REVEALED: How SECRET ‘corporate courts’ could cost UK taxpayers billions—just for blocking polluters
Obscure 1970s treaties allow multinational firms to sue Britain in private tribunals–with MPs powerless and taxpayers left exposed
British taxpayers could be forced to fork out eye-watering sums to foreign investors after ministers dared to block a new coal mine thanks to obscure trade treaties signed decades ago behind closed doors. New details of this murky system have been unearthed in a report by The Ecologist and Abolish Westminster.
In a scarcely believable twist, a Singapore-based investment firm is suing the UK Government after a High Court ruling stopped a controversial coal mine in Whitehaven, Cumbria, over climate concerns.
Investor SHADY Dispute Settlement
The claim is being brought through a little-known legal mechanism called an Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS), a shadowy system that allows companies to sue governments in private tribunals for “lost future profits”.
Even more astonishingly, the investors are being represented by Geoffrey Cox KC, a sitting Tory MP and former Attorney General.
The case relies on a trade treaty between Britain and Singapore signed in 1975, long before climate change was a household concern. Under its terms, corporations can demand compensation if government action hurts their investments, even when those actions are taken to protect the environment.
Critics say the system effectively puts multinational corporations above democracy: essentially, corporate courts that allow polluters to bully governments into backing down from climate action.
Britain at the centre of the scam
And Britain, it turns out, is at the very centre of this global web.
Research shows UK trade deals protect fossil fuel projects responsible for an estimated 255 million tonnes of CO₂ emissions every year—almost as much as Britain’s own annual emissions.
Since 1998, companies using UK-linked treaties have launched claims worth more than $40 billion, nearly half of it linked to oil, gas and coal.
Most of the countries on the receiving end are poorer nations in Africa, Asia and Latin America, many already suffering the worst effects of climate change.
But now the system is turning on Britain itself.
Campaigners warn that governments are increasingly afraid to act on climate change because the legal risks are simply too great. Even asking companies to carry out environmental assessments has triggered multi-million-pound lawsuits.
One notorious case saw a UK fracking firm sue Slovenia for €120 million after the government tried to tighten environmental rules. The country eventually backed down.
Cloaked in secrecy
Behind it all sits the Department for Business and Trade, housed in the grand Old Admiralty building on Whitehall, once the nerve centre of the British Empire.
Critics claim the department is far more attentive to oil giants like Shell and BP than to MPs or the public. Ministers in the department reportedly met Shell or BP more than once a month during Labour’s first year in office.
Meanwhile, MPs have virtually no power to scrutinise trade deals. There is no guaranteed parliamentary vote, no meaningful debate, and barely time to read the documents before they are signed.
Former Green MP Caroline Lucas has described UK trade policy as “cloaked in secrecy”.
With billions potentially at stake—and climate laws hanging in the balance—critics say one thing is clear: Britain’s secretive trade treaties are fast becoming a ticking time bomb.
And it’s the public who may end up paying the price.