Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds arrives as coking coal is unloaded at Immingham Port, northern England, as he visits the site in Lincolnshire to view raw materials destined for British Steel at Scunthorpe, being off-loaded, April 15, 2025
THE CRISIS at Scunthorpe steelworks, rightly if belatedly being addressed in the immediate term by state intervention, is the consequence of privatising critical national infrastructure so decisions on its future rest on the profit-and-loss calculations of private companies.
Right-wing media and parliamentarians, who are pro-privatisation and pro-war, want to avoid this conclusion. So we are seeing a propaganda campaign to blame it on other causes, each of which advances the right’s agenda.
One is that it is the result of pursuing “net zero” policies aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, a planned and publicly directed green transition is essential to Britain’s industrial future: it is leaving it to the market which places jobs and industry at risk.
Turning our backs on the climate crisis cannot be an option as extreme weather events and crop failures grow more serious with each passing year. Labour should face pressure not to drop its already much reduced climate commitments, but to invest in measures that directly help people — restoring its original ambitious plans to insulate 19 million homes in a decade, cutting emissions and lowering household energy bills, for example — to stop the climate-denialist right claiming green policies lower living standards.
The other is to turn Jingye’s record at British Steel into a “security risk” because the company is Chinese, scaremongering over other Chinese investments in Britain and calling for trade decoupling in line with the new cold war being pushed from Washington.
Here, socialists must take a clear position that distinguishes our opposition to any company not accountable to the British people controlling assets of strategic importance from a China-bashing narrative that raises international tensions and risks advancing the US-led war drive.
That doesn’t mean defending the behaviour of a firm like Jingye, which seemed designed to force the closure of the Scunthorpe blast furnaces and whose negotiations with government involved demanding huge sums of money while offering little in return.
But it does mean identifying the parallels between its conduct and, say, that of the Indian conglomerate Tata, which has also taken hundreds of millions in public money while refusing to save the blast furnaces at Port Talbot, a move set to cost thousands of jobs. The common factor is not the country of origin, but the lack of democratic accountability of companies not owned by the British public.
A host of parliamentarians were previously employed by agencies with fossil fuel clients.
At least 24 newly elected MPs used to work for public relations, consultancy and lobbying firms that have a history of representing oil and gas companies, DeSmog can reveal.
A DeSmog analysis of the MPs entering Parliament after the 2024 general election found that two dozen had a background working for oil and gas giants, coal power station conglomerates, as well as other highly polluting clients.
The findings have sparked concerns that fossil fuel interests in Parliament may influence policy-making.
“I entered politics after working as an engineer in the renewables industry exactly because I could see we had the technology to make the transition to clean and green energy, but we were lacking the political will to make it happen,” said Green Party co-leader and Bristol Central MP Carla Denyer.
“Part of what stops this transition from occurring is the embedded influence of the fossil fuels industry in politics.”
Labour’s new Ossett and Denby Dale MP Jade Botterill started working at lobbying firm Portland after her parliamentary candidacy was announced in September 2023. Portland’s clients include oil major BP, French energy firm EDF, Heathrow Airport, and Chinese state-owned oil company CNOOC. Another Labour MP – Laura Kyrke-Smith – worked for Portland several years ago. She told DeSmog that she didn’t represent any oil firms while working for the company.
Portland told DeSmog that they “do not comment on client relationships”.
At least three new Labour MPs – Oliver Ryan, Mary Creagh, and Steve Race – previously worked for Lexington Communications, a lobbying firm that works for oil giant Phillips 66, the International Airlines Group (IAG), and Eren Holding, a firm that runs coal-fired power stations in Turkey.
New Conservative MP for Bromsgrove Bradley Thomas spent at least five years working for Phillips 66, latterly as a strategy lead, before becoming an independent consultant to the sector.
Almost a third of Labour’s new MPs have a background working in communications and lobbying, according to the Sunday Times, a similar share to the Conservatives. Due to the UK’s limited transparency rules around lobbying, it’s often impossible to know whether these individuals worked on behalf of oil and gas clients.
However, we do know that several other major lobbying and consultancy firms with fossil fuel links – in addition to Lexington and Portland – used to employ a number of new MPs. These include:
Teneo (clients include BHP, Centrica, and EnQuest)
Four Communications emphasised that its work for the Oman Oil Company ended in 2019, though the firm also has offices in the petrostates United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia.
In June 2024, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said that PR agencies had “aided and abetted” the fossil fuel industry, “acting as enablers to planetary destruction”. He called on these agencies to stop taking on new fossil fuel clients, and to set out plans to drop their existing ones.
“Fossil fuels are not only poisoning our planet – they’re toxic for your brand,” he said.
All the MPs named in this article were approached for comment.
Gas Lobbyists and Energy Consultants
Several new MPs have also worked for much smaller groups with links to the energy industry. This includes Labour’s new Cannock Chase MP Josh Newbury, who between 2019 and 2022 worked as senior parliamentary officer for the Energy and Utilities Alliance (EUA) – a trade group for the gas industry and fossil fuel boiler manufacturers.
DeSmog revealed in 2023 that the EUA, which is led by former Labour MP Mike Foster, was behind a barrage of negative press attacking heat pumps as a home heating source. Foster has repeatedly labelled pro-heat pump campaigners as a “green cult”.
New Liberal Democrat MP for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire Ian Sollom worked as the principal of StrategicFit, an energy sector strategic consultancy that has worked for the oil major ExxonMobil, and the Chinese state oil firm CNOOC.
Sollom told DeSmog that “as a scientist entering Parliament, I am committed to the phasing out of fossil fuels, and my previous career primarily focused on improving decision making and collaboration between energy companies, regulators and other stakeholders”.
Liberal Democrat MP for Cheltenham Max Wilkinson used to work for Camargue, which lobbied politicians in Westminster on behalf of the oil company Esso while he was employed by the firm.
A spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats stressed that Wilkinson did not work for any oil and gas clients.
Fossil fuel companies have extensive existing ties to Westminster politics. DeSmog revealed that, from the 2019 general election to the start of the 2024 election campaign, the Conservative Party received £8.4 million from oil and gas interests, climate science deniers, and polluting industries.
Meanwhile, a number of leading right-wing think tanks have received direct funding from the fossil fuel industry. Onward, which hosted the most government meetings of any think tank in 2023, receives funding from Shell and BP.
All the agencies named in this article were approached for comment.
