A cross-party group of MPs has joined calls for a climate sceptic thinktank to be stripped of its charitable status.
The complaint, which is also being supported by the Good Law Project, claims the Global Warming Policy Foundation does not meet its aims as a charity and is in fact a lobbying organisation.
In a complaint submitted to the Charity Commission, MPs from the Liberal Democrats, Labour and Green party expressed concerns that the GWPF may be in breach of its duties in regard to the use of its charitable funds, by using them to fund non-charitable activities carried out by its subsidiary, Net Zero Watch (NZW).
The thinktank has produced reviews – at odds with mainstream science – that claim the climate emergency is not happening and members have shared work suggesting that a rise in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could be a good thing.
Recently, the foundation started Net Zero Watch, a campaigning platform highlighting what it calls the “costs of net zero”. The campaigning arm of the foundation was set up after a previous investigation by the Charity Commission found that it had breached rules on impartiality.
The GWPF has been supported by some Conservative MPs in the past, and the Northern Ireland minister Steve Baker was a trustee until he took up his ministerial post. Peter Lilley, a former MP for Hitchin and Harpenden, is a trustee. It was launched in 2009 by the former Conservative chancellor Nigel Lawson who, in an article last year, called global heating a “nonexistent problem” and questioned whether the climate crisis was “quasi-religious hysteria, based on ignorance”.
Specialist charity lawyers have analysed the work of the GWPF, as well as its funding, and concluded that it could be in breach of its charitable status.
The Good Law Project says it has found “several hundred thousand pounds’ worth of spending on one-sided research and a financial relationship between GWPF and NZW which appears to breach key protections of charity law”.
The complaint claims that money from the charitable foundation is funding non-charitable lobbying work by its campaigning arm.
The Labour MP Clive Lewis, who is supporting the complaint, said: “I am deeply concerned about the conclusions reached by lawyers in our letter today, exposing what could be a serious breach of charity law. It is vital that the Charity Commission acts swiftly to ensure the Global Warming Policy Foundation can no longer abuse its charity status to pursue one-sided, political lobbying downplaying the climate crisis.”
The complaint is also being supported by the Green MP Caroline Lucas and Liberal Democrat Layla Moran.
Lucas said: “Net Zero Watch is not a charity, it’s a lobby group for the climate-wrecking fossil fuel industry and it should be treated as such. Public money cannot and must not fund the blatant denial of overwhelming global scientific evidence that we are in a climate emergency.”
The Good Law Project has pointed out that the GWPF benefits from tax breaks as a charity, so money passed on to Net Zero Watch for campaigning purposes could have avoided being fully taxed.
Jo Maugham, director of Good Law Project, added: “The main function of these sinister organisations is to be masks behind which their unattractive funders and venal purposes can hide. That is bad enough. But, to top it all, because the Charity Commission is asleep at the wheel or deliberately looks the other way, we must subsidise those unknown funders and purposes with our taxes.”
A GWPF spokesperson said: “The Global Warming Policy Foundation and Net Zero Watch are separate organisations. It is standard structuring for an educational charity (such as the Greenpeace Environmental Trust) to operate separately from an associated, but non-charitable organisation (such as Greenpeace). It is right and proper that non-charitable activities are not funded by charitable donations and we take great care to ensure this does not happen. Any suggestion to the contrary, or attack on the academic credibility of the foundation’s publications, is unfounded. We will, as always, cooperate fully with any questions the Charity Commission considers it appropriate to ask of us.”
