Nadine
Dorries won’t answer it. Lord Lawson won’t answer it. Michael Gove
won’t answer it. But it’s a simple question, and if they don’t know it’s
because they don’t want to. Where does the money come from? All are
connected to groups whose purpose is to change the direction of public
life. None will reveal who funds them.
When she attempted to restrict abortion counselling, Nadine Dorries MP
was supported by a group called Right to Know. When other MPs asked her
who funds it, she claimed she didn’t know(1,2). Lord Lawson is chairman
of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, which casts doubt on climate
science. It demands “openness and transparency” from scientists(3). Yet
he refuses to say who pays, on the grounds that the donors “do not wish
to be publicly engaged in controversy.”(4) Michael Gove was chairman of
Policy Exchange, an influential conservative thinktank. When I asked
who funded Policy Exchange when he ran it, his office told me “he
doesn’t have that information and he won’t be able to help you.”(5)
We know that to understand politics and the peddling of influence we
must follow the money. So it’s remarkable that the question of who funds
the thinktanks has so seldom been asked.
There are dozens of groups in the UK which call themselves free market
or conservative thinktanks, but they have a remarkably consistent
agenda. They tend to oppose the laws which protect us from banks and
corporations; to demand the privatisation of state assets; to argue that
the rich should pay less tax; and to pour scorn on global warming. What
the thinktanks call free market economics looks more like a programme
for corporate power.
Some of them have a turnover of several million pounds a year, but in
most cases that’s about all we know. In the US, groups claiming to be
free market thinktanks have been exposed as sophisticated corporate
lobbying outfits, acting in concert to promote the views of the people
who fund them. In previous columns, I’ve shown how such groups, funded
by the billionaire Koch brothers, built and directed the Tea Party
movement(6,7).
The Kochs and the oil company Exxon have also funded a swarm of
thinktanks which, by coincidence, all spontaneously decided that manmade
climate change is a myth(8,9). A study in the journal Environmental
Politics found that such groups, funded by economic elites and working
through the media, have been “central to the reversal of US support for
environmental protection, both domestically and internationally.”(10)
Jeff Judson, who has worked for 26 years as a corporate lobbyist in the
US, has explained why thinktanks are more effective than other public
relations agencies. They are, he says, “the source of many of the ideas
and facts that appear in countless editorials, news articles, and
syndicated columns.”(11) They have “considerable influence and close
personal relationships with elected officials”. They “support and
encourage one another, echo and amplify their messages, and can pull
together … coalitions on the most important public policy issues.”
Crucially, they are “virtually immune to retribution … the identity of
donors to think tanks is protected from involuntary disclosure.”(12)
The harder you stare at them, the more they look like lobby groups
working for big business without disclosing their interests. Yet
throughout the media they are treated as independent sources of
expertise. The BBC is particularly culpable. Even when the corporate
funding of its contributors has been exposed by human rights or
environmental groups, it still allows them to masquerade as unbiased
commentators, without disclosing their interests.
For the sake of democracy, we should know who funds the organisations
which call themselves thinktanks. To this end I contacted 15 groups.
Eleven of them could be described as free market or conservative; four
as progressive. I asked them all a simple question: “Could you give me
the names of your major donors and the amount they contributed in the
last financial year?”. I gave their answers a score out of five for
transparency and accountability.
Three of the groups I contacted – Right to Know, the International
Policy Network and Nurses for Reform – did not answer my calls or
emails. Six others refused to give me any useful information. They are
the Institute of Economic Affairs, Policy Exchange, the Adam Smith
Institute, the TaxPayers’ Alliance, the Global Warming Policy
Foundation and the Christian Medical Fellowship. They produced similar
excuses, mostly concerning the need to protect the privacy of their
donors. My view is that if you pay for influence, you should be
accountable for it. Nul points.
Civitas did fractionally better, scoring 1. Its website names a small
number of the donors to its schools(13), but it would not reveal the
amount they had given or the identity of anyone else. The only rightwing
thinktank that did well was Reform, which sent me a list of its biggest
corporate donors: Lloyds (£50k), Novo Nordisk (£48k), Sky (£42k),
General Electric (£41k) and Danone (£40k). Reform lists its other
corporate sponsors in its annual review(14), and earns 4 points. If they
can do it, why can’t the others?
The progressives were more accountable. Among them, Demos did least
well. It sent me a list of its sponsors, but refused to reveal how much
they gave. It scores 2.5. The Institute for Public Policy Research
listed its donors and, after some stumbling, was able to identify the
biggest of them: the European Union (a grant of E800,000) and the Esmee
Fairburn Foundation(£86k). It scores 3.5. The New Economics Foundation
sent me a list of all its donors and the amount each gave over the past
year, earning 4 points. The biggest funders are the Network for Social
Change (£173k), the department of health (£124k) and the Aim Foundation
(£100k). Compass had already published a full list in its annual
report(15). The biggest source by far is the Communication Workers’
Union, which gave it £78k in 2009. Compass gets 5 out of 5.
The picture we see, with the striking exception of Reform, is of secrecy
among the rightwing groups, creating a powerful impression that they
have something to hide. Shockingly, this absence of accountability – and
the influence-peddling it doubtless obscures – does not affect their
charitable status.
The funding of these groups should not be a matter of voluntary
disclosure. As someone remarked in February 2010, “secret corporate
lobbying, like the expenses scandal, goes to the heart of why people are
so fed up with politics … it’s time we shone the light of transparency
on lobbying in our country and forced our politics to come clean about
who is buying power and influence.”(16) Who was this leftwing firebrand?
One David Cameron.
I charge that the groups which call themselves free market thinktanks
are nothing of the kind. They are public relations agencies, secretly
lobbying for the corporations and multi-millionaires who finance them.
If they wish to refute this claim, they should disclose their funding.
Until then, whenever you hear the term free market thinktank, think of a
tank, crushing democracy, driven by big business.
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