Disabled children’s charity hands 43% of grants to rightwing think-tanks

The shadowy networks of think-tanks that poison our politics never declare who funds their rightwing propaganda. But Good Law Project can reveal another entry in the rogues’ gallery of tobacco companies, fossil fuel firms and billionaire-linked trusts backing this radical crew.

Over the last five years, the Street Foundation, a charity set up to support “individuals and organisations involved with children/young people with a disability/special needs”, has given rightwing pressure groups £749,000 – more than 40% of the money it handed out during this period. The foundation says it makes grants to advance health, tackle disability and save lives, but it has been supporting think-tanks that cast doubt on the legitimacy of mental health issues, promote privatising disability benefits (PDF) and call for the abolition of the Equality Act.

The Street Foundation gave £250,000 to the New Culture Forum, a think-tank that suggested earlier this year that abolishing the Equality Act – an act which enshrines protections for disabled people in the UK – was one of the “10 election pledges that can save Britain”. The outfit has claimed that mass immigration is “an existential threat to Britain” and promoted speakers who suggest people shouldn’t “worry too much about climate change”. The group says it aims to challenge “the orthodoxies dominant in our institutions, public life and wider culture” and counter what it calls “left-wing bias” in academia and the media.

Between 2021 and 2022, the foundation also gave £55,000 to the Institute of Economic Affairs. Speaking on the institute’s podcast in May, editorial and research fellow Professor Len Shackleton tried to make a contrast between people with “genuine problems” and “areas in which it’s really not possible to get inside people’s heads” such as back health and mental health. The group also published a report in 2016 which suggested people could opt out of Employment and Support Allowance, and “take out private disability insurance instead”.

The foundation has also given to groups backing climate denial, fossil fuels, Brexit and other rightwing causes, including Civitas, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, The Politics and Economics Research Trust (PERT), and the Hampden Trust, with the total given to rightwing pressure groups more than £749,000 over the last five years.

According to Dan White, policy and campaigns officer at Disability Rights UK, disabled people are struggling after austerity, Covid and the cost of living crisis, so it’s “shocking that a charity that claims to meet the needs of disabled children, has given 42% of its grants in the last five years to political think-tanks.”

“The Street Foundation says it supports ‘individuals and organisations involved with children/young people with a disability/special need’, White said, “yet it has used its funds to promote the privatisation of benefits and the abolition of the Equality Act… it appears that a high proportion of its funds is not being spent on disabled children at all.”

The Street Foundation gets the majority of its funding from the aerospace company, HR Smith Group, which has supplied radio equipment for military transport planes, and one of its subsidiaries, TechTest. HR Smith Group has also given £50,000 to Reform UK and £10,000 to the Conservatives, while TechTest has given £890,000 to Reform, UKIP, the Tories, and campaigns to leave the European Union.

The firm’s CEO is Richard Smith, who serves alongside members of his immediate family on the foundation’s board. He also owns the building in Tufton Street where the New Culture Forum, Civitas, the Global Warming Policy Foundation and the Institute of Economic Affairs are based.

Smith has donated £31,500 to the Conservatives in a personal capacity, has served on the New Culture Forum’s advisory committee, and is a member of the TaxPayers’ Alliance – another rightwing pressure group based in Tufton Street.

While the think-tanks based at Tufton Street refuse to declare their funding, they have been linked with the fossil fuel industry, property developers, tobacco companies and dark money trusts in the US. 

Anonymous foundations in the US have poured over $14m into these groups since 2012, and a recent joint investigation from DeSmog and Democracy For Sale showed that Conservative donors have given almost £7 million to Tufton Street since 2019.

For Good Law Project’s executive director, Jo Maugham, the revelations are a “grim set of facts”.

“The Charity Commission continues to force hardworking taxpayers to fund political activity and misinformation through its disinclination to regulate right wing charities,” Maugham said. “And diverting money away from disabled children is a new low.”

“But the real question is what Starmer proposes to do about it. One of his own MPs is pushing taxpayer-subsidised climate disinformation at Net Zero Watch, so the jury is very much out on what his ‘politics of service’ actually means.”

The Street Foundation, Richard Smith and the HR Smith Group, the New Culture Forum, the Institute for Economic Affairs, Civitas, and the Global Warming Policy Foundation did not respond to requests for comment.