Over the last five years, the Street Foundation is found to have given rightwing pressure groups £749,000 – more than 40% of the money it handed out during this period
A disabled children’s charity which was set up to support individuals and organisations involved with children and young people with a disability/special needs, has been awarding grants and support to right-wing think tanks and pressure groups, an investigation has revealed.
Over the last five years, the Street Foundation is found to have given rightwing pressure groups £749,000 – more than 40% of the money it handed out during this period, the Good Law Project has found. That includes money being given to Tufton Street think-tanks such as the Institute of Economic Affairs, which has questioned climate science, as well as 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 New Culture Forum has also 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 Good Law Project reports: “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 investigation by the Good Law Project also found that The Street Foundation gets the majority of its funding from the aerospace company, HR Smith Group, which has given £50,000 to Reform UK and £10,000 to the Conservatives.
The firm’s CEO Richard Smith 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.
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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