Daily Archives: 4 March 2023

Fossil Fuel Linked Donors Gift Half a Million to Conservative Party

Spread the love

Original article by Sam Bright republished from DeSmog.

The CEOs of jet fuel suppliers, gas turbine makers, oil and gas companies are among those who made large donations in the last quarter of 2022.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. Credit: Number 10 Downing Street / Simon Walker, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

The Conservative Party has received more than £632,000 in new donations from individuals and firms tied to polluting industries, DeSmog can reveal. 

New Electoral Commission records released today show that the bulk of the fossil-fuel linked funds came from Christopher Harborne, who donated £500,000 in the final quarter of 2022 – the joint-largest donation registered by the party during this period. 

Further donations were made by a gas turbine manufacturer, a North Sea oil investor, a petrochemical engineering firm, and a peer with shares in major oil and gas companies.

The revelation comes at an important moment for UK climate policy. Sunak’s government is due to release an update to its net zero strategy next month after a High Court judge ruled it lacked sufficient detail. 

The government recently opened up a new round of North Sea oil and gas licences for oil and gas exploration, at a time when the UN has warned that only drastic, immediate cuts to carbon emissions can avert a climate catastrophe.

Caroline Lucas, Green Party MP for Brighton Pavilion, said donations from polluting industries represented a “dangerous conflict of interest”. 

Fossil Fuel Ties

Harborne is the owner of AML Global, an aviation fuel supplier operating in 1,200 locations worldwide with a distribution network that includes “main and regional oil companies”, according to its website. Harborne is also the CEO of Sheriff Global Group, which trades in private jets. 

Before the pandemic, aviation emissions accounted for eight percent of the UK’s annual greenhouse gas emissions, according to the government’s Climate Change Committee, yet the government granted nearly £250 million in “free pollution permits” to the industry in 2021.  

In the past, Harborne has provided gifts to Conservative MP Steve Baker, who co-founded an anti-green group of back benchers  – the Net Zero Scrutiny Group – and who has said that a considerable amount of climate science is “actually still contestable”.

Harborne has also donated some £6.5 million to the Brexit Party – now Reform UK – whose co-founder Nigel Farage has called for a referendum on the government’s net zero targets and has labelled the focus on carbon emissions “alarmism”. Harborne has rarely spoken about the climate crisis, so the details of his personal views are unknown. 

As revealed by DeSmog, Harborne also donated £515,000 to the Conservatives in the second quarter of 2022, when the party accepted a total of £651,000 from the aviation industry.

These donations landed in the same period as the government’s “Jet Zero Strategy”, published in July. The policy – which aims to cut UK aviation emissions to net-zero by 2050, allow travellers to fly “guilt-free” and supports further aviation sector growth – has been dismissed by environmental groups as “pure greenwash”.

Harborne and AML Global have been approached for comment. 

Other Donors

The new Electoral Commission records show that the Conservatives received a further £15,000 in the final quarter of 2022 from Centrax Industries – a firm that specialises in manufacturing gas turbines. Centrax has now given more than £300,000 to the Conservatives since 2010.

DeSmog previously revealed that companies and individuals involved in North Sea oil and gas – including Centrax – donated a total of £419,900 to the Conservatives ahead of and during the government’s review into the future of the sector from July 2020 to March 2021.

Another Conservative donor in the final quarter of 2022 was Nova Venture Holdings, which donated £52,260. The company is wholly owned by Jacques Tohme, who describes himself as an “energy investor” on LinkedIn and lists his current role as co-founder and director of Tailwind Energy, an oil and gas company. 

According to its website,Tailwind focuses on “maximis[ing] value in UK continental shelf (UKCS) opportunities”, an area which includes the North Sea. Serica Energy reportedly has an agreement in place to buy Tailwind, which is expected to complete in March. The acquisition will make Serica one of the 10 largest North Sea oil and gas producers. 

A further £10,000 was given to the Conservatives by Alan Lusty – the CEO of Adi Group – adding to the £17,000 that he has given to the party since 2021. According to its website, Adi Group is a “leading supplier of engineering services to the petrochemical industry”. These services “add significant value to petrochemical engineering companies”, Adi says, though the firm claims “to work towards delivering a low-carbon economy” through its products. Adi also provides engineering services to the aerospace and automotive industries. 

Finally, the Conservative Party received £50,000 from one of its peers – Lord John Nash – who also donated £5,000 to the local Wantage constituency party. According to his register of interests, Lord Nash holds shares in Royal Dutch Shell, the second largest investor-owned oil and gas company in the world by revenue, and BHP, the Australian-based mining, oil and gas firm. 

Lord Nash, who has run several private equity funds, has donated more than £560,000 to the party since 2018. 

The £632,260 accumulated by the Tories from fossil fuel interests and high polluters represents more than 13 percent of the party’s £4.8 million income during the final quarter of 2022. 

Rishi Sunak himself received £141,000 from energy interests during his Conservative leadership campaign in the summer of 2022. 

Jacques Tohme, Tailwind Energy, Centrax, Adi Group, Lord Nash and the Conservative Party have been approached for comment. 

Additional research by Clare Carlile.

Original article by Sam Bright republished from DeSmog.

Continue ReadingFossil Fuel Linked Donors Gift Half a Million to Conservative Party

When governments can decide what journalists say, we should all be worried

Spread the love

Original article by Peter Geoghegan republished from openDemcracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

OPINION: UK National Security Bill is latest in long line of cynical attempts to maintain secrecy and stifle journalism

Journalism, as George Orwell famously said, is “printing what someone else does not want printed”.

But what happens if the someone who doesn’t want your story printed also has the power to put you in prison?

That sounds like the kind of question journalists in places like Iran or North Korea might have to contend with. But it’s a dilemma someone like me, living and working in the UK, could be asking soon, too.

The National Security Bill currently going through Westminster contains a clause saying that “providing” information that may “materially assist a foreign intelligence service” can be punishable by up to 14 years in prison.

Here at openDemocracy we pride ourselves on publishing stories that the government and others in power would much rather never see the light of day.

We’ve revealed how the Treasury helped Putin’s sanctioned warlord to sue a British journalist in London, how Russian oligarchs have bankrolled the Conservatives, how dark money flows into British politics and more.

Investigative journalists like us at openDemocracy often receive sensitive information. Could our reporting be used by foreign powers to embarrass the British government?

The honest answer is ‘yes’. But does saving our government’s blushes mean the public shouldn’t know that the British army was aware of the dangers of ‘Snatch Land Rovers’, associated with the deaths of over 34 British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan? Or how the UK’s corporate secrecy vehicles are used to hide oligarchs’ ill-gotten gains?

Crucially, Sharpe’s promise that journalists won’t get caught in the security bill’s dragnet will not be enshrined in law

In recent days, Rishi Sunak’s ministers have made some minor amendments to the National Security Bill in the face of organised opposition by openDemocracy and other media outlets. (A huge thank you to the more than 8,000 oD readers who sent emails to their MPs demanding changes to the bill.)

The government has been at pains to say we shouldn’t be worried. In the Lords this week, one minister, Andrew Sharpe, said that it is “almost inconceivable that genuine journalism will be caught within the threshold for criminal activity”.

But it’s the “almost” that should worry all of us.

The National Security Bill replaces older secrecy legislation, and is supposed to counter the activity of hostile foreign powers in the UK. But the bill’s provisions are so wide-ranging that it is not hard to see how journalists – and whistleblowers – could be caught by it.

Crucially, Sharpe’s promise that journalists won’t get caught in the security bill’s dragnet will not be enshrined in law.

Why can’t we just trust our leaders when they say that hacks like us have nothing to worry about?

Well, their track record isn’t good. This is a government that ran an Orwellian ‘Clearing House’ that vetted Freedom of Information requests from journalists and others. When we revealed what was happening, Michael Gove, the minister in charge, smeared us and our journalism.

The Clearing House has now been closed down, but journalism is still under threat.

London’s libel courts are still being used by the world’s rich and powerful to silence public criticism. Last year, Dominic Raab pledged to legislate to end so-called “strategic litigation against public participation” cases, or SLAPPs.

But Raab’s rhetoric has not turned into reality. openDemocracy is currently subject to a SLAPP case, as are many of our journalistic allies.

Rishi Sunak has allotted no parliamentary time for anti-Slapp legislation – which means it’s very unlikely to happen. Should we be surprised when one of Sunak’s own appointments, former chancellor Nadhim Zahawi, issued legal threats against journalists and campaigners who asked questions about his tax affairs?

Sunak and his ministers are fond of saying how much they care about free speech and the freedom of the press. But when the government gets to decide what information journalists can – and can’t – report, we should all be worried.

Original article by Peter Geoghegan republished from openDemcracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

Continue ReadingWhen governments can decide what journalists say, we should all be worried