The chief of the Metropolitan Police has said he would like to be able to leave anti-fossil fuel protestors hanging from motorway gantries, but that he is not allowed to.
Sir Mark Rowley, who took over as Commissioner of the Met in September, told MPs that he was “completely up” for leaving the activists where they were if they had locked themselves onto motorway gantries.
However, he told the Home Affairs Select Committee that the Highways Agency had decided it was dangerous, because of the risk of distraction, and that it was “their call” to remove the protestors.
He also blamed Parliament for creating a legal “grey area” which meant police officers did not know if they could arrest protestors or clear them from roadways without infringing on their human rights.
He said MPs had left a “very grey space about what is lawful and what is disruption and expect police to work out a line through the middle of it”, adding that it was left to judges to decide what was and was not allowed.
Sir Mark’s appearance came as Just Stop Oil activists caused further disruption in North London on Wednesday and police threatened a motorist with a fine for “improper use of a horn”.
The eco group took to social media for the first time to rally the public to block the A305 in north London on Wednesday – but just 17 people turned up, many of them regular activists.
Cancer patients travelling to hospital and NHS staff were among those stuck in mass gridlock, as the activists blocked four lanes of traffic for 90 minutes around Finsbury Park and Holloway Road.
The group, which has used a legal loophole to avoid arrest in recent weeks, wants the Government to halt all new fossil fuel licences and axe the Whitehaven coal mine in Cumbria, the first to be approved in 30 years.
Some members of the public grew increasingly frustrated as they honked horns and shouted “f— the protest”, with one van driver at the front of miles-long queues refusing to stop beeping his horn.
It prompted Met Police Chief Inspector Matt Ashmead to run over and warn him: “That is improper use of a horn and I will give you a ticket.
“Beeping your horn in our ear isn’t helping is it? I will give you a ticket if you do it again.
“The courts of law have said that if we arrest them it’s an unlawful arrest, so it’s not the police’s fault.”
A transport carrier with nine cancer patients inside was stuck in the mass gridlock for at least 30 minutes before it was allowed to pass on the request of the police.
A Met Police officer was heard by The Telegraph asking the climate activists: “Can you do us a favour – there’s a van full of nine cancer patients, can you let it pass?”
When asked if he would apologise to the delayed patients, Sean Irish, 25, who was leading Just Stop Oil’s protest, did so and said “disruption is obviously a consequence”.
Mr Irish added: “They got through, we hope their treatment goes really well but there’s no liveable future on a dead planet.”
Dr Rebecca Long, an NHS mental health doctor, who had travelled from Enfield to Finsbury Park before her bus was stuck in the gridlock, said the protest was “foolish”.
“It’s a strike day so this protest is having little impact, I support climate change causes and I’m vegan but they are not helping the cause. I’ve got patients waiting to see me,” she told The Telegraph.
Meanwhile, an electrical engineer waved his NHS lanyard at officers who told him to “just stay behind me and it will go quicker OK”.
The group later staged a separate traffic block on nearby Camden High Street, with the Met Police at loggerheads with ministers and the public over what counts as “serious disruption”.
Morgan Penn, 55, a portrait artist from Holloway, stormed through the group’s orange “Just Stop New Oil” banners, telling them they were “smug” and staging a “pointless exercise”.
John Bogar, 64, from Canada, criticised the group at the roadside, saying: “The message is right but it’s not an easy problem to solve – what they’re asking for is just not feasible and is making a lot of people’s lives miserable.”
