One of those international bodies determined to bankrupt and ruin our country has struck again.

This time it is the International Court of Justice (ICJ) based in The Hague, which has issued an ‘advisory’ ruling on member countries’ climate change obligations.

If this court has its way, we wouldn’t be able to further exploit our natural resources in the North Sea, and we’d be on the hook for trillions of pounds in reparations to developing countries for the ‘damage suffered’ by historic carbon emissions.

No doubt Ed Miliband will be delighted.

Energy security is economic security, it is national security. The wars in Ukraine and the Gulf have shown us how important it is to have our own resources, which is why I have been unequivocal in my conviction that Britain must make drilling for oil and gas a priority.

Last week, in a report by the think-tank Policy Exchange, Professor Richard Ekins and his colleagues warned that the ICJ’s ruling could open the floodgates to legal claims against Britain, and fundamentally reshape our domestic energy policy without a single vote being cast.

BRITAIN has always been a nation that believes in the rule of law. We depend on it. It protects our investments abroad, underpins global trade and helps preserve peace. But believing in the rule of law does not mean accepting rule by lawyers.

Over the last few decades, a new form of legal activism has taken root. International courts and tribunals are no longer content with interpreting treaties. Increasingly, they are inventing new obligations that democratic, sovereign governments never signed up to.

Just ask the Swiss. In 2024, the European Court of Human Rights used Article 8 – the ‘right to private and family life’ – to rule that Switzerland’s apparently inadequate climate targets endangered its own population.

And don’t be fooled by the ‘advisory’ nature of the ICJ’s ruling. Another ‘advisory opinion’ – on Britain’s sovereignty of the Chagos Islands – has led the Labour Government to pledge £35billion to give away territory we already own.

This just shows how activists use advisory rulings as a political weapon and lawyers use them to challenge decisions made by elected governments.

Unless ministers act now, this latest ruling risks becoming another way of frustrating our ability to grow our economy, strengthen our energy security and defend our national interest.

Britain is in an exposed position. We are the only permanent member of the UN Security Council that still accepts the compulsory jurisdiction of the ICJ. France and America do not. 

This may have made sense when the court understood its limits. It no longer does. I do not believe that we should remain within the compulsory jurisdiction of this court if it is not in our national interest to be there. The world has changed. Our approach should evolve with it.

So I have asked my Shadow Attorney General to consider carefully whether we need to make changes to our arrangements and to report back to me by the autumn.

In the meantime, Andy Burnham should reassure the nation that no ‘advisory opinion’ will weaken our commitment to drilling in the North Sea, and sack those figures in Labour who would put international legalism ahead of the national interest.

This includes Energy Secretary Ed Miliband, whose Net Zero zealotry is deindustrialising the country and raising energy bills. Attorney General Richard Hermer and National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell – architects of the Chagos surrender – must also go.

Britain should honour our global commitments. But we should never allow international institutions to rewrite them. Our national interest and democracy must come first. We must not be naive.

Decisions about Britain’s future should always be made by those who answer to the British people.