Revealed: Michael Gove Threw Money at a Broke Council to Crush Climate Protest

Former levelling up minister Michael Gove signed off giving a cash-strapped council £188,000 to spend on high-paid lawyers in an anti-protest crackdown, even as it made swinging cuts to services, Novara Media can reveal.

The injunction prohibits protests at several fuel terminals and petrol stations in Thurrock, Essex. The Navigator fuel terminal, the Esso fuel terminal on London Road, and Exolum Storage are all subject to the injunction, as well as the Oikos fuel terminal on Canvey Island and Thames Oilport in Stanford-le-Hope.

In April 2022, activists from Just Stop Oil glued themselves to oil tankers and tunnelled under access roads, as they looked to protest the government giving out new oil licences and tried to disrupt the flow of petrol across south-east England. Essex police arrested 461 people and claimed that policing these protests cost them £1m. In March, Thurrock council sought an injunction against the protesters alongside Essex county council.

Both public bodies and private companies can obtain injunctions and can be targeted against named individuals and “persons unknown”, meaning anyone who might want to protest at a location. There has been a significant increase in their use in recent years, with a BBC File on 4 investigation finding there were civil injunctions designed to restrict protest in force at 1,200 locations across the country last year.

Thurrock council currently has debts of £867m and these are projected to rise to £1.015bn by the end of 2025-26. The council ran up what has been described as the “largest budget deficit in local government history” as business deals involving huge sums of public money went disastrously wrong.

Thurrock raised council tax by 5% for 2025-26, and approved increases of 8% and 9.9% in the two years previously. It has also cut services, due to its financial situation. The council cut a hardship fund in 2024, a £616,000 programme designed to help people deal with the cost of living crisis, and axed £126,000 from its budget for youth services in 2023.

Despite its parlous financial state, the local authority has been able to enlist leading London law firms to represent it in the High Court as it has sought to limit protests at oil infrastructure.

Raj Chada, head of crime at law firm Hodge Jones & Allen, who has represented over 50 Just Stop Oil protestors, said: “The use of injunctions has become a widespread attempt to suppress the right to protest and arguably an act of totalitarianism. This misuse of injunctions has been condemned by the UN Special Rapporteur, who has urged the government to act to protect a citizen’s rights to free speech.”

A freedom of information (FOI) request by Novara Media reveals documents which show that the council received support from Michael Gove, who awarded it £187,838 on 28 March 2024. The day before, Thurrock council had sought to extend its injunction against climate protesters at the High Court. The injunction was sought against 222 named climate activists and “persons unknown”, meaning anyone wanting to protest near named sites in Thurrock and the county of Essex.

Alongside other climate protesters, Charles Phillip Laurie was arrested for blocking a road in front of the Navigator oil terminal in Thurrock on 2 April 2022. He was held in custody for 16 hours and then released with strict bail conditions, which banned him from entering Essex for six months.

Rather than signing an agreement to never protest in Essex again, Laurie went to the High Court to challenge the injunction, a case he ultimately lost. He also challenged an injunction by the oil giant Shell designed to stop named climate activists from protesting at Shell petrol stations and key company buildings. Alongside his co-defendant Emma Ireland, Laurie took on the case despite knowing that if he lost, he could be forced to pay Shell’s legal costs.

“I haven’t got much, but I don’t want to be homeless,” he said. “It seems like quite a lot when you can lose everything for participating in a peaceful protest.”

Laurie and Ireland lost the case against the Shell injunction, but the oil company was refused costs. When Laurie heard that news, he said he “collapsed in the dock” with relief.

Friends of the Earth has described “persons unknown” injunctions as “fundamentally unfair” and a breach of human rights and is challenging the use of them at the European Court of Human Rights.

Gove gave the money to Thurrock under section 31 of the Local Government Act 2003, which gives ministers broad powers to provide money to local councils should they incur unexpected costs, often related to housing and education.

S31 is often used to pay for essential services like homeless shelters and school maintenance. However, the legislation gives ministers a lot of room to use s31 as they wish, with the Treasury providing the only oversight. There’s no central record showing how ministers allocated funds under s31 and for what purpose.

Chada said: “Unlike criminal proceedings, you do not have the right to legal aid when the injunction is granted and you could face paying the other side’s costs, which are likely to be hundreds of thousands of pounds.

“You can access legal aid to contest the breach, but you are not allowed to state your defence as to why the injunction should not have been taken out in the first place. The court deems this as something you should have challenged before the breach, despite the issues that prevent you from doing so.

“This leaves local authorities, bankrolled by the government or oil companies, to act without challenge and ultimately succeed in their aim to silence activists and remove the right to protest. I have even seen clients being held to be in breach of an injunction when they didn’t even know that it existed.”

Michael Gove could not be reached for comment.

A spokesperson for Thurrock said the council felt it was appropriate for s31 to be used in this way.

They said: “The injunction does not restrict lawful protest and the council supports everyone’s right to peaceful protest and it considers climate change and net zero to be important concerns to the council and its residents. The injunction’s sole purpose, however, is to prevent unlawful activity through blocking and damaging the public highway.”

The spokesperson justified the government contributing to the legal costs by saying: “The council and its council taxpayers have also had to pay for the costs of repairing the highway.”

Thurrock council has instructed Radcliffe Chambers Services Limited and Shape Pritchard LLP, two powerful central London law firms, to represent it in the High Court. Last August, the council said it had given those two firms £116,337.24 for their work on the injunctions, in response to a FOI request by a member of the public.

Novara Media made another FOI request asking what support the council had received from third parties to pay for legal costs. The council revealed that it had received £187,838 from the then levelling up ministry, authorised by Gove as levelling up secretary.

Gove announced his “levelling up plan for the UK” in 2022, saying that “for decades, too many communities have been overlooked and undervalued. As some areas have flourished, others have been left in a cycle of decline … Levelling up is about ending this historic injustice and calling time on the postcode lottery.”

Since then, high-profile levelling up projects have been hit by rising costs and delays, including a scheme to redevelop parts of the centre of Sheffield.

Gove stood down at the 2025 general election, was made a life peer and became the editor of the rightwing Spectator magazine.

Essex County Council, which sought the injunction alongside Thurrock, has said that it has only spent £43,109 on legal costs related to the injunction. That money was spent “serving the 222 named defendants in the proceedings”.

A spokesperson for Essex county council said: “the injunction does not restrict anyone’s right to carry out lawful protests – it only seeks to stop unlawful behaviour.”

To date, five people have been sentenced for breaching the Essex injunction. Ruth Cook, Joy Corrigan, Stephen Jarvis, and George Oakenfold, all Just Stop Oil activists, were given suspended prison sentences after they sat on the road at Thurrock Motorway Services in Grays, Essex, on 24 August 2022.