Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch enjoyed a £7,500 getaway in February at the home of an influential anti-climate donor, DeSmog can reveal.

New records show that Badenoch and four members of her family spent six days at a residence owned by Neil Record, a former currency trader who chairs Net Zero Watch, one of the UK’s leading climate science denial campaign groups.

Net Zero Watch advocates for dramatically increased fossil fuel production and the scaling back of the UK’s renewable energy capacity. Its parent company, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), has claimed that carbon dioxide has been “mercilessly demonised” when in fact it is a “benefit to the planet” and should be “two or three times” higher than current levels.

Badenoch has lobbied vociferously for the UK to expand its fossil fuel output in the wake of the U.S.-led war in Iran, which has sent global oil prices skyrocketing.

Under her leadership, the Conservative Party has ditched its previous commitment to the UK’s 2050 net zero emissions target and has said that it would limit the country’s clean energy investments.

Record – who has given more than £550,000 to the party and its politicians in recent decades – donated to Badenoch’s 2024 Conservative leadership bid, which was run out of his London home.

Record is well connected among a range of anti-climate, right-wing organisations. He serves as the life vice-president of the Institute of Economic Affairs, the anti-regulation, anti-tax group that has received funding from BP, Shell, and Rupert Murdoch’s media empire. He is also a columnist at The Telegraph, which is a leading opponent of clean energy, and sits on the advisory board of the Prosperity Institute, a think tank founded by the Legatum Group, the investment firm that co-owns the anti-climate broadcaster GB News.

This isn’t the first time that Badenoch has been hosted by Record. In February 2025, Badenoch and select members of her shadow cabinet participated in a £14,000 week-long residential at Record’s Gloucestershire estate, which boasts a swimming pool, donkeys, and 180 acres of sheep-grazed grass.

Record has called renewable energy investment “economic suicide”, despite the ongoing war in Ukraine costing £100 billion to the UK – more than the entire expected cost of net zero – driven by higher fossil fuel prices.

As reported by DeSmog, Conservative Shadow Energy Secretary Claire Coutinho has endorsed a number of spurious reports this year on the alleged cost of reducing the UK’s emissions, including one produced by the IEA.

In the two decades to 2024, the Conservatives accepted more than £7 million from climate science deniers, according to DeSmog’s research.

The Conservatives, Net Zero Watch, and Record were approached for comment.

A version of this article has been published by The New World.