A rightwing thinktank has been offering potential US donors access to government ministers and civil servants as it raises cash for research to support the free-trade deals demanded by hardline Brexiters, according to an investigation.

The director of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) was secretly recorded telling an undercover reporter that funders could get to know ministers on first-name terms and that his organisation was in “the Brexit influencing game”.

Mark Littlewood claimed the IEA could make introductions to ministers and said the thinktank’s trade expert knew Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, David Davis and Liam Fox well.

The IEA chief was also recorded suggesting potential US donors could fund and shape “substantial content” of research commissioned by the thinktank and that its findings would always support the argument for free-trade deals.

Profile The Institute of Economic Affairs Show Hide The Institute of Economic Affairs was established in 1955 by admirers of the free-market economist Friedrich Hayek. Its mission involves “analysing and expounding the role of markets in solving economic and social problems”. In July it launched a £50,000 prize for ideas about harnessing the free market to solve the UK’s housing crisis. It is established as an educational charity and does not have to declare its donors, although it is widely known to have been backed by tobacco, alcohol and oil companies, among others. It publishes reports, and organises conferences and dinners that are often attended by government ministers as well as donors. It has a high media profile, regularly supplying spokespeople to TV news channels. Last year it spent £2.3m on its activities, which include distributing a magazine about economics to thousands of A-level students. Its trustees include Patrick Minford, a pro-Brexit economics professor who supported Margaret Thatcher, and the hedge fund billionaire and Conservative party donor Sir Michael Hintze.

This could hugely benefit US farmers by lifting the ban on the sale in the UK of beef from cattle treated with growth hormones and chlorine-washed chicken.

Speaking about what kind of Westminster access the IEA could provide donors with, Littlewood told the investigator: “I have absolutely no problem with people who have business interests, us facilitating those.”

The investigation, undertaken in May and June, also revealed the thinktank had already provided access to a minister for a US organisation.

The disclosures are likely to raise fresh questions about the independence and status of the IEA, which is established as an educational charity. Charity Commission rules state that “an organisation will not be charitable if its purposes are political”.



The investigation also sheds light on the way US business interests seem keen to influence the Brexit debate by bolstering the arguments of hardliners inside the Conservative party who continue to grow in strength.

In lengthy exchanges with the Guardian, the IEA said there was “nothing untoward about thinktanks having a collaborative approach with politicians”, adding that it had “no corporate view” on Brexit.

“It is spurious to suggest that the IEA is engaging in any kind of ‘cash for access’ system,” a spokesman said. “All thinktanks have relationships with government officials and politicians.” He said it had not accepted any cash from US business in relation to its work on trade and Brexit.

Littlewood told BBC Radio 4 Today’s programme on Monday that such interactions were an integral part of the IEA’s work and perfectly normal. “My job is to meet other free-market people to try and persuade them to give me some money so my institute can conduct free-market research so that we can influence debate and opinion in society,” he said.

“Let’s be clear about that. I have no power over ministers. I’m not a chief whip or a leader of a party. We can’t promise people any access at all. The IEA has done spectacularly well in engaging with politicians.”

Founded in 1955, the IEA describes itself as the UK’s original free-market thinktank. In the two years since the EU referendum, it has been a platform for those pushing for a clean-break Brexit.

The footage was gathered by Unearthed, an investigations unit set up by Greenpeace amid concerns about the IEA and whether it was working behind the scenes to use Brexit to lower environmental standards.

Play Video 0:59 IEA's Mark Littlewood: 'I don't mind our donors affecting us on salience.'

The IEA is already subject to a Charity Commission review of a complaint that its promotion of a hard Brexit is incompatible with its charitable status.

A reporter from the unit posed as a consultant for a US agriculture investor, secretly taping conversations with senior IEA officials on two occasions.

The recordings include discussions between Littlewood and the reporter in which the IEA director sets out the potential benefits of funding work by the thinktank.

Littlewood explained that a meeting with an agriculture minister would provide him and his client with the opportunity “for you to say, ‘Minister I’m really keen to bend your ear about beef’”.

Q&A 10 food safety risks under a free-trade deal with US Show Hide A report by the Soil Association highlights 10 concerns about food safety in a post-Brexit era. These foods are currently banned in the UK: Chlorine-washed chicken (banned in the EU).

Hormone-treated beef (banned in the EU).

Ractopamine in pork (banned in the EU).

Chicken litter as animal feed (banned in the EU). Includes the birds' faeces.

Atrazine-treated crops (banned in the EU). Atrazine is a herbicide used on 90% of sugar cane, which can enter into the water supply and interfere with wildlife.

Genetically modified foods (banned in the EU).

Brominated vegetable oil (banned in the EU). BVO is used in citrus drinks; Coca-Cola announced it would stop using BVO in 2004.

Potassium bromate (banned in the EU). A dough conditioner also banned in China, Brazil and Canada, in tests on rats it has been found to be a possible carcinogen.

Azodicarbonamide. A bleaching agent for flour, it has been linked to an increase in tumours in rats.

Food colourants (banned in the UK, regulated in the EU). Can lead to hyperactivity in children.

It is understood the footage, which has been shared with the Guardian, will be handed to the Charity Commission on Monday.

In the recordings, the IEA claimed it had arranged for Tucker Link, a business figure from Oklahoma who at the time owned a 4,450-hectare (11,000-acre) cattle ranch, to meet the Brexit minister at the time, Steve Baker.



Baker left his post after David Davis resigned as Brexit secretary.

A spokeswoman for Baker said he “met US Republicans in his political capacity to discuss trade relations between the two countries”.



She said he only ever had meetings “on merit”, adding: “We would not want any ambiguity whatsoever to exist on this point.”

Littlewood claimed the IEA also arranged for Link, and the director of an Oklahoma business thinktank, to go to the Department for International Trade, Fox’s department, where they met a senior civil servant.

“The people running our international trade team are talking to [Gove] definitely once every three or four days … along with David Davis, Boris Johnson, Liam Fox,” Littlewood was recorded as saying.

Davis, Baker and Lord Callanan, a Brexit minister, all recorded meetings with the IEA in the first three months of this year.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Tory Brexiters David Davis, Boris Johnson and Liam Fox. Composite: Daniel Leal-Olivas/PA/AFP/Getty Images/Reuters

During a pitch for funding for research, Littlewood said the IEA allowed donors to affect the “salience” of reports and to shape “substantial content”.

He said the thinktank was keen to commission a study on post-Brexit farming which would focus on how changes in technology, genomics and chemicals could benefit the British countryside.

The idea was to “get these ideas in the bloodstream of Defra”, Littlewood said, referring to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which is run by Gove.



The IEA director suggested the report would be written by Matt Ridley, a commentator on genetics in agriculture, who had already discussed the idea with Gove.



The undercover reporter was given a summary of the report and a cost plan, which showed the IEA needed £42,500 to produce and publicise it. It said £5,000 of the sum would go towards a private lunch for the donor. Littlewood said this would be with a minister, and that a minister, “quite possibly” Gove, would also be invited to the launch.

In the recording, Littlewood said IEA reports were consistent with the thinktank’s ideological position and he said donors could not dictate their conclusions.



But he added: “There is no way this report is going to say the most important thing we need to do is keep American beef out of our market in order to prop up our beef farmers, in fact exactly the opposite.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest An American cattle herd. Photograph: PrairieArtProject/Getty Images/iStockphoto

He also suggested the report might propose allowing the UK sale of chlorine-washed chicken from the US as long as it was labelled.



A spokesman for Gove confirmed Ridley had suggested the report to him.

But he added: “There will be no chlorinated chicken entering the UK and we will retain the precautionary principle [used to prohibit GM farming in the EU]. That position won’t change whatever any thinktank recommends.”



The IEA said Littlewood’s remarks about the report’s most likely conclusions did not mean it would be written to suit the donor’s interests.



“We think it is likely that [Ridley] will follow the evidence, which in our view leads to the conclusion that freedom of choice is best for consumers.”



An IEA spokeswoman said it was confident it had acted in accordance with the charity regulations, adding: “We do not act in donors’ interests, except to the extent that they have an interest in pursuing free trade and free markets.”

Peer review meant the thinktank’s output was “independent and free from conflict of interest”, she said. “We are not controlling politicians in any way … When they work with us they do so of their own volition.”



The IEA makes “independent editorial decisions and then seeks funding … It is surely uncontroversial that the IEA’s principles coincide with the interests of our donors,” it added.



It said it had not received any cash from US businesses in relation to its work on trade and Brexit.

The Unearthed editor, Damian Kahya, said its investigation appeared to have uncovered a campaign to lower Britain’s environmental standards and raised questions about whether the IEA may have failed to comply with its legal obligations.

Greenpeace has repeatedly clashed with the IEA over GM farming. The IEA has argued that Greenpeace should not have charitable status because it serves “no public purpose” and has accused it of opposing GM rice “that could prevent the deaths of more than 2 million children a year”.

Greenpeace UK says it is not a registered charity, although it does have a small charitable wing. It says so-called “golden rice” is still not commercially available after more than 20 years of research.