By Fiona Heslam
Background to date
In September 2024 a legal challenge to the highly controversial new coal mine at Whitehaven was successful. Mr Justice Holgate decided to quash the permission for the mine on four grounds.
Very many involved in opposing the mine breathed a huge sigh of relief thinking that this would finally be an end to the matter. A few of the more cynical campaigners wondered if this would actually be the last that they would hear of West Cumbria Mining.
Fast forward to August 2025 and headlines appeared in various online publications indicating that the investors behind the failed Cumbria coal mine project are being represented in their efforts to sue the UK government by a serving Conservative MP.
How can the investors sue the UK government?
The Singaporean firm, Woodhouse Investment Pte Ltd, whose parent company is based or domiciled in the Cayman Islands (a tax haven) has now filed something called an Investor-State Dispute Settlement [ISDS] claim against the UK Government using provisions in the 50 year old 1975 UK-Singapore Bilateral Investment Treaty.
ISDS claims are brought in private tribunals – completely outside of our country’s domestic court system. There is no obligation on tribunals to publish their decisions. If a government settles a claim there may be no publicly available record – which means that there is no scrutiny!
Let me be very clear; regardless of the outcome, this legal action by those behind West Cumbria Mining will cost money and will be paid for by UK taxpayers. There is no limit to the amount of damages that a tribunal can award against governments, which can run to hundreds of millions and even billions of pounds.
With this type of case, even where cases are successfully defended, the government (or us!) must pay the high legal costs involved. Following the legal judgement, rather than simply walking away from the West Cumbria mine project, the intention now seems to be to try and screw money out of the UK as a whole.
Why this matters
There is a curious irony that I am sitting at a table in West Cumbria writing a blog for Fuel Poverty Action. Why so?
Well, back in 1954 Lewis Straus, the US Atomic Energy Commission Chairman predicted that nuclear energy would make electricity too cheap to meter. A neighbour of mine remembers exactly this being said about the energy produced at Sellafield – just along the coast from the proposed mine site.
We all know that this particular forecast has not aged well. Had the prediction been correct there would surely be very little fuel poverty, yet we all know that far too many households in this area have to make a choice between eating and heating.
Statistics about fuel poverty in Cumbria make for depressing reading. The latest estimates tell us that 104,195 households in Cumbria are in fuel poverty (spending more than 10% of their income on energy). Of these 38,243 are in extreme fuel poverty (spending more than 20% of income on energy) and as many as 20,000 may be in such deep trouble that they won’t use central heating this winter.1
The Cumbrian statistics are slightly worse than the national average because in addition to income, housing types in Cumbria can be more difficult than in other areas to retrofit which would improve energy efficiency.
Reflections
Over recent decades the part of the West Cumbrian coastline which extends between Maryport and Millom been branded as ‘Britain’s Energy Coast’.
In a 2017 paper a company called Dragongate talked about ‘cold spots of deprivation’ in the area labelled as Britain’s Energy Coast. Alleviating one literal cold spot of deprivation, namely fuel poverty, by retrofitting would seem to be a very sensible use of taxpayer’s money.
Instead, in the ‘best case’ scenario, money will be used to pay for the legal expense caused by this bid by a company whose roots lie in a tax haven.
The worst case scenario will be that the investors behind West Cumbria Mining will be rewarded by vast sums of compensation.
What you can do
The campaign group Global Justice Now (GJN) is gathering signatures on a petition urging the UK Government not to continue inserting ISDS into its trade and investment deals.
GJN also have a link to a template email which you can use to email your MP to ask them to help stop companies suing over climate action. Every email counts and if you can customise your email this individual approach is even more powerful.
Fiona Heslam is a retired maths teacher who now enjoys long distance cycling. Fiona established, and is now the Membership Secretary for, a community food club called the Village Larder which runs from Great Clifton Village Hall in West Cumbria.
- These figures are from the End Fuel poverty Coalition and were obtained in September 2025. ↩︎
