Lord David Frost has been announced as the new director-general of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), the influential anti-government lobby group.

The IEA’s press release hailed the former Brexit negotiator and Conservative minister for his “clarity of thought, strategic leadership, and ability to deliver institutional change”.

The statement did not mention Lord Frost’s role as one of the UK’s leading opponents of climate action.

Frost is a director of Net Zero Watch, the campaign arm of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the UK’s foremost climate science denial group. The 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.

Frost – who has no scientific training – has claimed that “rising temperatures are likely to be beneficial” to Britain.

Earlier this week, a Charity Commission probe into the IEA called on the group to implement reforms to improve transparency and reduce its political bias.

The IEA is able to maintain its charitable status – which carries tax benefits – because it is considered to be an “educational” group.

Contrary to Frost’s views on climate change, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s leading climate science body, has said “it is a statement of fact, we cannot be any more certain; it is unequivocal and indisputable that humans are warming the planet.”

The IPCC has also stated that carbon dioxide pollution “is responsible for most of global warming” since the late 19th century, which has increased the “severity and frequency of weather and climate extremes, like heat waves, heavy rains, and drought” – all of which “put a disproportionate burden on low-income households and thus increase poverty levels.”

The IEA is part of the Tufton Street network – an orchestrated alliance of radical right-wing groups based in Westminster that lobby to dismantle state services and privatise public bodies. These groups share an opposition to climate action, and have spent decades attempting to undermine the scientific consensus behind policies to reduce emissions.

The IEA has advocated for the ban to be lifted on fracking for shale gas, calling it the “moral and economic choice”, has criticised the windfall tax imposed by the UK on fossil fuel firms, and has celebrated the Conservative Party’s pledge to scrap the 2008 Climate Change Act.

The IEA received funding from oil giant BP from 1967 to at least 2018, and has accepted donations from GWPF backers.

Frost has resigned the Conservative whip to take up his new role at the IEA, and will sit as a non-affiliated peer in the House of Lords.

Frost’s Climate Denial

Since resigning as Brexit minister in 2021, Frost has been a leading opponent of the UK’s 2050 net zero emissions target. 

In May he wrote a column which celebrated that “the Tories are joining Reform in distancing themselves from the craziness of this agenda”, adding that the Climate Change Committee – the government’s independent net zero advisory group – “will be thrown on to the junk heap of history and we will never speak of it again.”

Last month he wrote that “we need to end the disaster of net zero”.

Frost has also used his position in the House of Lords to promote climate science denial. In a July 2023 debate on climate change, Frost declared that “rising temperatures are likely to be beneficial”, since more people “die from cold than heat in Britain”.

He argued that the UK should stop trying to mitigate rising temperatures, and should instead adapt to its effects and invest in nuclear and gas power.

Rising global heat kills one person a minute worldwide, while it has been estimated that the climate crisis may cause 14.5 million additional deaths by 2050.

Lord Frost and Net Zero Watch

Frost is also formally affiliated with anti-climate institutions.

In November 2022, he became a director of the GWPF, claiming the group provides an “objective view” of climate change.

Frost gave the annual GWPF lecture in 2023, in which he claimed: “Climate change is a problem, one of the many we face: it is not existential and it doesn’t mean extinction is coming.”

He added that the “causal connection” between cutting emissions to net zero by 2050 and limiting global temperatures to 1.5C “is very much open to debate”.

Frost stepped down from the GWPF in December 2024, only to join the board of Net Zero Watch, its campaign arm, where he remains an active director.

In 2022, Net Zero Watch urged the government to “recommit to fossil fuels” with “a new fleet of coal-fired power stations”, and called for wind and solar power to be “wound down completely”. 

Net Zero Watch chair Neil Record (life vice president and former chair of the IEA) was a major donor to Kemi Badenoch’s Tory leadership campaign.