By Brian Monteith – 5 minute read
ARE PEOPLE finally wakening up to the great harm that NGOs do to our personal freedoms, economic prosperity, cultural values and safety from foreign powers or terrorists? That might seem like a long list of threats to our way of life – because it is – yet it is a simple reflection of the wide range of issues Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) seek to lobby government over to bring about change they want.
It used to be the case that NGOs, many of which are charities, were more trusted than any other institutions, but this notion no longer holds true. The latest Edelman Trust Barometer shows business is trusted more than NGOs, with government and the media further behind both.
There’s nothing wrong with single issue groups proselytising a particular view – that’s free speech – but what is utterly scandalous is when you scratch the surface and look at annual accounts or internal policy documents you find just how many and to what a significant extent today’s NGOs are funded by the taxpayer – only for them to campaign against the democratic choices of those taxpayers.
It is also scandalous to find governments – with a democratic mandate given to them by the electorate – using NGOs to deliver their publicly endorsed agenda, only to find many of those same NGOs working in opposition to the democratically elected government. There is also the difficulty that in being funded by the taxpayer to help solve a problem there can be a perverse incentive for the NGO to never solve that problem, because its funding would then dry up.
That particular vested interest helps explain how some NGOs in the sphere of public health are never satisfied with regulatory restrictions or introducing bans but will always come back with further demands for tighter restrictions and extending the reach of any bans.
NGOs can be found campaigning against government policies while in the receipt of taxpayers money. For example, Asylum Aid, which is very proud of its role in blocking the plan to send illegal immigrants to Rwanda for processing, received the vast bulk of its revenue (£1.6m of £1.7m) from either the taxpayer or grants by large donors such as the National Lottery Community Fund, the Open Society Foundation, and the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust.
The same process happens in controls over nicotine (be it in vapes or tobacco itself), alcohol consumption, and the content of different fats, sugar, salt or dairy in various foods from NGOs that campaign about health.
In the international sphere, some NGOs can even be found making political statements that could materially impact on territorial disputes, such as the Hamas terrorism of 7 October 2023 and Israel’s response, or even Israel’s right to exist itself – while receiving taxpayer funding to deliver humanitarian relief in Gaza. There appears to be no limits to the hypocrisy of some NGOs in running their own agenda that is contrary to the goals of what they take public money for.
While in the past NGOs could seek to expose bad business practices or highlight threats to the environment through the media, few doubted their motives or challenged their narratives. Now, thanks in part to the internet and social media removing the filter of the mainstream media, we are now able to see what is not being reported, we are able to delve into the background and do our own due diligence on what NGOs are doing and how they are funded.
It was back in 1999, following the ‘battle of Seattle’ demonstrations against free trade being sought by governments and businesses at that year’s World Trade Organisation meeting, that Edelman decided to commission an annual ‘trust barometer’ to measure who the public trusts and what influences such judgements. Unsurprisingly, the most trusted institutions globally were the NGOs – many of whom were responsible for the demonstrations.
As a result of the 2003 Iraq war and later the financial crisis of 2008, that poor showing of governments and business was maintained. Yet by 2020 the survey found trust in businesses as a group had grown – tying with NGOs – and thereafter pulling ahead of them, as the truth about many NGOs became accessible and trust in them declined.
Scandals over the behaviour of various charities’ executives (such as sexual exploitation by Oxfam employees Haiti in 2018 then in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2021), the huge salaries being paid out to senior executives, and the departure of some NGOs from what they were established to campaign on has eaten away at public trust. Patrick Moore, a founder of Greenpeace as an environmental campaign, became its biggest critic over its doomsday scenario over climate change, while just recently Greenpeace in the UK attacked the US embassy in London with false blood to protest against arms sales to Israel in its war against Hamas in Gaza.
No wonder NGOs became less and less trusted. This year’s barometer shows business achieves a public trust level of at least 60% in 15 of 28 countries measured – but for NGOs it’s only 11 of 28, while government is distrusted in 17 of the 28. In addition only business is seen globally as both competent and ethical.
In Britain, examples that suggest our regulatory framework has been captured ideologically by unelected activist NGOs are not hard to find. Organisations like Sustain.org, which previously operated as the Children’s Food Campaign, systematically triggers complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority.
The result is a steady erosion of advertising freedoms, creating a regulatory slippery slope that ultimately burdens hardworking families with additional costs. Ordinary people who simply enjoy occasional treats in burger restaurants find themselves paying higher prices due to policies shaped not by democratic consensus but by activist agendas.
As a result, today’s most influential lobbyists are not corporates seeking change for commercial benefit, but NGOs seeking to act as unelected governments in the sector they wish to control. Think about it; why would businesses lobby for higher taxes, more regulations and anti-growth restrictions such as planning constraints?
Usually established as not-for-profit entities, many NGOs are approved as charities. All are unaccountable to the public for the regulations they campaign for, meaning they face no consequences if their policies prove to be a failure, costing jobs, limiting economic activity and requiring more government welfare or subsidies as a result.
There are more than 170,000 charities in Britain, with a combined income of £96 billion, spending £94bn last year. In comparison the Ministry of Defence cost £53.9bn in the same period. While the majority of British charities are small, about 9,000 have an income of more than £1 million and many use their moral authority as a charity to push tax and ban ideas.
From dictating industrial and economic policy (such as campaigning for strict adherence to Net Zero), to energy provision (not developing oil and gas fields) to food standards (lower sugar and salt etc), to broadcast advertising rules (adverts presenting family diversity as standard) and sports governance (insisting on trans athletes participating in the classification of their choice), these activist charities ultimately denude consumers of choice and push the cost of living up for the poorest. All in the name of saving us from ourselves.
The recently proposed sugar tax on milkshakes exemplifies such overreach, a regressive policy that will disproportionately punish lower-income households while doing little to address obesity. When unaccountable charities dictate behavioural change through institutional and regulatory capture we need to ask, who elected them to make these choices for us?
Be it Blair and Brown – or Cameron, through to Sunak, our leaders have not challenged the growing influence or taxpayer funded activist NGOs. It must be a job for the next government – now is the time to start making a case for reducing the power of NGOs.
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Photo of the Seattle demonstrations by Carwil – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=145083848