What better way to end the month than to watch Wes Streeting being heckled?

The Fabian Society’s New Year Conference hosting Wes Streeting as the keynote speaker was disrupted by an activist calling on the Labour Party to end tree-burning subsidies for Drax Power Station. Yet days before, left-wing Labour MP Barry Gardiner came out fighting over the company – calling it “not fit and proper”.

Wes Streeting: heckled at the Fabian conference

The Fabian conference on Saturday 25 January together key government ministers, journalists, and organisations, this year around the theme ‘Britain 2030’.

An activist interrupted health secretary Wes Streeting’s speech to draw attention to the ‘devastating’ health impacts of biomass production:

They accused the government of funding toxic air pollution in the UK and abroad by subsidising Drax and the biomass industry using a levy off UK energy bills.

Another protester spoke out as well:

Labour is currently considering whether to grant further subsidies to Drax, the UK’s single largest carbon emitter which also makes considerable donations to the Labour Party, when its current subsidies run out in 2027.

More than 40 environmental NGOs are calling on the government to reject this proposal. Drax has repeatedly been accused of ‘driving environmental racism’ through their woody biomass pellet production process, with high levels of toxic pollutants emitted on production sites predominantly located in low-income communities of colour:

Wes Streeting and Labour cannot talk seriously about protecting health whilst continuing to enable polluters to profit massively from poisoning communities. It's high time this government committed to ending subsidies for Drax, Britain's dirtiest power station.#FabianNYC25 https://t.co/G58JPuLNsV

— Axe Drax @axedrax.bsky.social (@axe_drax) January 25, 2025

Around midday on 25 January, partway through the keynote speech, an activist disrupted the event – challenging Wes Streeting over his party’s refusal to rule out renewing subsidies for Drax.

Standing up in the hall to address him directly, the activist highlighted the inherent health risks of climate inaction. ‘We cannot heal the NHS on a sick planet!’ the protestor told Streeting. Members of the audience could be heard cheering for the activist. She was taken out of the room by security:

Climate Resistance and @axe_drax just disrupted Wes Streeting at the Fabian Society conference! We confronted him about government subsidies for Drax, the world’s largest tree-burner that pollutes the air in the UK and abroad

The climate crisis IS a health crisis#FabianNYC25

— Climate Resistance (@climate_resist) January 25, 2025

Barry Gardiner: acting like a Labour MP should

Rosie Gloster, spokesperson for Axe Drax, said:

The Government has the opportunity to end years of suffering inflicted on communities abroad by ending subsidies for Drax. There are whole communities struggling to breathe in the US due to Drax’s operations. Drax is destroying vital forests, poisoning communities and polluting our planet. As Secretary of State for Health Wes Streeting must listen to the communities abroad suffering the devastating health impacts of Drax’s dirty pollution and put an end to subsidies for Drax.

By contract, Labour Party MP Barry Gardiner accused Drax of ‘not being fit and proper’. It was during the Climate and Nature Bill debate last week – the Bill that Labour torpedoed.

Gardiner said:

We cannot allow the damage to old growth and to virgin forests that we know is happening in Canada…

The people concerned in Drax are not fit and proper to run the company, and we should not be paying them.

Sam Simmons, spokesperson for Climate Resistance, said:

It’s never been more obvious that the climate crisis is a health crisis. In the space of three months we’ve seen thousands lose their homes to the LA wildfires, mass power outages in Scotland and Ireland from storm Éowyn, and hundreds of deaths in the Valencia floods. It is an outrage in the wake of all these catastrophes that our energy bills are still being used to fund environmentally destructive projects like Drax Power Station. If the Labour government wants to protect the health of UK citizens it must end tree-burning subsidies now.

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