Yet more controversy over the police’s handling of protests:

Government officials passed secret police intelligence to energy firm E.ON before last summer’s environmental demonstration at Kingsnorth in Kent.

Environmental action group Climate Camp had planned a peaceful demonstration at the proposed site of a new coal-fired power station.

Emails obtained by Liberal Democrat MP David Howarth under the Freedom of Information Act show that civil servants from the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform gave details of meetings and activists’ movements to E.ON.

From the Guardian:

At first officials at BERR refused to release the emails, despite a request under the Freedom of Information Act from the Liberal Democrats. The decision was reversed on appeal and although large sections have been blacked out, they show:

• BERR officials passed a strategy document belonging to the “environmental protest community” to E.ON, saying: “If you haven’t seen this then you will be interested in its contents.”

• Government officials forwarded a Metropolitan police intelligence document to E.ON, detailing the movements and whereabouts of climate protesters in the run-up to demonstration.

• E.ON passed its planning strategy for the protest to the department’s civil servants, adding: “Contact numbers will follow.”

• BERR and E.ON tried to share information about their media strategies before the protest, and civil servants asked the energy company for press contacts for EDF, BP and Kent police.

David Howarth said, “It is as though BERR was treating the police as an extension of E.ON’s private security operation. The question is how did that intelligence get to BERR? Did it come via the Home Office or straight from police?”

Liberal Democrat research has revealed that the Home Office exaggerated the extent of police injuries at last summer’s Kingsnorth Climate Camp.

Home Office minister Vernon Coaker had originally described the £5.9 million police operation as appropriate and proportionate.

Now, in response to a Parliamentary Question by Liberal Democrat Shadow Justice spokesperson David Howarth, Coaker has admitted that, “there were no recorded injuries sustained as a result of direct contact with the protesters.”

From the Telegraph:

“Kent police were criticised for being “heavy handed” and for using aggressive tactics during the Camp for Climate Action protests in August.

Ministers at the time justified the operation, pointing out that 70 officers had been injured in the course of their duties.

But not one of those injuries was sustained in clashes with demonstrators, according to documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

The papers, acquired by the Liberal Democrats, show that the 1,500 officers policing the Kingsnorth climate camp near the Medway estuary in Kent suffered only 12 reportable injuries during the protest in August.

The Home Office has now admitted that the protesters had not been responsible for any injuries.

Only four of the 12 reportable injuries involved any contact with the protesters at all.

Instead the injuries reported included “stung on finger by possible wasp”; “officer injured sitting in car”; and “officer succumbed to sun and heat”.

One officer cut his arm on a fence when climbing over it, another cut his finger while mending a car, and one “used leg to open door and next day had pain in lower back”.

Three other officers succumbed to heat exhaustion, three had toothache, six were bitten by insects, and others had diarrhoea, had cut their finger or had headaches.”

Commenting, Liberal Democrat Shadow Justice Spokesperson, David Howarth said:

“It beggars belief that Vernon Coaker could defend as proportionate a £5.9m policing operation in which protestors didn’t cause a single injury to police officers.

“The threat posed by environmental direct action is being systematically overblown by both the Government and the police.

“I hope that ministers and the police will now stop trying to portray peaceful protestors as somehow equivalent to terrorists or violent extremists.

“Members of Parliament have been rightly exercised by political policing rearing its ugly head with the arrest of Damien Green. They should be just as concerned when the same tactics appear to be directed at peaceful protestors.

“In light of this new evidence, it has to be asked whether climate campers were so heavily policed because they posed any genuine threat of violence, or because they posed a challenge to government policy?”

Tim Ireland from Bloggerheads conjectures that red noses are probably illegal in Parliament Square, unless you’ve got permission from the police for such a flagrant display of political idealism of course.

Depressingly, he’s probably right, though it’ll be up to the police to decide if someone’s antics look to them like a protest. The Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 does not actually define what a demonstration is, leaving it to the police to decide what counts as unacceptable within the exclusion zone.

So far, the police have warned, cautioned and/or arrested people under this act for displaying lapel badges, wearing t-shirts with slogans and even for carrying magazines containing political articles. Parliament Protest has more.

This just shows once again the absurd and intrusive effects of this dreadful piece of legislation, which didn’t even succeed in its primary objective - getting rid of Brian Haw. How they must hate him in the Home Secretary’s office.