A Tory MSP is receiving up to £1000 a year from an American think-tank criticised for pushing a “radical right-wing agenda” by former US vice-president Al Gore.
Adam Tomkins’s register of interests shows he takes the money from “private educational foundation” the Liberty Fund to work as a conference delegate.
The organisation has been linked to climate change denial groups, as well as US billionaire Charles Koch.
In his book The Assault on Reason, Gore claims the Liberty Fund ran training seminars for judges “generally responsible for writing the most radical pro-corporate, anti-environmental and activist decisions”.
He added: “They are giving multi-thousand-dollar vacations to federal judges to promote their radical right-wing agenda at
the expense of the public interest.”
The fund is linked to the Federalist Society, a Kochfunded group reported to have assisted Donald Trump in drawing up his Supreme Court candidate list that resulted in the nomination of scandal-hit Brett Kavanaugh.
It also works on events with the Property and Environment Research Center, an organisation described by Greenpeace as a climate denial front group that highlighted potential benefits of global warming for American farmers.
An SNP spokesman: “This will rightly raise some serious concerns about the Tories’ links to right-wing figures and institutes.
“Adam Tomkins must make clear why he feels comfortable continuing to take money from a conference linked to such extreme figures.”
Tomkins and the Scottish Conservatives declined to comment on his relationship with the fund.
But his register of interests states: “I am a conference delegate for Liberty Fund, a private, educational foundation.
“I will work for two days per conference, up to a maximum of two conferences per year, for which I will receive remuneration of between £500 and £1000 per annum.”
The MSP is a law professor at Glasgow University where he receives £30,000 to £35,000 a year for working one-and-a-half days a week.
