Steve Baker

Credentials

Background

Steve Baker was the Conservative MP for Wycombe between 2010-2024, after losing his seat in the July 2024 general election.³

Baker became the Minister of State in the Northern Ireland Office on September 7, 2022.⁴

Baker is a long-time Eurosceptic, having co-founded in 2015 Conservatives for Britain, a campaign organisation formed just after the General Election of that year to lobby for a referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union.⁵ ⁶

The president of Conservatives for Britain was Lord Nigel Lawson, founder of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, Britain’s most prominent climate science denial group, based at 55 Tufton Street, a hub for pro-Brexit pressure groups.⁷

In May 2021, Baker joined⁸ the Board of Trustees of the GWPF.⁹ Baker stepped down from the GWPF’s Board of Trustees on September 8, 2022, the day after his appointment as Minister of State in the Northern Ireland Office.¹⁰

Baker received a £10,000 donation from Neil Record, a Conservative Party donor and chair of the GWPF’s campaign arm, Net Zero Watch, in January 2023,¹¹ as well as a £5,000 donation in February 2022 for a “media and strategic campaign consultant” to work on the Conservative Way Forward relaunch, according to parliament’s register of members’ financial interests.¹²

Baker has become a vocal critic of the government’s plans to decarbonise the economy by 2050, writing an article for The Sun that claimed “the cost of Net Zero could deliver a political crisis greater than the Poll Tax.”¹³

Baker has also written about the “eye-watering costs” of net zero policies for Net Zero Watch, a campaign launched and managed by the Global Warming Policy Foundation. NZW claims to “scrutinise” the UK government’s net zero emissions plans and states that the UK has “burdened households and businesses with hugely expensive climate and energy policies”.¹⁴ ¹⁵

Baker helped set up the Net Zero Scrutiny Group, a group of backbench Conservative MPs and former government ministers which opposes many of the government’s net zero policies, alongside Conservative MP Craig Mackinlay.¹⁶

From 2016-2017 and 2019-2020, Baker was chairman of the European Research Group, a publicly-funded group of Conservatives in Parliament aiming to secure a “hard” Brexit. Baker was deputy chairman of the ERG from 2018-2019. The group consists of as many as 80 pro-Brexit MPs and has been chaired by other MPs including Jacob Rees-Mogg, Suella Braverman, and Mark Francois, among others.¹⁷ ¹⁸ The group has always taken a Eurosceptic stance, having emerged in 1994 out of the opposition to the Maastricht Treaty within the Conservative Party.¹⁹ ²⁰

In September 2017, the ERG was in the spotlight when OpenDemocracy revealed taxpayers’ money was being used to fund research for the group, despite expenses rules being against such funding.²¹

In the period leading up to the EU referendum in 2016, Baker was one of a number of ERG members who held positions in the official pro-Brexit campaign group, Vote Leave. Baker took a donation in 2016 from the Constitutional Research Council (CRC) when he was chair of the ERG. The CRC was later revealed to be behind a £435,000 donation to the Democratic Unionist Party, which was spent on pro-Brexit advertising.²² ²³ ²⁴

Baker resigned as a minister in the Brexit department on 9 July 2018, following the resignation of Brexit Secretary David Davis.²⁵

Baker and Davis’ resignations were part of the wider Brexiteer response to the Chequers Statement of the UK’s relationship with the EU post-Brexit. Brexiteers such as Boris Johnson, Davis and Baker saw Theresa May’s Chequers plan as keeping the UK too closely connected to the EU and failing to deliver on the “take back control” mantra of the original Leave campaign. The Chequers plan presented a compromise that left neither the Remainers nor the hard Brexiteers satisfied, hence the resignations of key Brexit cheerleaders and subsequent re-grouping of the Tory Brexiteers on the backbenches.²⁶ ²⁷ ²⁸

Baker co-founded a free-market thinktank called The Cobden Centre in 2010, inspired by the ideas of Austrian School economists Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises. In 2018, he was criticised for failing to declare his involvement with the organisation in Parliament’ register of interests.²⁹

Stance on Climate Change

October 5, 2021

At a 2021 Conservative Party Conference event hosted by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), Baker said that much of climate science is “contestable” and “sometimes propagandised,” while claiming that some UN climate scenarios were “implausible”.³⁰

Baker said:

“A lot of the science is absolutely settled. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. We’ve emitted plenty of it. That will have contributed to climate change. Lots of it is actually still contestable, but that’s not really the point.”

He continued:

“Interested as I am as a chartered aerospace engineer who used to work on thermodynamics, with an MSc in computer science, capable of understanding models – fascinated as I am, I am not having that conversation about the science. But I have to say, the science is sometimes propagandised.”

Baker also criticised the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s leading authority on climate science, claiming: “The most dramatic and scary IPCC scenarios, the extreme ones that lead to disaster and doom, aren’t going to happen. They are implausible.”

December 19, 2010

In a piece for Conservative Home, Baker wrote:³¹

“I am deeply concerned about climate change and how we deal with it, about resource depletion, about population growth and about the problem of how to improve the lot of the world’s desperately poor, but I am most concerned about bad economics. […] What we need today more than urgent action on climate change is a paradigm shift in economic thinking. ”

Key Quotes

July 5, 2024

After losing his seat in the July 2024 general election, Steve Baker appeared on an LBC interview with Nick Ferrari in which he said: “I fought this campaign to win, I wanted to win, I wanted to go ahead and do my duty but Nick, I have to tell you, it is a dreadful job and I am thank god I’m free. I will not be back.”³²

October 3, 2022

Baker appeared on an IEA panel titled: “Energy Crisis: Can the UK Afford Net Zero?” at the 2022 Conservative party conference, in which the IEA’s chief operating officer, Andy Mayer, called the net zero target “nonsense” and said we should “get rid of it”. ³³

Baker answered the event’s question about whether the UK can afford net zero by saying:

“In the short run, when you look at this winter and the energy costs that we face, no. But in the longer run it’s water under the bridge, we’re going towards net zero.”

He recommended policies from a Net Zero Watch report published earlier in the year, which included “suspending net zero commitments for this winter” and “reduc[ing] the value of renewable obligations to close to zero”.

Baker also revealed that he was still administrator of the Net Zero Scrutiny Group’s WhatsApp group, despite having stepped down from his role as head of the parliamentary caucus in September.

October 11, 2021

Speaking to talkRADIO host Julia Hartley-Brewer about the UK’s energy crisis, Baker said that to “deal with the problem of intermittency” of renewable energy sources like wind and solar power, the UK should be “going for gas” and building up its nuclear capacity to secure its energy supply.³⁴

Baker also called the decision by the Offshore Petroleum Regulator for Environment and Decommissioning (OPRED) to refuse Shell’s request to continue developing its Jackdaw gas field “pathological” and “self-harming.”³⁵

He added: “We really should be going for the gas we have, the gas that’s under our feet with shale, developing the gasfields we have” and “making sure we’re not so dependent on Vladimir Putin”.

August 15, 2021

In an interview for i News about the government’s Net Zero policies, Baker said that the government would face “another absolute political fiasco” if it failed to “confront the cost of net zero now”.³⁶ While he noted that there is “undoubtedly a political consensus we should go to net zero,” Baker also warned that imposing the costs of a net zero transition too quickly would lead to political backlash and drive voters towards parties like Reform UK and UKIP.

Baker also said that he was “absolutely clear that climate change is a real thing, and that human-emitted carbon dioxide has contributed to it, and that we should do something about it,” adding that “the idea that we should do nothing is dangerous and foolish”.

Baker also spoke about the public reception of net zero policies, saying: “I do not see how we get any government elected on an open and frank manifesto of making the public poorer and colder. The only way that could be done is if the public genuinely believed that the Earth was about to burn. And that I think is why we then see the IPCC report being presented in a way that encourages people to be terrified.”

July 28, 2021

In a tweet about the impact of the government’s net zero policies, Baker claimed that people may have to adjust their diets to replace meat with insects by 2030, tweeting:³⁷

“Research promoted by the taxpayer-funded UK Research and Innovation Council said the nation may have to swap bangers and beef burgers for I’m a Celeb-style jungle substitutes made of gross insects by 2030.”

The claim was fact-checked by Carbon Brief Deputy Editor Simon Evans, who tweeted:³⁸

“Factcheck: False. The @theCCCuk balanced net-zero pathway involves a 20% reduction in meat & dairy by 2030 – continuing the trajectory of recent trends. It makes no mention of “gross insects”. (And other pathways to net-zero are available)”

December 19, 2010

In a post for the Conservative Home website in 2010, Baker wrote:³⁹

“[B]ad economic science is a greater threat to civilisation than climate change.”

“Climate science does appear to be subject to uncertainties and climate change appears to be a problem we face in the medium to long term. But I remember the fuel protests. I lived in a remote Cotswold hamlet and I came close to running out of food as well as fuel. I remember the queues and the anxiety and how quickly the situation developed. I remember thinking that we were only ever a couple of meals from barbarism. Perhaps resource depletion is a greater threat than climate change.”

Key Actions

January 2023

Baker received a £10,000 donation from Neil Record, a Conservative Party donor and chair of the GWPF’s campaign arm, Net Zero Watch.⁴⁰ The register does not say what the donation was for.⁴¹

July 20, 2022

DeSmog reported that Baker attended the Conservative Party’s summer ball in June 2022 with a ticket – worth £2,000 – paid for by aviation fuel executive Christopher Harborne, according to the register of members’ financial interests.⁴² ⁴³

July 10, 2022

Baker revived Conservative Way Forward, a Thatcherite pressure group, with financial support from the chair of the Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF).⁴⁴

Neil Record, a currency trader and chair of the GWPF, donated £5,000 to Baker in February 2022 for a “media and strategic campaign consultant”, understood to be Ed Barker – a public relations consultant who worked on Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s 2019 party leadership campaign – to work on the Conservative Way Forward relaunch, according to parliament’s register of interests.⁴⁵

Tory peers David Frost, a former chief Brexit negotiator, and Daniel Hannan, a former MEP, were also reportedly backing Conservative Way Forward.

DeSmog also reported that Baker was helping run the leadership campaign of Kemi Badenoch, a Conservative MP,⁴⁶ before ultimately supporting Liz Truss in the prime ministerial contest.⁴⁷

July 7, 2022

The Guardian reported that Baker was considering running for prime minister and, if appointed, would end the government’s plans to push for the development of more wind and solar energy. Baker told the paper: “[Wind and solar] are fundamentally intermittent sources of energy. And therefore if we’re going to maintain our standard of living and in particularly [sic] industry, we’ve got to cover those intermittent sources with something else.”⁴⁸

Baker also spoke about reversing policies that pay British farmers to adopt conservation practices on their farms, saying that he “want[s] policies that can feed us all”:

“That does include actually growing food as a thing that we do in the UK. And I’m afraid some of the policies which are being adopted are just anti-life. They’re anti-human life on Earth in the name of environmentalism, and I want us to live flourishing and full lives with a healthy environment around us.”

Baker also told the Guardian that “we are at risk from extreme green policies” and accused climate campaigners of “terrifying children,” adding: “I regard that as child abuse, it’s wrong.”

Baker was speaking to the Guardian after a parliamentary event hosted by the Global Warming Policy Foundation.

January 2022

The NZSG was formed in 2021 ahead of the UN’s COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, and launched in January 2022 with a letter to the Telegraph. The letter, signed by 19 MPs and Lord Peter Lilley, claimed that the “Climate Change Levy on business energy use” was “making UK energy-intensive businesses uncompetitive” and called for a “new approach to our energy security” from then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Chancellor Rishi Sunak.⁴⁹

Coverage of the letter did not mention Baker’s ties to the Global Warming Policy Foundation, of which he was a trustee at the time.⁵⁰

October 11, 2021

On the day Net Zero Watch, a campaign led and managed by the Global Warming Policy Forum, launched, Baker published an article titled “‘Winging it’ for Net Zero is a catastrophe waiting to happen” on the campaign’s website.⁵¹

In the article, Baker claimed that successive governments, “Whitehall bureaucrats” and the government’s Climate Change Committee have been working on net zero policies for “well over a decade now” and “still have little or no idea how Net Zero can be achieved, beyond a vague idea that we should electrify everything and have lots of energy from windfarms”.

Baker also criticised the practicality and “eye-watering costs” of a proposed energy solutions, including wind, pumped hydropower, batteries, hydrogen, and carbon capture and storage (CCS).

Baker continued:

“…successive governments, egged on by the CCC, the renewables industry, and the green movement have told us we must “keep fossil fuels in the ground”. […] So we first made the electricity grid unwelcoming for gas-fired power stations, then we neutered the nascent shale gas industry with absurd regulations, and then we banned it completely.”

Baker also called for ministers to “get a grip and liberate the private sector to go for gas, right now.”

May 25, 2021

Baker wrote an article for The Sun criticising the government’s plans to ban gas boilers within 14 years as part of its 2050 net zero emissions strategy, which would also involve installing 600,000 heat pumps by 2028. Baker disputed the effectiveness of heat pump installation, writing: “If you live in an older property, you might well have to spend many thousands more on fitting enough insulation to make a heat pump viable,” adding: “And once you have spent all that money, your house may well be colder than before.”⁵²

Elsewhere in the article, Baker stated that as a result of policies aimed at minimising carbon emissions “We are on the path to poverty, misery and a failure to inspire the world to decarbonise.” Arguing that “the cost of Net Zero could deliver a political crisis greater than the Poll Tax,” Baker added that the government’s policies could lead to a “terrible revolt”.

Baker’s article was praised by Spiked writer Ben Pile, who wrote: “Baker’s intervention is notable by its rarity.” Pile added: “It has been a long time since any elected politician has said anything to defend the voters’ interests against the green ideology that has captured the British establishment.”⁵³

November 18, 2020

Commenting on Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s 10-point plan for a “Green Industrial Revolution,” Baker tweeted: “I am increasingly concerned by the huge costs which these policies will impose on struggling individuals, families and businesses as we recover from the dreadful hit of coronavirus on livelihoods,” citing a GWPF article which described Johnson’s policies as “shallow gesture politics” with “severely negative economic implications.”⁵⁴ ⁵⁵

December 23, 2019

Baker received a £2,000 donation from Jon Moynihan, chair of the Initiative for Free Trade, former chair of the Vote Leave Finance Committee, and former trustee for the Institute of Economic Affairs.⁵⁶ ⁵⁷ ⁵⁸ ⁵⁹

On the same day, he registered a donation of £3,000 from Bruno Prior, another trustee of the Institute of Economic Affairs.⁶⁰ ⁶¹

August 2018

Emails obtained by OpenDemocracy show Baker continued to have meetings with the hard Brexit European Research Group while a Minister in the Department for Exiting the European Union. The ministerial code says MPs must cut ties with the group when they are promoted into government positions. The meetings were not recorded in the department’s transparency log, OpenDemocracy reported.⁶²

July, 2018

Baker was implicated in an undercover investigation by Unearthed that suggests the Institute of Economic Affairs was receiving cash to get funders access to ministers, including Baker. IEA chief executive Mark Littlewood told the reporters he had been used as a “slight shill” to hide some of Baker’s meetings with IEA analyst Shanker Singham.⁶³

Baker is also revealed to have co-ordinated the creation and running of a WhatsApp group for backbench MPs who are given voting instructions through it by Baker. This “party within a party” is highly Eurosceptic, containing mostly members of the ERG, and leaked messages from the group show Baker asking MPs to vote for ERG Amendments to the Taxation (Cross Border) Trade Bill.⁶⁴

January 17, 2018

The Ferret revealed that Baker had failed to declare in Parliament’s register of interests his links to the pro-Brexit Cobden Centre thinktank he co-founded in 2010.⁶⁵

July, 2017

Baker accepted a donation of as much as £6,500 from the Constitutional Research Council, a group that channelled £435,000 to the Democratic Union Party, OpenDemocracy revealed. The money was used for pro-Leave advertising and across the UK.⁶⁶

OpenDemocracy also revealed that during 2013, Baker was a director of the company Thermal Engineering Ltd., which is involved in arms dealing in Saudi Arabia.⁶⁷

May, 2017

Baker was one of 70 signatories on a letter to the BBC claiming their coverage of Brexit was biased. Of these 70, 12 are connected to the 55 Tufton Street climate science denier network, including Baker.⁶⁸

December, 2013

Baker voted against allowing carbon dioxide emissions limits to be set at power stations with pollution abatement equipment fitted. Baker has generally voted against climate change measures previously.⁶⁹ ⁷⁰