Ruby Lott-Lavigna

The UK’s newly appointed minister for net zero is facing questions over her links to a think tank funded by oil giants that called for climate protesters to be jailed. Claire Coutinho, appointed minister for energy security and net zero this week, was a senior fellow to the opaquely funded right-wing think tank Policy Exchange in 2021. Before that, she had contributed to a report for the group in 2020, and gave a speech there in July this year.

openDemocracy revealed in 2022 that Policy Exchange had helped write the UK’s controversial Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act after explicitly stating the government should pass legislation to target Extinction Rebellion (XR) in a 2019 report.

It was given the lowest possible transparency rating in openDemocracy’s ‘Who Funds You?’ project earlier this year – but an investigation by this website in 2022 found the think tank had taken cash from US oil giant ExxonMobil….

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/policy-exchange-claire-coutinho-minister-net-zero-fossil-fuels/