A trustee of the UK climate science denial think tank the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) has just been reappointed to a parliamentary science committee.
Labour MP Graham Stringer was appointed unopposed this week to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee. The all-male group is tasked with making sure government decisions are based on sound scientific evidence.
Stringer has been on the committee before, between 2015 and May 2017. During this same time he joined the GWPF’s Board of Trustees in July 2015. The GWPF continues to dismiss the overwhelming evidence on climate change as it lobbies against taking action to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Most recently it admitted to using fake data during Lord Lawson’s widely-criticised BBC interview.
Stringer was also just one of two MPs in 2014 (the other being Peter Lilley, who joined GWPF at the same time as Stringer) to vote against the Energy and Climate Change Committee’s acceptance of the UN IPCC’s conclusion that humans are the dominant cause of global warming.
Speaking to The Independent, Greenpeace’s senior political advisor Rebecca Newsom said: “You would think that a broad alignment with mainstream science would be a basic requirement for any MP sitting on the Science and Technology Committee.
“So it’s rather odd that out of hundreds of possible Labour MPs, one with climate sceptic affiliations should have made it onto the committee.”
Stringer failed to respond to a request for comment from DeSmog UK.
As DeSmog UK previously revealed, Stringer is part of a close-knit network of Brexit climate deniers – he was a board member of Vote Leave during last year’s referendum and in 2010 he hosted a group of climate deniers in Parliament which included the DUP’s Sammy Wilson.
Several other Brexit climate deniers have also taken up prominent committee appointments this week.
Sammy Wilson has been appointed to the Committee on Exiting the European Union along with Christopher Chope, the other current MP to have voted against the 2008 Climate Change Act. Fringe MP and Tory grassroots favourite Jacob Rees-Mogg, who has also questioned climate science, joins them on the Brexit committee.
And former pro-fracking energy minister Baronness Neville-Rolfe – who last year attended the GWPF’s annual lecture delivered by infamous climate science denier and hereditary peer Matt Ridley – now sits on the Lords’ EU committee.
Meanwhile, Phillip Davies, another MP who voted against the Climate Change Act, who has on numerous occasions been criticised by the opposition for being “deeply sexist” and was last year challenged for his seat by the leader of the Women’s Equality Party, has been appointed to the Commons’ Women and Equalities Committee.
Photo: Screengrab via Parliament Live
