“We are very clear that these are our priorities – our NHS, housing, climate and nature, public services, and the quality of our water.”
The general election is now in full swing, with parties out on the streets and in the media to make their case to voters. Today, the Green Party of England and Wales formally launched their general election campaign in Bristol, where the party’s co-leader Carla Denyer is hoping to become its second ever MP.
Outgoing Green MP Caroline Lucas opened the launch by saying the Greens were carrying out their “most ambitious general election campaign ever”. She went on to say that by getting more Greens elected to parliament, a Labour government would be “pushed to be bolder and braver on everything from housing, to the NHS, to the accelerating climate crisis”.
Denyer and her fellow co-leader Adrian Ramsay spoke at the campaign launch to set out the party’s core campaign messages. Among them were a commitment to build affordable homes, take action on the cost of living crisis, reverse NHS privatisation and clean up rivers and seas.
As well as attacking the Tories’ record in office, the Greens also used their launch to heavily criticise the Labour Party’s policy offer in the election.
Denyer said: “People are disappointed by the way Starmer has backtracked on his promises on green investment, his weak offer on housing, and now we have Wes Streeting telling us that more privatisation of the NHS is a good thing. When the challenges we face are so huge, people tell us they’re disappointed by the lack of ambition from the Labour Party.”
She added: “Across the country, people now have the chance to vote for real hope and real change. Our politics is broken, our public services are on their knees and people are worse off now than when the Conservatives came to power 14 years ago.
“The case for change is obvious, but it has to be real change that offers real hope. Half measures and broken pledges will not do. The Conservatives are clearly on their way out of government, but Labour is failing to offer the real change needed.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. Credit: Associated Press / Alamy
“Outrageous” findings show that the Conservative Party “is clearly in bed with the fossil fuel lobby”, say MPs and campaigners.
The Conservative Party has received £8.4 million since December 2019 from oil and gas interests, highly polluting industries, and individuals who have expressed or supported climate science denial, DeSmog can reveal.
This comes as climate action is increasingly being used as a “wedge” issue to divide voters ahead of the next election, which is due to be held on 4 July.
Over the last year, the governing Conservative Party has watered down its support for the UK’s flagship 2050 net zero emissions target, and has enacted policies to increase fossil fuel extraction. In July, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak confirmed that his government plans to issue hundreds of new oil and gas licences, as well as introducing annual licensing rounds, claiming that he intends to “max out” the UK’s fossil fuel reserves.
Sunak launched the election campaign by claiming that he had “prioritised energy security and your family finances over environmental dogma”.
DeSmog reviewed the donations to every major Westminster party since 12 December 2019 and found that the Conservative Party and its MPs had received 80 times more polluting cash than the Liberal Democrats (£132,600), and 160 times more than Labour (£41,600). The anti-net zero party Reform UK has received more than £2 million in polluting donations since December 2019, accounting for more than 90 percent of its funding.
Since the December 2019 election, the Conservatives have received £2.35 million from fossil fuel interests, £5.7 million from highly polluting industries, and £404,000 from supporters of climate science denial.
“No political party should be taking any money from fossil fuel interests whatsoever,” Caroline Lucas, the Green Party MP for Brighton Pavilion, told DeSmog.
“To have the Conservative party of government in their pocket to the tune of £8.4 million is simply outrageous and unacceptable. Is it any wonder they’ve adopted so many reactionary and dangerous policies to prop up planet-wrecking fossil fuels? He who pays the piper, calls the tune.”
The Conservative Party did not respond to DeSmog’s request for comment.
Fossil Fuel Donations
Since the 2019 general election, the Conservative Party has received more than £2 million from fossil fuel companies, their executives, and those with a financial interest in oil and gas.
These donations have come from some of the party’s highest-ranking figures.
Tory peer Lord Michael Spencer is a former party treasurer who sits on the board of its endowment fund, the Conservative Party Foundation. In a personal capacity and through his family office, IPGL, Spencer has given £548,500 to the party since December 2019.
Spencer currently holds an 18.8 percent (£4.5 million) stake in the oil and gas exploration company Deltic Energy, which has been awarded multiple North Sea licences by the government.
He previously told DeSmog that he believes “it is totally in the best interest of the UK to replace imported oil and gas by energy extracted from our own North Sea.”
He added in a new comment that “using our own oil and gas clearly is a huge benefit to UK balance of payments” – with reference to the amount that the UK exports versus the amount that it imports.
Spencer has a number of oil and gas interests. His House of Lords register of interests shows that he has a stake in Pantheon Resources, a UK company exploring for oil in Alaska, and previously had a stake in Cluff Energy Africa, which is described as an “early stage oil prospecting company seeking licences in Africa (Angola and Sierra Leone)”.
Tory peer Lord Michael Farmer has also donated £317,000 to the party since the last election. Until April 2024, Farmer held shares in the fossil fuel giants Shell and BP, each worth more than £100,000. Farmer still holds shares in BHP Group, which has mining and oil assets. In 2022, BHP’s petroleum business merged with the energy company Woodside, with the new firm being 48 percent owned by BHP shareholders, creating a “global top 10 independent energy company”.
The Conservative Party has also received £75,900 from Amjad Bseisu, the CEO of EnQuest – a company that has been awarded North Sea oil and gas licences, as well as licences to explore CO2 storage under the North Sea. EnQuest declined to comment.
Alasdair Locke, who chairs the UK’s largest independent petrol station operator Motor Fuel Group, has given £280,000 to the Tories since December 2019. Locke is also the non-executive chair of Well-Safe Solutions, a firm that decommissions oil and gas wells, and is the founder and former executive chairman of Abbot Group, a major North Sea oil and gas services company.
Balmoral Holdings, an engineering firm heavily involved in the North Sea industry, has given £335,000 to the party, while more than £100,000 has been donated by Matthew Ferrey, a former senior partner at oil trading firm Vitol.
Donations worth £63,000 have also been given by Nova Venture Holdings, a firm owned by Jacques Tohme, who describes himself as an “energy investor” on LinkedIn and says that he is the co-founder and former director of Tailwind Energy, an oil and gas company.
In 2023, Serica Energy bought Tailwind, reportedly making Serica one of the 10 largest North Sea oil and gas producers.
“This investigation is yet more evidence of the stranglehold the oil and gas industry has on our politics,” Georgia Whitaker, Greenpeace UK’s climate campaigner, told DeSmog. “And it’s bill payers and the climate that will continue to suffer because of it.
“The governing party we’ve had for the last 14 years is clearly in bed with the fossil fuel lobby. We’ve seen rowback after row back on climate policy, as well as highly damaging rhetoric from political leaders. It’s clear that the Conservatives can’t be trusted to make the right decisions about energy policy.
“We already have the solutions to cut bills, increase energy security and cut emissions, but the government has ignored them in favour of pandering to vested interests at the expense of the rest of us. Dirty money from fossil fuels, highly polluting industries, or climate deniers should have no place in our politics.”
Carbon-Intensive Industry
The largest polluting donation to the Conservatives came from Amit Lohia, a petrochemicals executive whose business interests include a Russian textiles plant, as previously revealed by DeSmog. Lohia donated £2 million to the party in March 2023.
The Conservative Party also received more than £1.7 million during this period from the construction giant JCB and its proprietors the Bamford family. JCB sells its products in 150 countries and specialises in heavy machinery. The company, chaired by Tory peer Lord Anthony Bamford, also sells diesel-powered generators.
According to the government’s Environmental Audit Committee, the UK’s built environment is responsible for 25 percent of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions. The construction industry is responsible for 18 percent of large particle pollution in the UK, a figure that rises to 30 percent in London, according to a report by Impact on Urban Health, and the Centre for Low Emission Construction.
Aviation entrepreneur Christopher Harborne has given more than £1.6 million to the party since the last election. Harborne is the owner of AML Global, an aviation fuel supplier operating in 1,200 locations across the globe 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.
In addition to his Conservative Party donations, since December 2019 Harborne has given £465,000 to Reform UK, the country’s most overtly anti-net zero political party.
Aviation emissions accounted for eight percent of the UK’s annual greenhouse gas emissions before the pandemic, according to the government’s Climate Change Committee (CCC).
In response to DeSmog’s request for comment, Harborne posted a lengthy statement on the AML Global website. He said: “I am not a climate science denier and … I do not seek to influence any government through donations or lobbying regarding their policies on climate change or in favour of corporate interests.”
Harborne added that “there is overwhelming scientific evidence that human activity and in particular the use of hydrocarbons as an energy source is accelerating climate warming due to the greenhouse effect.”
He noted that he supports “aviation industry initiatives to improve fuel efficiency and the use of sustainable aviation fuel” and that he is “financing a business that is creating ambitious and innovative new designs for next generation aircraft that will have a radically lower carbon footprint.”
Climate-Denier Donors
Climate science denial is a growing feature of mainstream British politics. Its proponents dispute the settled consensus around human-caused climate change and the need to reach net zero emissions by 2050, displacing informed debate with divisive conversations that mislead the public.
The Climate Action Against Disinformation global coalition has observed that “climate has become co-opted into the culture wars”, which has widened the potential scope of mis- and disinformation around both the causes of and best solutions to global heating.
Since the 2019 election, the Conservative Party has received hundreds of thousands of pounds from individuals who have funded and promoted climate science denial.
Hedge fund manager Lord Michael Hintze has donated £294,000 to the Tories and a number of its MPs, including energy security and net zero secretary Claire Coutinho in January 2024.
Hintze, a Conservative peer, was one of the early funders of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the UK’s leading climate science denial group, which has claimed that carbon dioxide has been mis-characterised as pollution, when it is a “benefit to the planet”.
Hintze has said that he believes “there is climate change” caused “in part due to human activity over the past century”. However, he has said that “all sides must be heard” on climate change “to reach the right conclusion for society as a whole“.
A number of climate consensus studies conducted between 2004 and 2015 found that between 90 percent and 100 percent of experts agree that humans are responsible for climate change. A study published in 2021, which reviewed over 3,000 scientific papers, found that over 99 percent of climate science literature says that global warming is caused by human activity.
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s foremost climate science body, has stated it is “unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land”.
The party has also received £90,000 from First Corporate Consultants, a firm owned by Terence Mordaunt, a director and former chair of the GWPF. Mordaunt told openDemocracy in 2019 that “no one has proved yet that CO2 is the culprit” of climate change.
The IPCC has stated that carbon dioxide “is responsible for most of global warming” since the late 19th century, which has increased the “severity and frequency of weather and climate extremes, like heat waves, heavy rains, and drought”.
Jolyon Maugham, director of the Good Law Project, told DeSmog: “No one who has seen how the Conservative Party chose Big Oil over families during the cost of living crisis will be surprised by these numbers. But that shouldn’t dull our sense of quite how grim all of this is.”
Other Parties
Last year First Corporate Consultants also donated £200,000 to Tory rivals, the right-wing party Reform UK, which has been the second largest recipient of donations from polluting sources since December 2019.
Of the £2.5 million that Reform UK has received in donations since the 2019 election, around 92 percent (£2.3 million) of that income has been given by fossil fuel interests, polluting industries, or climate science deniers.
Reform UK has received £515,000 from former Tory donor Jeremy Hosking, whose investment firm had more than $134 million (around £108 million) invested in the energy sector at the close of 2021, two thirds of which was in the oil industry, along with millions in coal and gas.
Hosking, who also donated £50,000 to the Conservatives during this period, previously told DeSmog: “I do not have millions in fossil fuels; it is the clients of Hosking Partners who are the beneficiaries of these investments.” He declined to comment further for this article.
Hosking told The Guardian in May that he had ended his donations to Reform UK and is now channelling his political donations to Reclaim, a radical right-wing party led by actor Laurence Fox.
Since December 2019, Reform UK has also received more than £1.1 million from businesses run by its leader Richard Tice, who is a prominent climate science denier. Tice has claimed that “there is no climate crisis”, and has also expressed the view that “CO2 isn’t a poison. It’s plant food”. Reform UK campaigns on an overtly anti-climate platform. It has called for the UK’s 2050 climate target to be scrapped, and has proposed holding a “referendum on net zero”.
Reform UK has also received more than 50 loans collectively worth around £1.4 million from a company called Tisun Investments, which is owned by Tice, since the start of 2020.
A Reform UK spokesman said: “Climate change is real, Reform UK believes we must adapt, rather than foolishly think you can stop it. We are proud to be the only party to understand that economic growth depends on cheap domestic energy and we are proud that we are the only party that are climate science realists, realising you can not stop the power of the sun, volcanoes or sea level oscillation.
“The deniers are those who continually gaslight the public into thinking you can stop these powerful natural forces. We must use the energy under our feet, rather than send our money and jobs abroad.”
The Liberal Democrats and Labour have received much smaller sums from fossil fuel interests, polluters, and climate science deniers since December 2019. DeSmog’s analysis found that the Lib Dems have received £132,600, including £10,000 from energy investor Hosking, and £110,600 from Christopher D. Leach, who runs a private plane chartering and management business.
The Labour Party has received £41,600, including £9,600 from the aviation firm Airbus, and £12,000 from biomass company Drax, which is the UK’s largest single source of carbon emissions. Labour has also received sizeable donations from green technology entrepreneurs, including eco-campaigner Dale Vince.
The Scottish National Party (SNP) did not receive any Westminster donations from fossil fuel interests, polluters, or climate science deniers, according to DeSmog’s research.
Labour and the Liberal Democrats did not respond to DeSmog’s request for comment.
Eldar Saetre, CEO of Equinor. Credit: Jeff Gilbert / Alamy
Campaigners likened the fossil fuel company’s patronage of climate events to letting an “arsonist sponsor a fire safety conference”.
Major media companies have sparked a wave of criticism after allowing a Norwegian oil and gas company behind the UK’s largest new North Sea project to sponsor events on climate change.
Equinor was an official sponsor of two conferences on climate and energy this week, one run by the New Statesman magazine, and one run by Politico. Both saw MPs pull out over the sponsorship, while the first was interrupted by a climate activist.
The Norwegian state-owned company has a majority stake in the Rosebank North Sea oil field, which has been dubbed a “carbon bomb” by environmental law charity ClientEarth.
Equinor claims it supplies 27 percent of the UK’s energy from oil and gas, and is currently investing $6 billion (£4.8 billion) a year in fossil fuel exploration and drilling.
“Allowing fossil fuel companies like Equinor to sponsor and speak at climate conferences is as absurd as allowing an arsonist to sponsor and participate in fire safety conferences,” said Carys Boughton of the Fossil Free Parliament campaign. “At this critical time for climate and energy policy-making, we can’t afford this absurdity.”
Equinor’s sponsorship of these events is the latest example of fossil fuel companies using media partnerships to greenwash their polluting activities.
An investigation by DeSmog and Drilled in December detailed how oil and gas companies are using media deals – including partnerships with Politico, the Economist, the Financial Times, Reuters, and the Washington Post – to present a climate-friendly image.
DeSmog also revealed this week, based on documents released by a powerful U.S. congressional committee, that fossil fuel companies believe these media partnerships help to protect their “social licence to operate”.
Michelle Amazeen, a mass communications researcher at Boston University, said that oil and gas sponsorship is “a strategic move by fossil fuel companies to compromise the integrity of events intended to foster dialogue and action around climate issues”.
She added that, “While the sponsorship gives the impression of caring about the environment, it’s a veneer that’s like an oil slick obscuring the actual conduct of the fossil fuel industry.”
This week, a cross-party group of 50 MPs, including three Conservatives, wrote to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak urging him to end the licensing of new oil and gas fields, appoint a climate envoy, and back the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance, an international coalition working to facilitate a global phase-out of oil and gas production.
Alice Baxter, Equinor’s UK spokesperson, said: “At Equinor we believe in openness and the importance of engaging in the complex conversations around the energy transition. We respect everyone’s right to protest and encourage robust debate.”
New Statesman Event
Equinor was one of the sponsors of the New Statesman’s Energy and Climate Change Conference on 14 May at the Leonardo Royal Hotel in south London.
Green Party MP Caroline Lucas pulled out of the event last week due to Equinor’s sponsorship.
Was due to speak at @NewStatesman conference on Energy & Climate Change. Then it turns out it's sponsored by @Equinor_UK – the company backing giant Rosebank oil field. That's me out. #StopRosebank
At the event, attended by DeSmog, the second panel discussion featured Equinor’s UK country manager Alex Grant. The session was entitled “How can the UK lead the world in the green transition?”
When it was Grant’s turn to speak, a Fossil Free London activist in the audience stood up and gave a speech criticising Equinor and its sponsorship of the event.
BREAKING: Climate protester interrupts Equinor-sponsored New Statesman event.
The activist said climate scientists “are warning us that we are headed towards a catastrophic 2.5C of global warming. Yet staggeringly, Equinor, that’s sponsoring this event, is opening the largest undeveloped oil field in the North Sea.”
Labour MP Meg Hillier, who chairs the Public Accounts Committee and was on the panel, interjected: “Why don’t you let us talk about it, because I’m actually here to be pretty critical of the government, I’d quite like to get my points across.”
The protester continued her speech, and was removed by security. Her comments received a round of applause from the audience.
Grant replied by saying that Equinor takes a “pragmatic approach” to the energy transition, as opposed to one that “costs more than it needs to”. He also defended the Rosebank project, saying it would reduce carbon emissions over the long term.
Rosebank could produce around 300 million barrels of oil over its lifetime, emitting 200 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.
Questions at the New Statesman event were submitted online, rather than asked in person by the audience.
During the event’s final session with Chris Stark, the former chief executive of the Climate Change Committee, which advises the government on its climate policies, DeSmog submitted a question about Equinor and Rosebank’s impact on the climate. The question was not posed to the panel.
The latest issue of the New Statesman magazine, which features an interview with climate scientist and author Michael Mann, includes advertorials from biomass company Drax, which is the UK’s largest single source of CO2 emissions, and Calor Gas, one of the UK’s largest suppliers of liquefied petroleum gas.
The New Statesman hosted a number of events at the 2023 Labour Party conference sponsored by fossil fuel companies and lobbying groups, including Cadent, National Gas, and Offshore Energies UK.
The New Statesman did not respond to DeSmog’s request for comment.
Politico Event
On 16 May, Politico held its own Energy and Climate Summit, also sponsored by Equinor.
Labour MP Alex Sobel, who chairs the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Net Zero, last week pulled out of the event due to Equinor’s sponsorship.
I have decided to withdraw from the Politico Energy and Climate Summit next week, due to the involvement of Equinor. It was unclear that they were sponsors and I would not have accepted the invitation had their sponsorship been known.
— Alex Sobel MP for Leeds Central and Headingley (@alexsobel) May 8, 2024
At the event, attended by DeSmog, a panel on Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) featured David Cairns, a former British ambassador to Sweden and now Equinor’s vice president of political and public affairs.
When questioned by the Politico chair, Cairns confirmed that the company had no plans to set targets for phasing out oil and gas.
He also said it was “debatable” whether the oil and gas industry was making large profits. Equinor reported £28 billion in profits in 2023. Cairns added that it was “really misplaced” to think that the oil and gas industry is an “easy business in which it’s easy to make money”.
A Politico spokesperson said: “This multi-sponsored Energy and Climate UK Summit is an extension of Politico’s ongoing and robust coverage of climate policy in the United Kingdom.
“There is a clear division between Politico’s newsroom and our commercial operations. With critical milestones and a general election on the horizon, we continue to cover climate each day through our dedicated reporting.”
Politico’s influential London Playbook newsletter has this week been sponsored by the oil and gas giant BP.
Michelle Amazeen said that fossil fuel sponsorship of media companies “has delegitimised their journalistic content, opened their journalists up for attack, and has even led to the resignation of journalists who are trying to write about climate issues”.
Equinor’s AGM
Equinor also faced further public criticism this week, when on Tuesday the company was confronted by a climate activist at its annual general meeting (AGM).
Lauren MacDonald of the environmental group Uplift delivered a four minute speech about the company’s impact on the planet, and promised that campaigners would not stop opposing Rosebank or the company’s other fossil fuel projects.
I just confronted the CEO of @equinor and it’s majority shareholder, the Norwegian government, at their AGM.
The people in this room are responsible for the UK’s biggest undeveloped oil field – Rosebank.
— Lauren MacDonald🌻 #StopRosebank (@laurensunfl0wer) May 14, 2024
At the meeting, shareholders rejected a resolution calling on the company to align its strategy and spending with climate goals.
“We invest in the energy the world needs now. That is oil and gas,” Equinor’s chief executive Anders Opedal said.
Tessa Khan, executive director at Uplift, told DeSmog: “Try as it might, Equinor can no longer ignore the scale of opposition to its climate-wrecking business model – it’s not just campaigners who are calling out its harmful mission, it’s also politicians pulling out of Equinor-sponsored events and shareholders demanding it ditch its plans of endless oil and gas expansion.
“Even if Equinor wants to stay silent, these demands for accountability will only get louder. Governments in the UK and Norway – who can’t afford to ignore this chorus of voices – must reject Equinor’s delay tactics and insist that their activities don’t further endanger our climate. As a first step, this means rejecting new oil and gas fields, and pulling the plug on disastrous projects like Rosebank.”
All-Energy and Dcarbonise
Equinor was not the only fossil fuel company to sponsor climate events this week.
On Wednesday, climate protesters disrupted the All-Energy and Dcarbonise event in Glasgow, which describes itself as “The meeting place for the renewable and low carbon energy community”, yet featured paid exhibitions from oil and gas majors BP and Shell.
Protesters from Stop Polluting Politics, and Fuel Poverty Action interrupted a speech by Scotland’s Net Zero and Energy Secretary Màiri McAllan, and a pre-recorded video of UK Energy and Net Zero Secretary Claire Coutinho. Both appeared alongside Louise Kingham, a senior vice president at BP.
“As the lethal reality of climate breakdown becomes unmissable, the PR strategies of big fossil fuel companies like Equinor and Shell reveal their growing isolation, and an increasingly desperate attempt to buy friends,” said Andrew Simms, a director of the New Weather Institute and a co-founder of the Badvertising campaign.
“They are the unwelcome guests at the party with everyone waiting for them to leave, but who keep buying rounds for anyone willing to drink with them in order to stay.”
Rishi Sunak on stopping Rosebank says that any chancellor can stop his huge 91% subsidy to build Rosebank, that Keir Starmer is as bad as him for sucking up to Murdoch and other plutocrats and that we (the plebs) need to get organised to elect MPs that will stop Rosebank.Image of InBedWithBigOil by Not Here To Be Liked + Hex Prints from Just Stop Oil’s You May Find Yourself… art auction. Featuring Rishi Sunak, Fossil Fuels and Rupert Murdoch.
‘The worst kind of arm-chair politics, bigoted and ill-informed’
…
Caroline Lucas hit out at the leaked details of the new guidelines this morning, condemning the Tory Party for engaging in the “worst kind of arm-chair politics”.
The MP for Brighton Pavillion wrote on X: “Politicising sex education is unforgivable, dangerous & reactionary. It’s always *age appropriate* to give young people skills to stay safe. For younger ones that means teaching about respect & healthy relationships. This is the worst kind of arm-chair politics bigoted & ill-informed.”
Daniel Kebede, General Secretary of the National Education Union said that, if the reports are correct, then “there are many areas of concern”. Kebede slammed the Tory agenda towards school policy as he called it “yet more culture war noise from an ill-informed and out of touch government.”
An Early Days Motion tabled by Green Party MP Caroline Lucas has called on the UK government to establish a national system of rent controls to address the increasingly huge costs of renting in England.
Eight MPs have signed the motion so far which calls on the government to set up a Living Rent Commission, tasked with consultation on and designing a national rent control system with local flexibility and to provide powers to local councils to control rents in high rent areas.
The motion highlights how tenants in private accommodation in England are forced to pay out more for housing than our European counterparts where rights for renters are stronger, and therefore urges the UK government to follow suit and provide better protection for private renters.
It comes as rents in the UK are rising at the highest rate in decades, increasing by 9.2% in the 12 months to March 2024 according to the ONS, highlighting the ongoing affordability crisis.
