The Attorney General is seeking clarity on whether claims that protesters honestly believed organisations affected by their stunts would have consented to the damage - if they had known more about the impact of climate change - can be a defence in court.

Victoria Prentis is seeking to prevent the use of the defence where damage has been caused to buildings. The defence exists to defend people where, say a window would need breaking to rescue someone, however it has been used, with varying degrees of success, for protestors breaking windows as a protest.

The trial of five Extinction Rebellion activists involved with damage to the offices of JPMorgan is a case in point, with the five being prosecuted for Criminal Damage in breaking glass.

For the Government, the law is being used in a way fore which it was never intended, and resulting in wilful damage being ignored, for Extinction Rebellion it is an attempt to undermine trials by jury.

Now, the Court of Appeal will consider whether the last remaining legal defence of ‘belief in consent’, should continue to be available to defendants in nonviolent direct action cases involving damage to property.

Due to the coinciding of the JPMorgan Emergency Break Glass trial and the Court of Appeal review, it is possible that the group on trial in front of Judge Reid could be the last defendants allowed to run ‘belief in consent’ as a legal defence. As a result, defendants could find themselves in court, with no legal defence and prevented from explaining their motivations to a jury of their peers – that is, that the potential damage to the planet means that the protestors believed that the damage was for a good reason.

Extinction Rebellion co-founder Dr Gail Bradbrook has already been denied the use of this defence and was therefore left without any legal defence in her trial last November for breaking a window at the Department for Transport.

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