Mapped: How the Net Zero Backlash is Tied to Climate Denial – and Brexit

“Go for gas with all the vigour of a national war effort…” That was the take from Steve Baker on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Baker, the leading light of the backbench Net Zero Scrutiny Group (NZSG), has seized on the war to push for the UK’s ban on fracking to be scrapped. 

Ukraine is just their latest tactic. A few weeks ago it was the cost-of-living crisis, which they tried to pin on green policies. The NZSG has been active in influencing the climate debate, gaining widespread media coverage and some support from former ministers. 

But these MPs have faced little “scrutiny” themselves. While they cloak their demands for more fossil fuel extraction in concern for their constituents’ household bills, the MPs have strong ties to the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the UK’s leading producer of climate science denial and misinformation.

The NZSG has roots in the libertarian network behind the push for a “hard” Brexit, including the European Research Group (ERG), which Baker chaired. Many of the same politicians, think tanks and donors that backed Brexit are deeply involved in opposing climate action. Nigel Farage recently joined the fray with his campaign for a “net zero referendum”, an effort steeped in climate science denial. 

The recent IPCC report noted the dangers of this misinformation, which it said  “undermines climate science and disregards risk and urgency”, at a time when there is “a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all”. 

There is much to debate about climate action, but a serious discussion of the best route to net zero is impossible when public discourse is hijacked by ideologues and vested interests. The evidence is clear that, despite its claims, the Net Zero Scrutiny Group of MPs is allied with climate science deniers. 

Below we bring together all the evidence about the NZSG in one place, with an interactive map and a new profile on the group in our climate disinformation database. We hope these resources help to inform media coverage of the NZSG and provide useful context about their campaigning.

New Group on the Block

The Net Zero Scrutiny Group (NZSG) was set up last year with the help of former Brexit minister Steve Baker, who has led backbench campaigns in favour of Brexit and against Covid restrictions. The group is chaired by South Thanet MP Craig Mackinlay, and was formed around the time the Global Warming Policy Foundation’s campaigning wing, the Global Warming Policy Forum, rebranded itself as the similarly-named Net Zero Watch. 

The group publicly launched in January with a letter to the Sunday Telegraph calling on the government to scrap green levies on energy bills, expand North Sea oil and gas exploration and support “shale gas extraction”, known as fracking, which the UK effectively banned in 2019. 

The signatories to this letter amounted to the first published list of NZSG members, and named 19 MPs and one Lord. This was less than half the “north of 50 MPs” Mackinlay had claimed in November. 

The group penned a second letter in February, this time to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, calling for the fracking ban to be lifted, according to the Telegraph. The 29 signatories to this letter were not published, but reportedly included Lord David Frost, and MPs John Whittingdale and Bob Blackman. 

Another letter, published in the Daily Mail in March, that argues the war in Ukraine means the UK should overturn the fracking ban, is claimed to have been signed by 34 MPs and five members of the House of Lords, though again no list of names was provided. 

DeSmog is taking the 20 signatories of the initial letter as NZSG “members”, with these extra names as “satellites”, though the group might be a loose association of people signing letters ad hoc, organised by a core team of leaders.

Global Warming Policy Foundation Links

The NZSG claims to accept climate science. But the group has a number of strong institutional links with the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the UK’s most prominent climate science denial organisation. 

The MP group’s ties to the GWPF are extensive. In August 2021, NZSG chair Craig Mackinlay told Bloomberg that his new parliamentary group would use GWPF research for its campaigning. Meanwhile, two NZSG members are current or former trustees of the GWPF: Steve Baker MP joined the GWPF as a trustee in May 2021, and NZSG member Lord Peter Lilley is a former GWPF trustee.

This month DeSmog reported that Steve Baker recently received £5,000 from Neil Record, chair of the Global Warming Policy Forum, the GWPF’s campaigning wing, now known as Net Zero Watch. 

Baker and Lilley attended the GWPF’s annual lecture in November, where US professor Steve Koonin questioned the scientific consensus on the climate crisis.

GWPF figures are also employed by the NZSG chair. Last month, DeSmog revealed that two of Mackinlay’s parliamentary aides have current or former roles at the GWPF: Harry Wilkinson, the GWPF’s head of policy, and Ruth Lea, a former GWPF trustee. 

Wilkinson joined Mackinlay’s team in January after spending years working as research assistant to Lord Nigel Lawson, GWPF founder and board member, and perhaps the UK’s most famous and long-term climate science denier. 

In November, during the UN COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, Lawson wrote in a Spectator article that “global warming is not a problem”. In the piece he also defended the burning of fossil fuels and said carbon dioxide’s “principal effect” is the growth of plants. 

Ruth Lea has worked for Mackinlay since February 2017, and in 2019 wrote a GWPF pamphlet called “Carbon Futility”, in which she called the UK’s net zero target “futile gesture politics” and accused the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of “overestimating the degree of global warming”. 

NZSG members have also received donations from funders linked to the GWPF. Robert Halfon received £2,000 in 2019 from Australian hedge fund manager Michael Hintze, one of the GWPF’s few known donors. Hintze also donated £2,500 to NZSG MP Andrew Lewer’s seat of Northamptonshire South in 2019. Lewer also received a £500 ticket to the Conservative Party’s Black and White Ball from Hintze in October 2019.

Baker wrote an article to coincide with the Global Warming Policy Forum’s rebranding as Net Zero Watch in October 2021. 

Beyond this, NZSG MPs have themselves spread climate science misinformation. Steve Baker, speaking at Conservative Party conference in October, said that much of climate science is “contestable” and “sometimes propagandised”, and claimed some UN climate scenarios were “implausible”.

Pro-Fossil Fuel Agenda

On top of these connections, the NZSG’s policy agenda tracks very closely with the long-standing key demands of the GWPF. These include: scrapping green levies on energy, more North Sea drilling and the return of fracking. 

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