The news that the IEA accepts money from businesses aiming to further their commercial interests raises questions regarding assurances the IEA made to the Charity Commission in 2016 regarding its impartiality.

Jon Trickett, Labour’s shadow minister for the Cabinet Office, told Unearthed: “When big money uses underhand ways to influence political decisions it’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that democracy is being severely undermined.”

“The system is clearly not working if a registered charity, supposedly prohibited in law from having a political purpose, uses foreign money to lobby politicians to support its extreme political agenda,” he continued.

Commenting on the investigation Jane Mayer, award winning journalist and author of the book Dark Money, said: “These days it’s hard to distinguish some of these think tanks from corporate lobbyists.”

Access to ministers

The IEA is fiercely protective of the identity of its donors and little has been revealed about who funds the charity since the 1990s, when tobacco lawsuits showed it was funded by oil, chemical, tobacco and construction companies during the previous decade.

BP’s ongoing donations to the IEA were revealed by the charity’s director general, Mark Littlewood, during a meeting with an undercover reporter posing as a potential US agribusiness donor.

Littlewood told the reporter that BP’s donations enable the energy company’s staff to attend “intimate” private lunches and dinners, where it can probe ministers on issues like worker safety, environmental regulations and taxation.

“We’ve never written anything to specifically help BP’s you know, precise business model, but their corporate affairs team will come to tonnes of our events, I mean more than half”, Littlewood said. “And the representative from BP will often frame his question within the context of his company – you know, ‘We at BP are really struggling with these regulations which we don’t believe are improving safety of our workers or improving the environment and they are putting up the energy bill for ordinary British citizens – can you tell me why you’re not going to change this, minister?’”

He continued: “That would… be a normal part of the conversation. But then the person from BP might also say, you know, ‘And overall aren’t taxes too high in Britain?

“So there’s a general, we don’t expect, people can’t leave their interests at the door I mean you know,” he added.

Littlewood, who defended the IEA’s policy of hiding its donors’ identities, claimed that he was not breaching a confidentiality agreement with BP “because they state it in their annual accounts”. However, Unearthed could find no evidence of this in the corporation’s filings.

When contacted for comment by Unearthed, the IEA stated that it has received donations from BP every year since 1967. This includes a period in the 1990s when the IEA was at the forefront of efforts to cast doubt on the link between climate change and the burning of fossil fuels.

An IEA spokeswoman said: “It is surely uncontroversial that the IEA’s principles coincide with the interests of our donors.”

Mayer told Unearthed that the IEA was the progenitor of the modern conservative think tanks that now proliferate in the US: “Unsurprisingly, businesses flocked to fund such think tanks. These days it’s hard to distinguish some of these think tanks from corporate lobbyists. They are often funded by huge private interests, to promote the political agenda of huge private interests, yet they present themselves as untainted, independent charities,” she continued.

Private dinners

As one of the UK’s largest corporations, BP executives frequently meet with ministers to discuss their concerns. But the private dinners and other events organised by the IEA offer corporate donors a less-official channel through which to build relationships and discuss their interests with politicians and policy advisors – one where there is little public information about who attended and what was said.

Littlewood explained how these private dinners work: “Let’s just hypothesise that over the next year you have come to three of our drinks parties, four of our lunches and six of our dinners. By this time unbeknownst to me you’ve become big buddies with journalist X, MP Y and policy advisor Z and you’re going off and meeting them for coffee you know that, that is a how a lot of people make connections here that we have facilitated that they then pursue.”

“So if you had an agriculture minister here speaking and you and your clients were here to talk to them about it, you would exchange business cards, you would have our events, our evening dinners are 6.30 till 9 everybody gets to know each other, everybody bends each other ear and it’s, the opportunity would be for you to say minister I’m really keen to bend your ear about erm, beef from the west coast of the USA erm, we’re really worried that you’re not opening your market to this, who should I speak to about this?”

A spokesman for BP said: “BP engages with and shares our perspectives with a number of think tanks in the UK, allowing us to keep informed of different viewpoints and policy conversations. We have a long-standing relationship with the IEA, a respected free-market think tank, as we do with others including the Centre for European Reform and the Green Alliance. The IEA hosts round-table events under the Chatham House Rule which our staff have attended; these have involved politicians from different parties, academics and journalists.”

An IEA spokeswoman said: “There is nothing untoward about think tanks having a collaborative approach with politicians. We have introduced MPs and civil servants to experts from a range of relevant areas including customs operations and trade negotiations. We do not act in donors’ interests, except to the extent that they have an interest in pursuing free trade and free markets.”