Vegan meals for climate activists cost police £14k

tHE Metropolitan Police were forced to spend nearly £14,000 on vegan meals for eco warriors arrested on the streets of London this year.

the bill was run up to satisfy the dietary requirements of the Extinction Rebellion mob who brought road and rail links to a standstill.

Many members of the group deliberately set out to be arrested during their flamboyant climate change protests.

Once they were in custody, hundreds of them said they would only eat meat-free meals – a demand that would cost

Britain’s largest police force thousands of pounds.

Between september 30 and October 17, a total of £4,651 was spent by the Metropolitan Police on vegan meals for activists in custody, according to a freedom of information request by MailOnline.

the period coincides with Extinction Rebellion’s ten-day ‘autumn uprising’ in which 1,832 protesters were arrested and more than 150 were charged for offences including criminal damage and obstruction of highways. Between April 12 and April 26, police spent £3,228 on vegan meals for activists.

In the group’s April protests activists glued themselves to trains and broke windows at shell’s London headquarters.

More than 1,100 people were arrested.

the group’s leader Roger Hallam branded the April protest – where activists stopped traffic at Oxford Circus, Waterloo Bridge and Marble Arch – the largest show of civil disobedience in modern British history.

the Met spent £ 16million policing the protests in April and £24million on the October demonstrations. In comparison, the annual budget for the Violent Crime taskforce is just £15million.

Between Boxing Day 2018 and March 11, £1,285 was spent on vegan meals. A further £791 was blown in June and £991 between July 8 and 19, this rose to £1,002 between August 16 and 23. A further £1,779 was spent on non- meat meals between september 5 and 19.

During the October protests, thousands of front-line officers were moved away from their normal duties and deployed in central London during the twoweek period, with the average length of the 21,000 shifts covered being 12.5 hours. the demonstrations between October 5 and 16 saw 7,929 Met officers deployed, plus another 1,000 sent from 35 outside forces under the mutual aid system.

In November, the High Court ruled that the Met’s ban on the group’s London-wide protest in autumn was unlawful, opening the floodgates for millions of pounds-worth of compensation claims.

Extinction Rebellion argued that the ban was an unprecedented curtailment of the right to protest.

Lord Justice Dingemans and Mr Justice Chamberlain said the Met had no power to impose the ban because the law does not cover ‘separate assemblies’.

‘Moved away from duties’