Campaigners including three MPs have called on the Charity Commission to investigate the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA).
The Good Law Project has sent a letter on behalf of Layla Moran, Clive Lewis and Alyn Smith – MPs for the Liberal Democrats, Labour and SNP, respectively – as well as Green Party candidate Siân Berry and former Commission board member Andrew Purkis.
Its formal complaint accuses the IEA of having extremist views and being in breach of charity regulations around political campaigning.
The IEA called the complaint a “vexatious publicity stunt” that “contains nothing new” and said it was confident it would be dismissed.
“The Charity Commission has been clear that approaching economic and political science from a free-market perspective is legitimate and consistent with our status as an educational charity,” an IEA spokesperson said.
“The IEA will not be deterred from its mission to advance the public understanding of economics by political activists with an axe to grind.”
Moran: ‘A blight on the whole sector’
The Good Law Project suggested that the IEA was seen as the inspiration for former prime minister Liz Truss’s mini-budget in 2022.
Moran said the regulator should act with “utmost urgency” and that “one charity promoting extremist views and acting outside the rules is a blight on the whole sector”.
It comes after Commission chair Orlando Fraser criticised “unfounded complaints” to the regulator about the “alleged non-charitable nature” of some think tanks’ research yesterday.
In a blog published in response to Fraser’s comments, Purkis said that Fraser had failed to address “the crucial legal principle that no charity can have a political purpose”.
“The core point is that they must not have even a partly political purpose,” he wrote.
“And even if they don’t, they must be reasonably even-handed in their relationships with different political parties.”
A spokesperson for the Charity Commission said: “As an independent regulator, we assess all concerns raised with us against our risk and regulatory framework to determine whether there is a role for us. The general principles of our regulatory approach towards charitable think tanks was set out by our Chair Orlando Fraser KC in his piece in the Times.”
Meanwhile, the Good Law Project last week urged the Commission to investigate GambleAware, which the regulator said it was assessing.
