Help stop dangerous climate change
Greenpeace's QC listed all the other European countries that had put
forward sites under the Habitats Directive beyond 12 miles offshore.
The judge interrupted him as he was doing this and asked the Government
and the oil companies representatives' QCs whether they disagreed with
Greenpeace on what these other countries were doing.
The Government QC Eleanor Sharpstone said that they didn't know whether
they agreed or disagreed with Greenpeace and said she would have to wait
for an instruction from the Government for further clarification. She
also said that she was happy for Greenpeace to take 'comfort', as she
put it, in this argument but couldn't really see why we were raising it.
Greenpeace's QC Nigel Pleming responded by saying that presumably there
was some relevance to the Government's original argument because, after
all, all he was doing was responding to the Government's claim that no
other European countries had put sites forward and said that of course
we took comfort from the fact that other European countries were doing
exactly what we thought the UK should be doing - and exactly what the
European Commission thought they were doing - in applying the Habitats
Directive beyond 12 miles offshore.
