MPs slam Quaker trust for £50,000 grant to activists

TORY MPs last night criticised a wealthy Quaker trust for awarding a £50,000 grant to online activists attempting to censor news outlets.

The Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust gave the two-year grant to Stop Funding Hate – a far-Left campaign group which has pressured advertisers into boycotting GB News.

Tory MP and former Minister Robert Goodwill said: ‘This is a blatant example of the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust funding organisations that quite clearly have a very political agenda, and actually quite a nasty political agenda.’

Craig Mackinlay, another Tory MP, last night called on the Charity Commission to investigate the funding. In a letter to Helen Stephenson, the regulator’s chief executive, he said: ‘ The activities of Stop Funding Hate are demonstrably party political and hugely divisive.’

In 2016, the trust was criticised by the Charity Commission after it gave £305,000 to Cage, a human rights group that described Mohammed Emwazi, the IS murderer nicknamed Jihadi John, as a ‘beautiful young man’.

It also funded a charity that accused a Labour MP of acting like a ‘neo-fascist murderer’ after she condemned British Pakistani men’s sexual abuse of girls.

The trust says it ‘supports people who address the root causes of conflict and injustice’. Its grant to Stop Funding Hate was ‘for a project to encourage responsible media through an ethical advertising code’.