Proving that you can fool most of the media most of the time is the repeated presentation of the IEA as an independent think-tank or as a charity.
IEA's views are usually represented on television by Chris Snowdon or Mark Littlewood. They are almost indistinguishable with their faces fixed in frozen sneers that occasionally melt into threatening snarls.
They are invariably negative putting the boot into good causes. The Institute for Economic Affairs (IEA) is a self-defined free market charity. Since 1955 they have been the right’s guns for hire, although they will never admit it.
Funded by ‘subscriptions’, IEA’s policy is “not to place a list of donors in the public domain.” Ho.ho!
IEA’s secrecy concerning funding has earned them a “D” rating from “Who Funds You?” for their lack of transparency. With ill-advised and damaging reports touting climate change denial and their outspoken pro-smoking stance, the IEA have been the subject of several journalistic efforts to uncover funders of their research.
Recently their non-evidenced based approach to smoking has attracted criticism. There were moves to reform tobacco advertising rules. Charities advocated plain packaging and display-banning measures that were widely welcomed by health experts.
Roger Scrutton authored a pamphlet attacking the World Health Organisation for its campaign against tobacco. He was exposed. He has paid links to the tobacco industry and he admitted he should have “declared an interest.” Credibility of the paper has not been affected its availability, it can still be downloaded from the IEA’s website. They are shameless and rely on the likelihood that visitors to their site to be as stupid as they are.
Information published by the Guardian reveals that British American Tobacco has confirmed that in 2011 it gave the IEA £10,000, plus £1,000 in event sponsorship. In 2012 it donated a further £20,000. ASH questioned British American Tobacco at the company's AGM in 2014. Clearly happy with services rendered BAT funding for the Institute doubled to £40,000 in 2013. Marlboro manufacturer Philip Morris International and JTI producers of Camel have both confirmed IEA memberships of undisclosed amounts. They have no doubt found reports lobbying for the tobacco industry rewarding and worth the subscription fee.
The Truth Initiative, an American non-profit group, does excellent work exposing the tobacco lobby. They have published documents covering decades of the tobacco industry’s lobbying activities, many referencing the IEA illustrating the longevity of its financial relations.
The IEA’s have a worryingly destructive stance on environmental issues. A report citing climate change as beneficial prompted a Greenpeace investigation.
It was revealed that the American Friends of IEA, an organization set up to allow Americans to donate to the Institute, received $50,000 from ExxonMobil in 2004.
My numerous email enquiries to the IEA requesting their sources of funding have always gone unanswered. Other Parliamentarians share my concerns, with Baroness Barker raising the issue in the Lords last week.
The exact funding they receive for science denying research will likely never be revealed. Elementary research has substantiated a relationship comparable to that of corporate lobbyist and client.
But why does the media give them airtime as alleged serious commentators when they are disguised lobbyists serving whatever bad cause stuffs their wallets with cash?
From the Independent February 2016
A right-wing think-tank secured a dramatic shift in government policy, to ban charities from using public funds to lobby, after receiving a ring-fenced donation to promote the change, The Independent can reveal.
The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), Britain’s oldest neoliberal think-tank, accepted £15,000 from an unnamed source to “develop” its controversial proposals to prevent charities from using public grants to lobby ministers, civil servants or MPs.
Cabinet Office minister Matthew Hancock last week announced that the Government was implementing the change and cited the IEA’s “extensive research” on the issue as a principal influence on the decision. The ban has been described by charities as a “gagging clause” designed to restrict their ability to inform Whitehall decisions.
'Independent' Brexit research groups have close links to Vote Leave
The IEA, which has previously accepted donations from tobacco companies while publicly raising tobacco-related issues such as plain cigarette packaging, declined to name the source of the donation, made in 2013. It insisted the money had come from an individual rather than a company and was not used to “commission” research.
But the existence of the donation and the IEA’s success in persuading ministers to adopt its proposals, set out in a series of policy papers between 2012 and 2014, will raise questions about the links between the Government and think-tanks, as well as the transparency of the policymaking process.
How ‘The Independent’ reported the Brexit campaign’s links with the IEA
A study last year of 169 think-tanks by the Transparify campaign group gave the IEA the lowest rating for transparency of its donations, describing it as “highly opaque”.
Senior charity executives said that it was “highly unusual” for government to announce a significant policy change based on one organisation’s work.
Kathy Evans, head of Children England, said: “This is a policy that was announced without consultation – there has been no effort to seek input from those affected.
“It raises extremely important issues. I would defend to the hilt the importance of charities being able to provide to ministers and MPs information that goes into the policymaking process. Charities and voluntary groups are often the only voice of those vulnerable groups affected.
“I don’t think that the IEA should be more influential towards government on the basis that they don’t receive public funds. I think it is perfectly legitimate to ask, in a democracy, what is the source of funding that results in a change in policy?”
Charities and politicians from all major parties have reacted angrily to the introduction of the “anti-advocacy” clauses into all grants from public bodies.
IEA at Select Committee on Smoking Ban
November 28, 2012
Bile and prejudice
Online charity blog reports:
Christopher Snowdon, a research fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs, was giving evidence this morning to the Public Administration Select Committee as part of its inquiry into charitable regulation.
Snowdon, who earlier this year wrote a report into political lobbying called Sock Puppets: How the government lobbies itself and why, told MPs that he objected to charities "campaigning among the general public and representing themselves as grass-roots groups when they really represent the government in power".
Snowdon gave examples including charities such as Alcohol Concern and Friends of the Earth, which he said had taken government money to lobby government itself, and the public, on behalf of government.
But Paul Flynn, Labour MP for Newport West, called Snowdon’s views "a diatribe of bile and prejudice" and said that charities were competing against vested commercial interests with "bottomless pockets". "In that situation, it’s entirely reasonable that a benign government should give the charities a helping hand," he said.
"The endemic cowardice of politicians of all parties means they won’t move forward without a comfort blanket of public support."
IEA at Select Committee
Q409 Paul Flynn: You say there have been no examples of political bias from the IEA. I have just read this remarkable document and I would suggest it is not a balanced document, but we will come back to that. The Atlantic Bridge: what lessons do you draw from the fact that the Atlantic Bridge was advised by the Charity Commission to end their activities?
Christopher Snowdon: I don’t know enough about the case, I am afraid.
Q410 Paul Flynn: Would you describe the Atlantic Bridge as having a "militant agenda"?
Christopher Snowdon: I don’t know anything about them.
Q411 Paul Flynn: I can fill you in on it. The Atlantic Bridge was an organisation dominated by prominent members of the Conservative Party and prominent members of the Tea Party tendency in America. They existed to promote things like the Iraq war, the Afghan war and other American agendas in Britain. They also imported brainwashed young people as researchers in this place, who were distributed to Conservative MPs and bored us all stiff on the Terrace with their extreme views. You are not aware of it.
Christopher Snowdon: Not really, no. Sorry.
Q412 Paul Flynn: Just on the question of "militant": you describe certain organisations as having a "militant agenda" in the nonpolitical view of the IEA, and the militant groups are the Child Poverty Action Group, War on Want and Pesticide Action Network. Can you enlarge on why these people are militants?
Christopher Snowdon: Militant? Both War on Want and the Child Poverty Action Group are on the far left politically.
Q413 Paul Flynn: That is militant, is it?
Christopher Snowdon: I think that is a reasonable viewpoint.
Q414 Paul Flynn: You have a fixation about smoking and the smoking ban. You claim in your document, you pray in aid evidence, that taxes on alcohol are intrinsically unpopular with the population, and you would say the same about tobacco-that it was unpopular to ban tobacco. The evidence you offer is a report from the World Health Organisation in 2004. Are you happy that that is a rational basis on which to found an argument: the popularity of the smoking ban?
Christopher Snowdon: The World Health Organisation in that particular paper said that a tax on alcohol is intrinsically unpopular, as indeed taxes on most things tend to be unpopular with the people who purchase them. With the smoking issue, ASH themselves-Action on Smoking and Health-said in their financial accounts from some years back, which I quote in there, that it is very difficult to raise funds for the antismoking cause, because it does not seem to be particularly popular.
Q415 Paul Flynn: The theme running through this book is that popularity should determine causes. If it is a popular cause, is should be an Act, and if it is an unpopular cause, it should not be supported. Could I just say that, if you had got figures more up to date than 2004, you would find that there was 56% support for the smoking ban in 2003 and 81% support in 2011? I can give you each individual year. Clearly this has been an example of a ban being imposed-obviously smokers objected-that then became very popular and very successful, which is absent from your document.
Christopher Snowdon: That is not relevant to my point, which is that, at the time the campaign was ongoing for the smoking ban, most people were against it. This is the argument I am making.
Q416 Paul Flynn: Do you think Government should just do those things that are popular, not the things that are necessarily right?
Christopher Snowdon: No; I am suggesting that Government should not fund lobby groups to campaign for causes that may be dearer to their hearts than they are to the public’s.
Q417 Paul Flynn: Does not Government have a duty to do good things in their simplest form? There are already hugely well founded organisations like Forest and others that are in the pay of the tobacco industry and are encouraging young people into this addiction that will lead to their early deaths. Does the Government not have a responsibility to ensure that another point of view is put forward and that is funded as well?
Christopher Snowdon: No, I don’t think so. What you are making there is basically what the European Commission’s argument is for funding all these environmental groups and, indeed, think tanks: to act as a counterweight to all the industrial lobbying that they receive. I do not think it is the place of Government to deliberately create front groups.
Q418 Paul Flynn: Would you agree there should be a balance between those who are lobbying for their own greed, their own profit, and those who are advocating the public good with health? If you are a lobbyist with a bottomless pocket, you can pay £250,000 and have a dinner with the Prime Minister to lobby him personally. Is that reasonable? In those circumstances, should the causes that are lobbying for the public good have some assistance?
Christopher Snowdon: No, because it is dishonest.
Q419 Paul Flynn: Is it not dishonest to buy an MP, and for countries like Azerbaijan and Israel to invite lots of MPs to their country, butter them up, pay for their hotels, pay their expenses and then bring them back and expect them to deliver? Is that dishonest?
Christopher Snowdon: I don’t know if it is dishonest. It is an attempt at persuasion. Even if it were dishonest, two wrongs would not make a right. If the Department of Health wishes to bring in a smoking ban, plain packaging for cigarettes or a ban on display, which it clearly does, then it should just get on and do it, rather than go through this charade of creating numerous front groups, using public money to finance campaigns that, on the face of it, do not look like Governmentfunded campaigns. They look like civil society campaigns to try to persuade the public on a policy that has already been decided within the bureaucracy and has not been decided democratically or through reasoned debate. It has been decided on high, and then these policies are pushed to the people using what we would describe, if industry was involved, as front groups.
Q420 Chair: It is passing off organisations that purport to be independent but actually are agents of government.
Christopher Snowdon: Of the state, yes.
Q421 Paul Flynn: You make no apologies for the fact that the piece of research you quote is eight years old and you did not check the subsequent research.
Christopher Snowdon: No, because it is completely irrelevant that it is eight years old. The point being made there is that, at the time the Government was funding groups to campaign on their behalf, the policy was unpopular. My argument throughout this report is that many of the things that the Government did create groups to campaign for are unpopular. There would be no need to go through this charade if they were popular policies. If you have popular policies, you simply put them in your manifesto and then you bring them about.
Q422 Paul Flynn: In your ideal world, Mr Snowdon, because there was not a majority among smokers for a smoking ban, we should not have had a smoking ban. The great benefits that have resulted from that would not come about.
Christopher Snowdon: I personally hate the smoking ban and I wish it had never come in, so it does not have any great benefits for me. The fact that 80% of the people may approve of it still means that 20% of the people disapprove of it. Incidentally, 20% of the population are smokers, so we probably disagree on how beneficial the smoking ban has been.
Q423 Paul Flynn: Do we judge all Government policies on the effects they have on Mr Snowdon? Is this a rational argument?
Christopher Snowdon: No, we do not, but nor do we judge them on Mr Flynn. Whether the smoking ban is a good or bad thing is by the by. I am using it as an example to show a tendency that has been in government for the last 15 years.
Q424 Paul Flynn: You claimed quite erroneously in this book that people who advocate the smoking ban, and I would class myself amongst them-having had all my family die of lung cancer, I am a fanatical person for the ban-all intend to prohibit tobacco in the long run.
Christopher Snowdon: I do not say that.
Q425 Paul Flynn: I have never come across anyone anywhere else who wanted to prohibit the use of tobacco.
Christopher Snowdon: I don’t think I say anything about prohibition in this paper.
Paul Flynn: Yes, you do suggest it. You may have forgotten it, but could we just have a general view of prohibition? Prohibition of tobacco would set off the biggest crime wave this country has ever seen.
Chair: I am not sure this is relevant to the inquiry.
Paul Flynn: It is. It is relevant to whether Mr Snowdon is a competent witness. I think this is a really shoddy piece of work. The most remarkable thing about this document is that it was actually published.
Chair: By a charity.
Paul Flynn: By anyone.
Q426 Kelvin Hopkins: My earlier question was about the division between corporate interests and what can be seen to be possibly a moral view-an ethical view. Are you funded by the alcohol and the tobacco industries?
Christopher Snowdon: I have no idea who we are funded by. There is a clear wall between the fundraising side of the organisation and the writing side.
Q427 Kelvin Hopkins: Can I suggest that my impression of you is you are simply a front for corporate capitalism and have no interest in the health of the nation?
Christopher Snowdon: Thank you for your input.
Eton as a charity?
Q443 Paul Flynn: You say in your book, Mr Snowdon, that the current rules on political campaigning have "led to a freeforall, with some charities seemingly able to engage in political lobbying on a permanent basis". Which charities are those?
Christopher Snowdon: Which charities are lobbying on a permanent basis? Somebody like Alcohol Concern or Friends of the Earth.
Q444 Paul Flynn: Are you serious? Alcohol Concern is lobbying politically on a permanent basis?
Christopher Snowdon: Yes. It does not provide services for alcoholics or anything like that. It is there entirely to be an advocacy group, pushing for fresh legislation.
Q445 Paul Flynn: Taking your thesis that it needs popular support before there should be the support of charity status, if you went out on the street rattling your tin asking for donations for Harrow and Eton, or even employed chuggers to collect money for Harrow and Eton, do you think you would collect a great deal of money?
Christopher Snowdon: No, I do not think you would. The case for the charitable status of Harrow and Eton is twofold. One is that education in itself is a public benefit and, secondly, by taking 7% of the schoolaged population out of the state system, you are saving the taxpayer money.
Q446 Paul Flynn: In this diatribe of bile and prejudice, there seems to be no mention of public schools and their status.
Christopher Snowdon: No, because it is not about public schools. It is about Governmentfunded lobby groups. As far as I know, Eton does not lobby and is not funded by the taxpayer.
Q447 Paul Flynn: You would be offended if it was suggested there was political prejudice in the writing of this document, would you?
Christopher Snowdon: Yes.
Q448 Paul Flynn: You would be. You would be entirely wrong anyway. Are your concerns restricted to charities? There was one that was mentioned by Mr Halfon, which was Greenpeace, which I believe takes no money from Government.
Robert Halfon: No, I was saying they were not classed as a charity, so what is the difference? The whole point is why some people are classed as pressure groups and some people, who do exactly the same thing, are classed as charities.
Paul Flynn: I understand. Are your concerns, Mr Snowdon, restricted to charities that receive income from the state or other ones, such as Greenpeace, which have no public money? Do you object to their campaigning?
Christopher Snowdon: Greenpeace’s? No, not at all. I do not object to any of the campaigning of the Green 10, being the very large environmental groups in Europe, nine of which are funded by the European Commission. I do not have a problem with any of them campaigning. They may well see that as the best way to pursue their charitable purpose. I just don’t think that the European Commission should be giving them up to 75% of their income from the taxpayer.
Q449 Paul Flynn: I don’t think you have fully answered the question that it is a matter of balance. It is not a question of winning government opinion, which might be settled, as you rightly say, but it is winning public opinion over. With the endemic cowardice of politicians of all parties, they won’t move forward unless they have a comfort blanket wrapped around them of public support. That process is necessary. On one side, you have commercial interests with bottomless purses; on the other side, you have charities wandering around rattling tins. It is entirely reasonable that a benign government and the European Union should give the charities a helping hand. Surely that is entirely right.
Christopher Snowdon: What they should do is invite the civil society groups in to have a chat about their concerns. There is no need for them to be giving them millions of pounds so they can go out and lobby the public, which is really what we are talking about: it is campaigning amongst the general public, going to the media, presenting themselves as grassroots groups, when they are in fact just reflecting the Government in power. You may agree with many of their causes; other people would not. I suspect that, if the Government suddenly decided it was going to set up an antiabortion charity, a progunowning charity or indeed a prosmoking charity, to provide some balance to the debate, you would not be so happy with it.
Q450 Paul Flynn: I think your view is a utopian, impractical and ill informed one. That is the best part of it. I think you should check on how much access groups like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth had on, say, the London airport developments compared with the commercial organisations. It was a ratio of about one to 12.
Christopher Snowdon: I think we come from fundamentally different perspectives here. You seem to think that it is the Government’s role to fund antiindustry groups and various proenvironmental or propublichealth groups, because that creates balance. What I say is it fundamentally does not create balance. There are civil society groups out there campaigning for the kinds of things you would applaud. All I am saying here is that the great campaigning successes over the centuries, antislavery and votes for women, were pursued by genuine civil society based on voluntary donations. They did not come about because the Government decided they were going to rig the system using public money.
Paul Flynn: It took decades to get that in because of the huge amount of pull that the slave owners had in this building, and they opposed it for years and years because they had the money. It would have been quite right for those who wanted to abolish slavery to be funded by Government. It is a wonderful example of slow progress, because of vested interest in the West Indies by lords and ladies in this House. I will leave it there.
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