foreign investors penalise his own government's climate policy.(3)
UK ministers can no longer deny that this regime of corporate privilege has a knife to the throat of our climate action. But they do have the power to disarm fossil fuel firms of their secret weapon, if they only drop ISDS from trade deals.
Tell the UK: call time on corporate courts ([link removed])
Thank you for being with us in our long campaign against corporate courts – this is a watershed moment.
In solidarity,
Cleodie Rickard
Trade campaigner at Global Justice Now
1. UK taxpayers on hook as failed Cumbria coalmine investors sue government ([link removed]) , The Guardian, 11 August 2025
2. Mining firm withdraws plan for UK’s first deep coalmine in 30 years ([link removed]) , The Guardian, 4 April 2025
3. Geoffrey Cox made £800,000 at law firm that helps rich companies sue poor states ([link removed]) , Open Democracy, 10 November 2021
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