A Greenpeace activist climbed on to the Tory election battle bus to protest against the party’s environmental record.
Amy Rugg-Easey got on to the coach using a ladder as it was parked up in for a campaign stop in the Sherwood Forest constituency by Home Secretary James Cleverly.
She unfurled a banner reading “clean power not Paddy Power”, in reference to the election date betting scandal, and stayed on the roof for 12 minutes.
Ms Rugg-Easey said she staged the action because “we deserve better than this”.
Speaking to reporters who had been travelling on the bus after climbing down, she said: “On climate and nature, the Conservatives are the worst out of all the parties and it’s so obvious…
“We deserve better on climate and nature.”
In a statement, she added: “We’ve had enough of this Government lurching from one scandal to the next while gambling with our future. We need clean power, not Paddy Power.
“Fourteen years of Conservative governments has left this country broken.
“(Rishi) Sunak has gone backwards on climate action, ditching key pledges and promising to ‘max out’ the climate-wrecking oil and gas that are the cause of the cost-of-living crisis and our unaffordable bills.
“Our rivers are awash with sewage and our economy, NHS and public services are on their knees.
“Enough is enough. We’ve climbed on to Sunak’s battle bus today to remind the British public that it is the Conservative Government’s consistent failure to deliver greener, fairer policies that has created the mess we’re in.
“Don’t back the wrong horse – a vote for the climate is a vote for a better future.”
The Prime Minister was not travelling on the Conservative-branded bus on Wednesday.
A Nottinghamshire Police vehicle and two officers appeared at the site of the campaign visit after the Greenpeace protesters and the Tory bus had left.
Greenpeace spokesman Paul Morozzo said the protest was “legitimate and important” when asked whether sending a young woman on to the roof of the campaign bus was the right way to make the point.
He told broadcasters: “I think it’s an important way to make our point.
“We’ve only been there for a few minutes. We’ve come down, we don’t want to mess with the companies who organised the event. We’re very respectful of that.
“But in an election where the debate is so sort of poor and weak, and there’s so many lies and untruths about both the economy and climate, we think it’s legitimate and important to make our point, and in whatever way we can.”
Mr Morozzo said there was “nothing untoward” in how campaigners worked out the location of the bus, adding: “We just triangulated from publicly available information, public websites.”
Farming minister Sir Mark Spencer told the PA news agency it was ironic that: “I’m here in my electric rechargeable vehicle and they turned up in their diesel van to protest about the environment”.
He said he was “sympathetic to some of the points they made” but the criticism of the Tories’ green record was not “fair at all”.
Candidates in this constituency are:
• David Paul Dobbie - Liberal Democrats
• Sheila Greatrex-White - Green Party
• Helen Rose O'Hare - Reform UK
• Mark Steven Spencer - Conservative
• Jeremy Paul Spry - Independent
• Lee Waters - Independent
• Michelle Welsh - Labour
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