A controversial rightwing American lobbying group that denies climate change science and promotes gun ownership paid for the Tory prime ministerial hopeful Andrea Leadsom to fly to the United States to attend its conferences.

The American Legislative Exchange Council – Alec – is a neoconservative organisation with close links to members of the Tea Party movement. Championed by supporters of the free market, it has been attacked by critics for exerting a “powerful and undemocratic” influence on US politics.



It is part funded by the billionaire Koch brothers, David and Charles, whose empire spans mining, chemicals and finance. Leadsom’s links to the council will be scrutinised closely by those trying to gauge her political leanings.

In the US the council produces hundreds of putative bills that it seeks to have made into law by US legislators who attend its conferences, where they are treated to generous corporate hospitality at lavish cigar parties.

Alec has built a web of relationships with politicians around the world. In the UK these include the Ukip MEP Roger Helmer and the Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan, who played a large part in the Vote Leave campaign.



The council, which promotes privatisation and seeks to curtail union power, is fiercely opposed to the European Union and regularly meets European politicians who seek to check the power of the union, fearing its ideas could spread across the Atlantic.

Alec’s national chairman, Earl Ehrhart, warned in 2005 that “the threats posed by the European constitution can easily be transported over here – the threats to free trade, free markets and individual liberty”. Such measures, Alec claims, would hurt American business and stifle job creation.

But its critics disagree. “Alec has clearly set its sights on promoting its agenda in Europe and in particular it has targeted politicians from the UK,” said Nick Surgey, director of research at the Center for Media and Democracy in the US. “Austerity under the Alec vision for the world is far more extreme than anything that the UK has seen under Cameron.”

Filings with the Electoral Commission show that in 2008, two years before she became an MP, Leadsom attended “exchange meetings” with Alec in Washington and Chicago. Alec picked up the £1,800 bill.

Mark Pocan, a US legislator who attended the 2008 conference, recounted how guests were told that global warming was “a huge, huge myth”. “At least two workshops addressed this issue,” he wrote in an account of his experiences, “one titled Taking the Politics Out of Science, and the other about New Energy Technologies in a Carbon Constrained World.”

The first workshop tried to point out inaccuracies about global warming and other “junk” science. The second was designed to talk up “clean coal” options and to make the point that CO 2 emissions are “not all bad”.

Erich Pica, president of Friends of the Earth US, said: “Alec has been behind some of the most anti-environmental climate regulation attacks in the US for quite some time.



“They’ve tried to pass anti-science legislation at the state level which would ban officials from talking and addressing climate change, they’ve attacked renewable energy standards to promote wind and solar energy efficiency, and they have worked to increase and prevent any kind of regulatory action against the oil and gas industry.”

In the year that Leadsom attended the council’s conference it was promoting a notorious bill across US states.

The “Stand Your Ground” law, backed by the National Rifle Association, which gave gun owners new rights to protect and defend themselves, was heavily criticised following the 2012 shooting of Trayvon Martin, a black teenager in Florida.

Alec’s support for the law ultimately led to the departure from the council of high-profile corporate members such as Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Bank of America and General Motors.

Of its former relationship with Alec, the Google chairman, Eric Schmidt, has declared: “I think the consensus within the company was that that was some sort of mistake.”

Transparency campaigners called on Leadsom to distance herself from the council. “It’s a powerful and profoundly undemocratic force in US politics,” said Tamasin Cave, of Spinwatch. “Why did Leadsom get involved with this lot? Who invited her, and why?”

A spokesman for Leadsom declined to comment.