Think-tank ecosystem: no funding disclosure requirement and no regional policy capacity

No legal requirement obliges think tanks to disclose funders. openDemocracy's revived Who Funds You? project rated several of the most ministerially connected tanks E for transparency and traced around £25m of pre-election policy funding to opaque sources, and the Transparency of Lobbying Act 2014 covers consultant lobbyists rather than think tanks. Unlock Democracy and On Think Tanks have proposed reforms, and none has been adopted. Separately, the roughly 150-strong UK think-tank sector clusters in London, with IPPR North the main sustained regional exception, leaving the new mayoral strategic authorities without independent local policy and evidence capacity.

Organisations shaping ministerial decisions face weaker disclosure rules than the consultant lobbyists Parliament regulated in 2014. New regional governments meanwhile lack independent policy capacity, so increasingly consequential devolved decisions rest on London-produced evidence, or none.

Two instruments. Disclosure first: extend lobbying-register-style rules so organisations meeting ministers or giving parliamentary evidence declare funders above a threshold. Capacity second: a philanthropic pooled endowment for regional policy institutes attached to strategic authority geographies, on the Centre for London and IPPR North model.

// Build now: First artefact: philanthropic pooled endowment for regional policy institutes (IPPR North model); statutory funder disclosure remains state-led.

Bodies shaping ministerial decisions face weaker disclosure than regulated lobbyists while regional governments lack independent policy capacity; both fixes are moderate, unadopted and undated.