Areas of Expertise

News and Briefings:

29 September 2009 | Dimmock v Secretary of State for Education | Back to News List

"GOVERNMENT HANDS TEACHERS LOADED GUN"

Stewart Dimmock, a lorry driver from Kent, scored a landmark victory
today against the Government in the High Court.

The concerned father of two and local school governor, objected to the
Government’s decision to send the alarmist, shockumentary on climate
change, "An Inconvenient Truth", to all secondary schools in England on
the grounds that it promotes politically partisan views and prodigiously
exaggerates and misstates the current best assessments of the effects
of climate change.

Mr Dimmock’s legal team successfully argued that the Government’s
decision to send AIT to schools breached both sections 406 and 407 of
the Education Act 1996, which respectively prohibit the political
indoctrination of school children and require political views to be
presented in a balanced way.

As previously reported in the press, the Government agreed mid-way
through the 2.5 day trial to re-write the written guidance that accompanied
the climate change pack following fierce criticism from Mr Dimmocks legal
team and concerns raised by the Judge. This represented an embarrassing
climb-down for the Government, which had vehemently maintained that
the guidance rendered AIT fit to be shown and that the amendments
merely reflected conclusions that teachers would draw themselves.

Dismissing this argument, Mr Justice Burton held that "there would have
been a breach of ss406 and 407 of the Act but for the bringing of these
proceedings." In finding for Mr Dimmock, the Judge held that AIT did
promote politically partisan views and that, far from neutralising that bias,
the old guidance "exacerbated" the problem through its overtly one-sided
political suggestions and failure to explain the litany of scientific errors
and exaggerations in AIT.

He also found that the Government did originally have an intention to
influence children rather than educate. During the course of proceedings,
he had described the original guidance as a "rubbish document." In his
judgment, he found that the original guidance, in inciting children into
political action, "just does not seem right; it is not what school is about."
He also found that the Government should have sent the guidance in hard
copy along with the climate pack, rather than leaving it to teachers to
download from the Internet.

Focusing on a "hit-list" of scientific errors, the Judge found that:

Gore’s depiction of a 20 feet sea level rise by the end of the century leading
to the displacement of millions of people (what the Judge described as the
“Armageddon scenario” depicted by Gore), “is not based on any scientific
view.”

There is no evidence to support Gore’s claim that citizens of unspecified
Pacific nations had all had to evacuate to New Zealand.

The prospects of global warming causing a shut down of the Gulf Stream,
leading to an ice-age in Europe, did not accord with any scientific view.

Gore’s main temperature graph was misleading in the sense that it
suggested that CO2 had historically driven rising global temperatures and
that the rises were linear. CO2 has historically lagged temperature rises by
between 800 to 2000 years.

There was no evidence that the melting of the snows of Kilimanjaro is
attributable to global warming, man-made or otherwise.

There is no evidence to support Gore’s claim that the drying up of Lake
Chad is the result of global warming.

There is insufficient evidence to ascribe Hurricane Katrina to global
warming.

There was no evidence to show that the four, drowned, polar bears
referred to in AIT had died as a result of global warming. The study in
question concluded that they had died in a storm.

The bleaching of coral reefs from global warming was difficult to separate from other stresses, such as over-fishing and polluting.

The Judge during the course of the hearing described AIT as an “exocet”
being sent out to our schoolchildren.

Comment
"We are delighted by this important and hard-fought victory. We are
astonished by the Government’s continued insistence that AIT was fit to be
shown with the old guidance. It plainly was not, as the Judge found today.
This was an irresponsible approach where children and teachers are
concerned. The Government’s actions could and almost certainly have
induced teachers to break the law."

29 September 2009

Dimmock v
Secretary of State
for Education

News and Briefings