Just Stop Oil: Activists ‘committed criminal damage’ by spraying government building, Grant Shapps says

Just Stop Oil (JSO) activists who filmed themselves spray painting a government department building are guilty of “illegal criminal damage”, a senior minister has said.

Asked about the actions of Matthew Cunningham and Imogen May, the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, Grant Shapps, told LBC: “It is illegal criminal damage and I will leave that to the authorities.”

Mr Cunningham, 25, and Ms May, 24, admitted to spraying orange paint onto the department’s headquarters in London after it issued more than 100 new oil and gas licences in the UK.

Theirs was one of a number of protests carried out by the group on Wednesday, according to the Metropolitan Police.

The force said its officers cleared slow-marching demonstrators from Westminster Bridge, Victoria Street and Vauxhall Bridge Road, as well as from roads in Marylebone and Kensington.

A video posted on Twitter by JSO showed the protesters using a spray canister to spread orange paint over glass panels covering Mr Shapps’ Whitehall department building.

In a different video posted on Twitter by JSO, Mr Cunningham, said: “We know from last month that the Climate Change Committee, the government’s independent watchdog for climate change policy, denounced the government’s efforts against climate change.

“They said that they were far less sure that the government would achieve net zero than it had been just one year ago,” he said.

Ms May said the department is “failing on their only purpose” and that the climate situation is “getting really dangerous”.

Conservative Party chairman Greg Hands, posting a picture on social media of Westminster Bridge being blocked by JSO supporters, called the demonstration “unacceptable”.

A JSO protester was kicked and punched to the ground during one of the slow-marching events.

Video posted on Twitter showed the activist leading a handful of others spread out in a line, blocking a street and preventing vehicles from passing.

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In the video, a man gets out of a grey car which appears to have crashed into a white van in the opposite lane and walks towards the JSO protester, identified as Daniel Knorr, a 21-year-old student from Oxford who was carried off the pitch by England cricketer Jonny Bairstow during the Ashes test match at Lord’s last month.

The man attacks Mr Knorr, knocking him to the ground before being pulled away by his partner.

Interviewed after the incident, Mr Knorr said he “felt no ill sentiment or ill will” towards his attacker, admitting the situation “was bound to create frustration”.