Exclusive: Tory donors bankrolling climate denial group
Labour MP calls for investigation after we find the Global Warming Policy Foundation is funded by Conservative donors and peers
By Peter Geoghegan and Lucas Amin
A Conservative donor who was handed a peerage by Liz Truss is bankrolling the UK’s most prominent climate denial group, an investigation by this newsletter has found.
Jon Moynihan has given £25,000 to the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), which has been at the forefront of attacks on the government’s net zero policy.
Our investigation also found that the GWPF, which does not declare its donors, has received previously unreported donations from another Conservative peer and party donor.
Labour MP Alex Sobel called for a probe into the GWPF in the wake of our story.
“This needs urgent investigation and action by the Charity Commission,” Sobel told Democracy for Sale.
The GWPF was founded in 2009 by former Conservative chancellor Nigel Lawson. The group has previously said that carbon dioxide - the primary greenhouse gas contributing to climate change - “has been mercilessly demonized as ‘carbon pollution’, when in fact it is a benefit to the planet."
Lord Moynihan, who was chairman of the Vote Leave campaign during the Brexit referendum, gave £25,000 to the GWPF through his foundation Moynitrust between 2018 and last year.
The businessman has given over £700,000 to the Tories and was elevated to the House of Lords last year in Truss’s controversial resignation honours list.
Our investigation also found that wealthy Conservative peer and donor Nigel Vinson has given £49,000 to GWPF over the last decade through his charitable foundation.
Vinson, a Eurosceptic industrialist who was close to Margaret Thatcher, is “life vice president” at the right-wing think tank the Institute of Economic Affairs and a long-time donor to the private University of Buckingham.
He personally supported Truss’s leadership bid with a £5,000 donation in 2022.
Vinson has previously been identified as a GWPF donor: in 2014, DeSmog revealed that he has given £15,000 to the group but there have been no reports of his subsequent donations. At the time Vinson said he was “very proud to fund [the GWPF]”.
Moynihan and Vinson are not the only right-wing Conservatives who have funded the GWPF.
Michael Hintze was previously revealed as a GWPF donor. Hintze, who received a peerage from Boris Johnson in 2022, has given more than £4.8million to the Conservatives, including £2,000 to energy secretary Claire Coutinho in January and £3,000 to her predecessor Steve Barclay last year.
Another Tory donor who has funded GWPF is former IEA chairman Neil Record, who chairs the group’s campaigning arm Net Zero Watch. Earlier this year Record resigned as a director of Restore Trust, which has been accused of fronting an astroturf campaign against the National Trust.
The Global Warming Policy Foundation has friends across the political Right. The group’s board includes former Australian prime minister - and admirer of Viktor Orbán - Tony Abbott as well as former Brexit negotiator Lord David Frost and Telegraph columnist Alison Pearson…. And Labour MP Graham Stringer.
GWPF’s chairman, Terence Mourdant, has donated £200,000 to Reform UK through his company First Corporate Shipping Ltd.
openDemocracy previously revealed that GWPF had received funding from groups with oil and gas interests, despite claiming to be independent of the fossil fuel industry.
The Charity Commission is currently facing a legal challenge by a cross-party group of MPs over its failure to investigate the GWPF, which is registered as an educational charity.
Layla Moran, Lib Dem parliamentary candidate for Oxford West and Abingdon, told this newsletter that"it’s deeply concerning that GWPF is being funded not only by the Tory party, but also by the public through its registration as a charity.”
“I hope the Commission finally sees fit to hold the charity accountable for spreading harmful misinformation on the climate crisis," Moran added.
Jo Maugham of the Good Law Project, which is supporting the challenge, said: "Once you realise that Tory Ministers and GWPF share the same dangerous pro fossil fuel agenda it is no surprise that they are funded by the same people. What is shocking is that Orlando Fraser, as Chair of the Charity Commission, tolerates these egregious abuses of charity law."
Outgoing Green MP Caroline Lucas said: "We've got to do better than this - at this time of climate emergency, there can be no interference in our political decision making from the planet-wrecking fossil fuel industry and climate change deniers."
The GWPF, Moynihan and Vinson did not respond to requests for comment.
Interesting story but you are assuming that all of the climate change information is correct. I have seen no scientific information to prove this case. Al Gore & Co produce rhetoric and wild statements, not independently supported data. Sorry, I’m not buying this stuff. Climate records only go back 150 years or so & the world, which is billions of years old, is just coming out of a mini ice age. Of course it’s a bit warmer. In the 70s we were warned about an impending ice age and about 20 years ago the Maldives were expected to be drowned. My holiday there last year was most enjoyable, no snorkel required. I don’t trust global alarmist who fly around the world & live by the coast.