Records reveal that Matthew Hancock has taken donations from Neil Record, who financially supports the Global Warming Policy Foundation thinktank

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

How much fossil fuel has been used in your lifetime? Read more

The Conservative energy and climate change minister, Matthew Hancock, has taken £18,000 from a key backer of the UK’s leading climate sceptic lobby group, the Guardian can disclose.



According to official records, Hancock has accepted five donations over the years from City currency manager Neil Record, who has given money to the Global Warming Policy Foundation and is on the board of its campaigning arm.

The most recent donation to the MP was £4,000 in November last year – after Hancock became a minister with responsibility for energy.

Record has separately given more than £300,000 to the Conservative party but Hancock is the only individual MP that he has backed, according to the Electoral Commission.

The Global Warming Policy Foundation, chaired by former Conservative chancellor Lord Nigel Lawson, is well known for casting doubt on established climate change science.

In September, Record and Lord Nigel Vinson were the first two backers of the organisation to confirm their contributions after years of speculation about who was financing the outfit.

When the Global Warming Policy Foundation was found to have breached Charity Commission rules on impartiality, Record was made a board member of its new non-charitable campaigning arm, the Global Warming Policy Forum.

The link between Record and Hancock was uncovered by Greenpeace, whose director John Sauven said it further undermined the government’s record on climate change.

“It says something that we have an energy and climate change minster who hates wind, loves fracking and accepts large sums of cash from a central figure in a climate sceptic lobby group,” he said.

Asked whether Hancock had ever discussed energy policy with Record and declared the link to the Department for Energy and Climate Change, a spokeswoman for the minister said: “All donations are declared publicly and proper process followed.”

Record said he never discussed energy policy with Hancock but confirmed his view that the science of climate change is not “settled” was well-known. “Over the past several years, I have provided some research support for Matthew Hancock, in my view an impressive 2010-entry MP,” he said.



“I resolved to do this when Matthew was a backbencher and, since then, Matthew has had several ministerial responsibilities and only recently has energy become part of his portfolio.

“I have never discussed energy policy or climate change with Matthew. Our discussions tend to centre round our mutual interest in economics; we both started our careers as economists at the Bank of England.”



He said his views on climate change were on public record. “I believe that the important scientific enquiry required for us to understand man’s effect on the climate is being hampered by a monolithic ‘establishment’ view that the science is settled,” Record said.





Record added that he believed some of the “current popular political choices for carbon reduction [wind; solar in high latitudes] are woefully inefficient and unsustainable [because they require subsidies]”.

Labour’s Caroline Flint said the donation showed “why the Tories can’t tackle climate change and have zero credibility on this issue”.

“Matt Hancock, the minister for energy and climate change, has reportedly taken money from someone linked to the country’s biggest propagandists of climate change scepticism,” the shadow energy and climate change secretary said.



“The Tory party all the way to the top are not the right people to negotiate a better deal for the world to tackle climate change.”

Hancock was last week criticised by green campaigners for hiring a private jet to fly himself back to London from Aberdeen after signing a climate change deal with the Mexican president.

The Guardian revealed that the Tory MP for West Suffolk chartered an aircraft along with two Foreign Office diplomats for the 100-minute flight even though there were 16 scheduled services from Aberdeen to four London airports that day.