Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch’s head of policy slammed the UK’s 2050 net zero emissions goal while working for a group that has been funded by BP, DeSmog can report.
Members of the new Tory leader’s top team have held senior roles at think tanks that are part of the Tufton Street network – a co-ordinated web of “free market” groups that campaign against climate action.
These include Badenoch’s head of policy Victoria Hewson, who used to work for the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA). In July 2022, Hewson wrote an article for the IEA website in which she argued that legally binding targets, such as the 2050 net zero target, are “arbitrary” and “distort decision making”. She also called the 2050 commitment a “huge own goal”.
Hewson’s views suggest that Badenoch may scrap the UK’s 2050 target, if she becomes prime minister. The Tory leader has previously suggested that she would be in favour of delaying the commitment, describing herself as a “net zero sceptic”.
Badenoch’s bid for Tory leader received funding from Neil Record, chair of the climate science denial group Net Zero Watch and the life vice president of the IEA, who also let Badenoch use his London home as a campaign office.
The IEA, which strongly advocates more fossil fuel extraction, received funding from the oil giant BP every year from 1967 to at least 2018. The IEA said that the last government’s commitment to “max out” the UK’s fossil fuel reserves was a “welcome step”.
Badenoch’s chief of staff Lee Rowley was co-chair of FREER, a libertarian group “run and operated by the IEA”. Meanwhile, the Tory leader’s political secretary James Roberts is the former managing director of the TaxPayers’ Alliance (TPA), a Tufton Street group which also celebrated the awarding of new North Sea oil and gas licences last year by the previous Conservative government.
The appointments come within days of Badenoch attacking Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer for announcing a new target to cut the UK’s emissions by 81 percent by 2035.
Speaking in Parliament last week, Badenoch called the new target a “unilateral commitment” and “yet another example of politicians putting short-term publicity above long-term planning”.
On Wednesday, Badenoch held a press conference about immigration at the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS), another Tufton Street think tank which has backed new North Sea oil and gas drilling. DeSmog revealed last year that members of the CPS board have financial interests in fossil fuels. The CPS said that DeSmog was “cherry-picking in order to manufacture an incorrect picture of the CPS’s position”.
Tufton Street think tanks have boasted close relationships with recent Conservative leaders, and in particular former Prime Minister Liz Truss, who served for just 45 days in 10 Downing Street in late 2022 after introducing a series of radical free market reforms supported by these libertarian groups.
DeSmog and Democracy for Sale revealed in June that Conservative donors had given over £6.8 million to Tufton Street think tanks since 2019.
“By getting the Tufton Street band back together, Badenoch has proven just how out of touch she is with the public and with businesses, who want Parliament to get on with the transition to green energy,” said Hannah Greer, Good Law Project campaigns manager. “The Tories have already forgotten how the kind of ideas that led to the disastrous mini-budget were so decisively rejected at the ballot box, less than six months ago.
“Now in Badenoch, we appear to be seeing a Liz Truss tribute act.”
The Conservative Party, the IEA, and the TPA were approached for comment.
Victoria Hewson
Badenoch’s head of policy Victoria Hewson is a lawyer who worked as an advisor to Badenoch at the Department of Business and Trade from March 2023 until July’s general election.
From 2018 to 2022, Hewson was head of regulatory affairs at the IEA, a think tank which campaigns against government regulation, including measures to limit climate change and protect the environment.
In 2018, an undercover investigation by Unearthed revealed that the IEA had received funding from BP every year since 1967. In response to the story, an IEA spokeswoman said: “It is surely uncontroversial that the IEA’s principles coincide with the interests of our donors.”
The group has also received funding in the past from oil giant ExxonMobil.
Tufton Street groups are characterised by a lack of transparency over their funding sources, with all members of the network given the lowest rating by openDemocracy’s “Who Funds You?” think tank transparency index.
In 2021, Hewson wrote a report for the IEA attacking the Climate Change Committee (CCC), the independent body which advises the government on its net zero policies. In the report, titled ‘Hot Air’, Hewson claimed that the CCC is an “activist committee” that “has become a political actor, rather than delivering balanced advice”.
Hewson added: “The absence of genuine challenge in the output of the CCC to prevailing elite political views on the need for net zero is striking. This does not entail ‘denial’ or even scepticism of climate change or anthropogenic influences on the climate.”
The report’s footnotes include a 2020 document on the supposed cost of net zero by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the UK’s main climate science denial group, which is based in 55 Tufton Street. Hewson’s report concluded that, “the government should institute a strategic review of its climate policy priorities”.
A Telegraph video interview with Hewson to promote the report was headlined, “Meet the New Labour blob-ocracy behind Net Zero”.
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s leading climate science body, has said global emissions must be cut to net zero by 2050 to limit global warming and avoid the worst impacts of climate change. These include “weather and climate extremes, like heat waves, heavy rains, and drought” – all of which “will put a disproportionate burden on low-income households and thus increase poverty levels.”
In 2018, Hewson worked as legal counsel for the Legatum Institute, a right-wing think tank run by the Dubai-based investment firm Legatum Group, co-owner of GB News, a broadcaster that frequently attacks climate science and net zero policies.
“Liz Truss surrounded herself with Tufton Street acolytes, and now it seems that Kemi Badenoch is doing the same,” Peter Geoghegan, editor of Democracy for Sale, told DeSmog. “Between this and Neil Record bankrolling her campaign, it feels like the Conservative Party is still tied to the dark money think tanks that have wreaked so much havoc in Britain in recent years.”
Lee Rowley
Badenoch’s chief of staff Lee Rowley is a former Conservative MP who served as housing minister under Boris Johnson. In 2018, he was co-chair of FREER, which described itself as “a major new initiative from the IEA, promoting a freer economy and a freer society”. The group now appears to be defunct.
In May 2018, Rowley wrote a paper for FREER about how to promote capitalism to younger voters. FREER’s website, which is no longer online, included a 2019 blog post by Liz Truss criticising bans on junk food; an interview with Truss at that year’s Conservative Party conference; a post by journalist and GWPF advisor Matt Ridley opposing bans on vaping; and a paper by Kemi Badenoch about free speech.
Rowley’s ties to the IEA have continued, with the former MP speaking at an IEA event on “intergenerational inequality” during the 2023 Conservative Party conference.
Rowley has also worked with the CPS Tufton Street think tank, writing a chapter on “building skills for the future” for its May 2018 booklet ‘New Blue’.
“It is time all politicians snapped out of their obsession with Tufton Street think tanks and their former employees,” said Tom Brake, former Liberal Democrat MP and director of the campaign group Unlock Democracy. “MPs should show far more curiosity about who is funding think tanks, from where, and why.”
James Roberts
The Tory leader’s political secretary James Roberts was the managing director of the TPA from September 2018 to June 2023, leaving the role to become an advisor to Badenoch in her previous role at the Department of Business and Trade.
The TPA has long been critical of government climate policies. Last year the group welcomed the Conservative government’s decision to delay some of its net zero policies, calling the move “sensible”. The group also supported the government’s new round of licenses to drill for oil and gas in the North Sea, and has consistently advocated for the ban on fracking for shale gas to be lifted in the UK.
In a manifesto launched during the recent Conservative leadership conference, Badenoch’s campaign praised the U.S. boom in fracking and questioned why other countries have not followed its example.
The House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee – a body of MPs that advises the government on climate matters – concluded in 2019 that fracking was incompatible with the UK’s climate goals.
Before his TPA role, Roberts was head of outreach at CT Group, an Australian consultancy firm founded by Conservative Party strategist Lynton Crosby which has advised oil, gas, and mining companies including Ferrexpro, the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association, and BHP.
Another Badenoch advisor, Lottie Moore, worked for several years as head of equality and identity at the think tank Policy Exchange. Last year, the then Prime Minister Rishi Sunak credited Policy Exchange with helping to draft the government’s laws cracking down on climate protests.
In 2017, Policy Exchange’s U.S. wing, American Friends of Policy Exchange, received $30,000 (roughly £23,700) in funding from ExxonMobil.
