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A senior Scottish Conservative controversially elevated to the House of Lords by Boris Johnson is under fire for agreeing to appear at an event organised by the UK’s “main climate denial group”.
Lord Malcolm Offord of Garvel – the Scottish Tory treasurer – will join a panel hosted by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) at the party’s annual conference in Manchester next week.
Offord – a financier from Greenock – was made a Lord by Boris Johnson in 2021 and immediately appointed as a junior minister in the Scotland Office.
His ennobling attracted criticism after it emerged he had donated nearly £150,000 to the Conservatives, with the SNP describing the move as “rampant cronyism”. He now serves as the party’s shadow minister for energy security and net zero in the Lords.
The GWPF, founded in 2009 by former Tory chancellor Nigel Lawson, has been described as the UK’s “main climate denial group” and has cast doubt on established climate science.
It has published papers arguing that carbon dioxide emissions are not pollution but a “benefit to the planet” and claimed climate scientists exaggerate the human impact on global warming.
Critics argued Offord’s planned appearance at the event showed climate denial “cranks” were being pulled into the mainstream of Conservative politics. One expert claimed it was evidence of how “unserious the party had become” on climate change.
The Conservatives and GWPF have been approached for comment.
The GWPF has faced criticism for refusing to disclose its donors and is part of the network of so-called ‘dark money’ right-wing Tufton Street think tanks in London.
Its fringe event will be held in the “Think Tent” at Tory conference organised by another Tufton Street outfit, the Taxpayers’ Alliance.
Provocatively titled “Can Britain Survive Ed Miliband?”, the event will feature Offord alongside GWPF head of policy Harry Wilkinson, Tufton-based Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) chief operating officer, Andy Mayer, and energy consultant Kathryn Porter.
The IEA has previously received funding from oil giant BP, while Porter has written for the GWPF and argued that “climate models overstate global warming”.
Scientific evidence overwhelmingly shows that the earth’s climate is warming and that human activities – specifically the burning of fossil fuels – are the cause.
In May this year, Porter authored a report criticising net zero which was launched in parliament by Offord.
He has argued for greater use of domestic gas – including fracked gas from onshore areas including central Scotland – and channeled Donald Trump by calling on Labour energy secretary Miliband to “drill, Mili, drill”.
Offord has stressed that he is not a climate denier, telling a House of Lords debate earlier this year that he had visited the Arctic and “witnessed the polar ice cap melting”.
But he says he is concerned about the cost of net zero for businesses and the public, particularly as a result of high energy costs. He attributes these to “all the subsidies, levies, curtailment payments and grid upgrades required by renewables”.
Most experts say the main driver of soaring UK energy bills in recent years has been the country’s reliance on gas, with international gas prices setting the cost of electricity.
Bob Ward, policy director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the London School of Economics, said the GWPF had a “long record of promoting misinformation about climate change” and is “not fit to be advising any political parties”.
Offord’s appearance at the event was an “indication of how unserious the party has become about this issue”, Ward claimed.
His view was echoed by Scottish Labour net zero spokesperson, Sarah Boyack, and the former leader of the Scottish Greens, Patrick Harvie.
“The transition to net zero is a chance to create jobs and lower bills for good, but this increasingly irrelevant Tory party appears to be giving up on tackling climate change,” Boyack said.
Harvie accused the Tories of pandering to Nigel Farage’s Reform party and their “wealthy climate-wrecking donors”. “It tells us everything we need to know about the Tories’ environmental credentials when they are joining climate change deniers and trying to present a politician as moderate as Ed Miliband as some kind of radical,” he added.
Meanwhile, Rosie Hampton, a campaigner at Friends of the Earth Scotland, argued politicians should not be giving “cranks” like the GWPF “any credence and should instead make it clear that they both understand and respect the evidence of the climate emergency”.
Kathryn Porter and the IEA were also asked to comment.
Cover image of Malcolm Offord thanks to the House of Lords
Hundreds of protected areas are under pressure from Scotland’s massive deer herd. Most agree deer numbers must be controlled to protect the environment, but are split on what should be done.
Edinburgh University students were “interrogated” by police at their desks over posters featuring Palestinians killed by the Israeli military, prompting dozens to complain.
Unsafe levels of faecal bacteria were recorded at dozens of Scotland’s best beaches this summer. Swimmers and paddlers could be at risk, but officials insist water quality remains high.
Footage of farmed trout suffocating, haemorrhaging, and being beaten with batons in a slaughterhouse has prompted an official complaint to a government regulator.
