The Green Party have alleged that Oxford City Council has misrepresented its financial commitment to combating the climate crisis. Last month the Council announced an extra £19 million to supplement the drive to bring Oxford’s carbon emissions to net zero. 

It had been announced that the funding was made available in response to recommendations made by Oxford’s Citizens’ Assembly on climate change, but the Oxford branch of the Green party have now claimed that as little as £550,000 of the extra funding is new. Further, it has stated that it believes a significant proportion of the money is dedicated to causes unrelated to the climate crisis, such as air quality assessment. 

The party also claim that the Council has failed to make good on repeated promises to prioritise the climate in policy making, criticising the scale of the Council’s investment in climate change, and the prioritisation of other policy areas over tackling the climate crisis.

In a statement released to Cherwell Dr Hazel Dawe, Oxfordshire Green Party Treasurer and law lecturer at Oxford Brookes University, said: “There are two disturbing features of Oxford City Council’s approach to its own Climate Emergency policy. First, nearly all of the money in the £19 million proposed to be spent on Climate over 4 years is money which was already committed before the Citizens Assembly made its report to the Council. Only about £550,000 out of the £19 million is additional funds, and only this can be considered a financial response to the Citizens Assembly report.  £19 Million on the Climate Emergency is a very small proportion of the City’s capital and revenue budgets, over 4 years: £18m is 4.5% of the capital budget and the other £1m is only 1% of the revenue budget.

“Within the Budget and Strategy consultation, achieving a Zero Carbon Oxford is 4th in the set of key City Council priorities NOT top. Greens can take credit for pressing the Council to adopt its Climate Emergency policy last January. But, now, the City Council needs to shift money towards Climate policies and away from increasing car parking in particular.”

Cherwell has been unable to reproduce the precise calculations and estimates made by Dr Dawe, but can confirm that a number of existing budget commitments appear to have been misrepresented as responses to the recent Citizens’ Assembly. A recently published (December 2019) budget report includes a section titled “In response to the Citizens’ Assembly the Council has initiated work in the following areas”, which lists work on the Zero Emissions Zone. However, the zone had been proposed as early as July 2017.

In the same section, the budget makes the claim that the council has “Included an additional £1.040 million of revenue spend over the next four years in addition to an existing £18 million of capital expenditure over the same period [in combating climate change]”. In contrast, a statement by Tom Hayes, Oxford City Councillor, made during the announcement of the Council’s new budget, states that “We’ve listened to the Assembly and our brand new climate emergency budget acts on its findings by providing at least £18m of new money to the City Council’s zero-carbon mission, plus a further £1m of new money to ensure that we deliver on those investments”. The second statement implies heavily that the Council would be making an extra £19 million available, while the statement made in the budget makes it clear that £18 million had been committed in advance of the report by Oxford Citizens’ Assembly.

Responding to a request for comment, Tom Hayes dismissed Green Party allegations as unwelcome politicking, and expressed dismay at the claims: “To be honest, this baseless allegation is why politics turns people off. Our climate emergency budget is literally there in black and white, so the Green Party either hasn’t read the report on which they are making claims or they don’t want to understand the facts.

“So far parties have played their part in tackling the climate emergency. I’m disappointed that the Green Party are trying to score political points instead of trying to play a more constructive role, and I have to wonder about the role of the upcoming local elections in their change of tack. Let’s stop electioneering until May when it needs to happen, spend the next few months making important climate-related decisions, and truly treat our climate emergency like an emergency.

“The Climate Emergency Budget is out to consultation and asks the public for their views. Our Labour and Co-operative city council has committed over £1 million of new operational funding and £18 million of new capital investment to address the climate emergency. This new money is on top of £90 million of ongoing investment to tackle the climate emergency in Oxford and countywide. Oxford City Council will be a net zero council from the end of this year and we’re funding the UK’s first Zero Emission Zone here in Oxford, to be introduced at the end of this year. We’re acting quickly and meaningfully because the situation demands it.

“We’re not acting from a standing start. This is about us adjusting our ambition significantly upwards and putting the initial steps in place precisely because we were told to by the Citizens’ Assembly set up by the Labour Party. 

“For the Green Party, 2020 is a crunch year. For the fourth election in a row, we woke up to a Tory government and this time, the Tories won their biggest majority since Thatcher. Our Labour city council has beaten the odds and protected our public and environment because we’ve been focused, creative, and other parties have more or less been constructive critics. But now the Greens propose to abandon their scrutinising role to baselessly attack the greenest council in the country. I don’t know another council that does as much as Oxford to tackle our climate crisis and we need real scrutiny to go further and faster, not petty party political point scoring.

“I’m also disappointed as a progressive by the baseless Green allegation. The Greens are part of a wider left which should work together to protect our people and planet against the Tories. Instead they’re forcing the left to fight itself on spurious grounds, not the Tories who are the real threat.”

“Where do we go from here? I hope the Greens create a clear and consistent vision, like the Labour Council. I also hope they realise that a responsible approach to tackling climate change has to be based on a just transition. Central to this has to be a meaningful engagement with trade unions and the workers they represent. There’s no climate justice without workers’ justice. Sadly, Green representatives decided to throw these principles out the window with repeated attacks on trade unions during the campaign. It shouldn’t need explaining as to why millions of workers coming together to improve their lives is a crucial thing.”

In September 2019, Oxford became the first city in the UK to host a Citizens’ Assembly on climate change. 50 residents were selected randomly selected through a stratified process, such that the selected group was an accurate representation of the population of Oxford. The group convened twice and, following the advice of experts, made a number of recommendations on climate strategies for local government. These included a recommendation that Oxford achieve carbon neutrality before the national target of 2050.

Although the Green Party made a number of criticisms of the Council’s climate strategy, it also lauded a number of initiatives. These include green energy contracts and offsets, and the energy superhub, the world’s largest hybrid battery system.

Oxford City Council’s team decided the fate of Barton Royal British Legion Club on the 15th of January. The club on Edgecombe Road is set to be demolished and replaced with affordable homes. It closed its doors in 2014 due to dwindling member numbers and has been left derelict in the years since.  

The housing site will consist of four two-bed, two three-bed, and one four-bed houses with associated access, parking, bin and cycle storage and landscaping.

Council documents prepared ahead of this week’s meeting read: “The redevelopment of this derelict site and the removal of the existing building would provide significant visual enhancements to the quality of the street scene in Edgecombe Road.

“It is considered that the siting and scale of the proposed development would safeguard the amenity of adjacent residential properties in the vicinity of the site and the proposals provide acceptable standards of amenity for future occupiers of the properties.”

The club, which opened in 1965, blamed its closure on tough financial times and a lack of interest from young people, leading many local residents to express their sadness over the loss of a community facility. 

Recently there have been calls for the council to put the site to a use which will benefit the community. Action was not able to be taken in previous years because of the club’s long lease over the site; as a result, the building is now unfit for use and has become a target for vandalism. Mike Rowley, city councillor for Barton, said:

“I would like to see both a community facility and housing on the site – as has been done successfully in Barns Road, though on a more modest scale – and I hope this will turn out to be possible.”

Other Barton residents have also stated that they would like to see the site used for a youth-friendly community facility, such as an internet cafe. 

The project was determined at an East Area Planning Committee meeting held on Wednesday. The meeting took place at The Old Library at Oxford Town Hall at 6pm and was open to members of the public.

Raymond Duch, Fellow of Nuffield College and Director of the Centre for Experimental Social Sciences, is the latest academic to be implicated in the Cambridge Analytica data scandal.

Duch, a “prominent social scientist” was revealed to have worked for Cambridge Analytica parent company SCL Elections in a recent article by Dr Emma Briant, a propaganda academic and Senior Researcher for the Netflix film The Great Hack.

Duch’s work for the company reportedly involved “data analytics on public opinion surveys.” Briant cites the projects as concerning Argentine local elections and being “undertaken in two parts, between fall 2014 to February 2015.” Further work was proposed by SCL in May 2015 but did not go ahead.

Further to this, Dr Briant states: “I have seen an email from 6th June 2015, when Raymond Duch wrote to Alexander Nix [then CEO of Cambridge Analytica] saying Duch’s colleague ‘e-mailed yesterday and indicated you were waiting on something from me regarding Argentina. I must have dropped the ball on this — can you remind me what you need and I’ll get it to you asap.’”

The Oxford professor claims his work had “nothing to do with the Argentinian presidential elections” refusing to “comment on specific clients”.

Raymond Duch failed to respond to Cherwell’s request for comment, whilst the University and Nuffield college declined to make any statement.

Freedom of Information requests were also sent to the University of Oxford, but have since been declined as Duch’s work was conducted on behalf of his company D&K Analytics Services LTD, not Nuffield College. In response, Dr Briant has asserted that “there are clear links between Prof Duch’s projects and his work at Nuffield he could not have done the work for CA without drawing on his Nuffield work”.

Briant notes that the Centre for Experimental Social Sciences also operates in Santiago, Chile, potentially giving Duch Latin American expertise which would make him an attractive target for Cambridge Analytica.

In addition, Raymond Duch recently hosted a workshop at the College, on the subject of “Why I was not worried about Cambridge Analytica (and you should not have been either)”.

Dr Briant insists that “Oxford University can’t hide its role in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, nor can it hide its Argentine connection”.

She provided Cherwell with the following comment: “Academics hold a position of trust and command an authoritative voice in the most important debates of our time, that carries with it a public responsibility too, both for the academic and the university.”

Her statement went on to stress the importance of transparency from an academic institutions: “Students also have a right to know their teachers are gaining the experience underpinning their expertise – and therefore their teaching – in ethical ways.

“Importantly, similar could happen at any university, while Oxford University should be criticised for its lack of transparency here, how is anyone meant to evaluate involvement in influence companies when they remain so opaque – activities are often siloed, hidden with NDA’s, funded by dark money or using shell companies.

“The UK Parliament’s Fake News Inquiry highlighted my concerns about this and demands for transparency and regulation of strategic communications, but the government has so far failed to take this forward.

“We must remember the lessons of the Cambridge Analytica scandal were not just for Facebook, the scandal exposed vulnerabilities in our electoral laws, lobbying, and in a lawless and rapidly expanding industry seeking to exploit them.”

Research into SCL Elections and Cambridge Analytica has revealed that the companies sought links with multiple academics, most prominently, Dr Alexander Kogan. The Cambridge professor built the app “thisisyourdigitallife” which is employed to collect data on Facebook users.

Duch’s own research is also related to electoral data, focusing on social media election forecasting.

Recent projects have tried to predict Texas congressional district elections and the 2019 India Lok Sabha election.

The connections between big data and academic establishments continue to appear, with Freedom of Information requests revealing the University of Sheffield received “a proposal document” from Cambridge Analytica.

Dr Briant is researching Cambridge Analaytica for her upcoming book ‘Propaganda Machine: Inside Cambridge Analytica and the Digital Influence Industry’.

This article was amended on the afternoon of the 24th January 2020 to better reflect Alexander Nix’s comments on SCL Election’s involvement in Argentine elections. What was formerly termed an “admission” of involvement with an anti-Kirchner campaign, was in fact an acknowledgement of discussion of such a campaign being a possible undertaking. More on this can be read here: https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmcumeds/363/36309.htm