Rachel Reeves accepted donation from peer with links to climate sceptic group

Rachel Reeves accepted a £10,000 donation from a supporter linked with climate sceptic groups, shortly before Labour ditched its pledge to invest £28bn a year in green energy.

Labour’s shadow chancellor received the money from Lord Donoughue in January to help finance campaigning in her constituency, Leeds West, according to her parliamentary register of interests.

Lord Donoughue, a Labour peer, is a former chairman of Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), a thinktank founded by former Conservative chancellor Nigel Lawson to examine the economics of climate change.

GWPF publishes briefing papers that question climate reports by bodies such as the Met Office and the United Nations’ IPCC climate science group.

A Labour source: “Lord Donoughue is a long-standing friend of Rachel’s and Labour peer. She does not share his views on climate change and has spoken of her determination to be Britain’s first green chancellor.”

Sky News understands the shadow chancellor intends to keep the donation.

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Lord Donoughue told the Telegraph, which first reported the story: “The donation was totally unrelated. I haven’t been involved in those £28bn discussions at all. And quite rightly so.

“She needed help staffing her constituency. I think she’s crucial to the Labour Party and the country. She’s so sensible and she’s got such good political and economic judgment.”

Lord Donoughue says he is “not a climate-change denier”, but questions the costs of policies.

In 2013, while a director of GWPF, he told the House of Lords: “I should make it clear I am not a climate-change denier -an offensive word, from which I have suffered. I am a questioner.

“I accept that the globe is warming mildly, 0.8% of 1 degree in 131 years… the warming is almost certainly linked to carbon emissions and human activity, and I support curbing those emissions in a measured way.”

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Bob Ward, policy director for the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics (LSE), said Lord Donoughue is “part of the small band of noisy ‘lukewarmers’ who oppose effective climate policy”.

“He shows that while most of the ideological opposition to climate policy in the UK is embedded in the fringes of the political right, there are some on the fringes of the political left who also share unscientific views about climate change.”

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