Did Westminster Protesters Have Inside Help?

By Gerri Peev political correspondent

AN INVESTIGATION has been launched after it emerged that demonstrators who climbed on to the roof of the Palace of Westminster may have been let in to the building by a parliamentary passholder.

Protesters breached security yesterday, sparking a two-hour stand- off with police before they were arrested.

The embarrassing stunt began at around 9:30am and lasted until just before Prime Minister’s Questions at midday.

Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, criticised the action – designed to highlight plans for a third runway at Heathrow Airport – during the weekly session.

He said: “The message should go out very clearly that decisions in this country should be made in the chamber of this House, not on the roof of this House.

“It is a very important message that should be sent out to those people who are protesting.”

The three men and two women, from the Plane Stupid campaign, unfurled two banners, one proclaiming: “BAA HQ” in reference to the owners of Heathrow, and another stating: “No third runway.”

The demonstrators handcuffed themselves to roof railings but police used wire cutters to release them before hauling them off for questioning.

One Commons insider said: “You can be sure they will be grilled. We want police to try and discover who, if anyone, was involved on the inside.”

Police sources believe it was an “inside job” because the five had to take a complicated route to access the roof, which would be known only to Commons regulars. Their banners would also have been confiscated in visitor security searches, prompting suspicions they were stored on the premises beforehand.

Matt O’Connor, the founder of Fathers 4 Justice, which has also breached security at the Commons during previous protests, said security at sensitive locations across London was “shambolic”, adding that his activists had carried out reconnaissance missions on and around the floor of the Commons and the Lords in the past two weeks.

The protest came on the final day of the government’s consultation on expanding Heathrow. It was the second security breach this week, following an incident at Heathrow on Monday when Greenpeace activists climbed on top of a BA plane in protest against the airport’s expansion.

Yesterday, the protesters launched paper planes from Westminster’s roof. The planes were made from photocopies of the consultation on the new runway, which they said was rigged and partially written by BAA.

Richard George, one of the demonstrators, said campaigners wanted to highlight “weak leadership” from Mr Brown over the impact of aviation on climate change.

He added: “The Prime Minister does not have the courage to ask Londoners: ‘Do you want a third runway?’”

The protesters said they had branded parliament “BAA HQ” due to the “extraordinary level of collusion” between the aviation industry and government.

Matthew Knowles, a spokesman for the Society of British Aerospace Companies, said: “These stunts do nothing more than peddle inaccurate propaganda. The aviation industry has achieved a 75 per cent cut in fuel-burn over the past 50 years and a similar reduction in noise from aircraft in the past 30 years.”

Burning Issue, Page 34

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