Funders and directors of the UK’s leading climate science denial group have donated more than £7 million to the Conservative Party over the past two decades, DeSmog can reveal.

The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) was founded by Margaret Thatcher’s former Chancellor Nigel Lawson in 2009 in order to combat what it describes as “extremely damaging and harmful policies” designed to mitigate climate change. 

Its current director Benny Peiser has claimed it is “extraordinary that anyone should think there is a climate crisis” and the group suggested in a 2015 report that carbon dioxide pollution is “a benefit to the planet”. 

In reality, the world’s foremost climate science body, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has stated that carbon dioxide “is responsible for most of global warming” since the late 19th century, which has increased the “severity and frequency of weather and climate extremes, like heat waves, heavy rains, and drought”.

The GWPF doesn’t publish a full list of its donors, but several have been outed over the years, while its directors – which include former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott and Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson – are publicly declared.

Electoral Commission records show that these individuals have donated more than £7.4 million to right-wing political parties in just over two decades, including £7.2 million to the Conservatives, and £230,000 to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. Almost half a million pounds of those donations were made in the last year.

The single biggest donor on the list was asset manager billionaire Lord Michael Hintze, who has donated over £5.2 million to the Conservative Party since 2002, including £257,400 in the last year.

Lord Hintze was revealed as one of the GWPF’s financial backers in 2012 by The Guardian, while DeSmog revealed in early September that he is one of the main donors in the ongoing Conservative leadership race, donating £10,000 each to James Cleverly, Tom Tugendhat, and Priti Patel.

Lord Hintze has previously said he believes “there is climate change” caused “in part due to human activity” but that he wants to ensure “all sides” are heard on climate change “to reach the right conclusion for society as a whole”.

More than 99.9 percent of peer-reviewed scientific papers agree that climate change is mainly caused by humans.

Lord Hintze isn’t the only figure linked to the GWPF currently bankrolling the Conservative Party leadership contest.

One of the race’s frontrunners – Kemi Badenoch – received £10,000 from Neil Record, the chair of Net Zero Watch, which is the campaigning arm of the GWPF. In total, Record has donated over £510,000 to the Conservative Party and its MPs since 2008, and has also given money to the GWPF.  

As recently as July, Record wrote a column for The Telegraph claiming it was “debatable in detail” if fossil fuels cause dangerous levels of global warming. Net Zero Watch has called for “rapid” new North Sea oil and gas exploration, and for wind and solar power to be “wound down completely”. 

Authors working for the IPCC have said that “it is a statement of fact, we cannot be any more certain; it is unequivocal and indisputable that humans are warming the planet”.

During the leadership contest, Badenoch has questioned the decision made in 2019 by Theresa May’s Conservative government to introduce the UK’s 2050 net zero target. 

When asked previously about his GWPF donations, Record said: “I personally regard the continuing contribution of the GWPF to the climate change debate as very positive in assisting balance and rationality in this contentious area.”

The Tories have also received £620,000 since 2001 from Lord Jon Moynihan, another GWPF donor. As revealed by Democracy for Sale, Conservative peer Lord Moynihan donated £25,000 to the GWPF between 2018 to 2023. The peer also has fossil fuel interests, holding shares in oil and gas majors BP, Shell, and TotalEnergies each worth more than £100,000.

Between the 2019 general election and the start of the 2024 campaign, the Conservatives received £8.4 million from fossil fuel interests, highly polluting industries, and climate science deniers.

Prior to its defeat at the 2024 election, the Conservative Party made a series of U-turns on its own net zero policies, attacked Labour’s green spending plans, and doubled down on its support for new fossil fuel projects, approving more than 100 new North Sea oil and gas licences.

The party gathers in Birmingham this weekend for its annual conference, which will act as a post mortem for the party’s worst general election defeat in its history on 4 July. 

“There is no doubt that public mistrust of politics is fuelled by parties accepting major donations from big companies like those whose lobbying efforts make it clear they want to frustrate the urgent need to tackle the climate crisis,” Green Party deputy leader Zack Polanski told DeSmog. 

“It’s time to implement strict rules on funding political parties, including a cap on how much any individual or business can donate.

“Elections should be won by the people with the best ideas, not the parties influenced by the biggest donors.”

Reform UK

The Conservative Party has not been the only right-wing party to benefit from funding from those with ties to the GWPF.

Terence Mordaunt has been a prolific political donor to right-wing parties – giving £412,000 to the Conservatives and £230,000 to Reform since January 2023.

He was the chair of the GWPF between 2019 and 2021, sitting on its board until August this year, and told the investigative news site openDemocracy in 2019 that “no one has proved yet that CO2 is the culprit (of climate change). It may not be.”

The GWPF’s replacement for Mordaunt as chair, Jerome Booth, has also donated £50,000 to the Tories between 2007 and 2013.

Reform, which campaigns to scrap the UK’s net zero targets, has extensive ties to climate science deniers and those with financial interests in oil and gas. 

Between the 2019 general election and the start of the 2024 campaign, the party received £2.3 million from fossil fuel interests, major polluters, and those who cast doubt on the climate crisis.

On 13 September, party leader Nigel Farage headlined a fundraiser in Chicago, Illinois, for the Heartland Institute – a group that has been at the forefront of denying the scientific evidence for man-made climate change – and urged the U.S. to “drill baby drill” for more fossil fuels.

The IPCC has warned that “keeping warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels requires deep, rapid and sustained greenhouse gas emissions reductions across all sectors”, led by the energy industry. The group has also stated that “climate change impacts will put a disproportionate burden on low-income households and thus increase poverty levels.”

All of the donors named in this piece, the Reform Party, Conservative Party and the GWPF were contacted for comment, but none replied.