A Conservative peer faces questions over her long-running support for a Canadian nuclear technology company hoping to develop the next generation of power stations in the UK.
Olivia Bloomfield has acted in support of the company, Terrestrial Energy, since 2018, including in advisory roles for which she received share options.
She organised for top executives of the company to meet ministers on two occasions in 2018. Later, while a whip in Boris Johnson’s government, she helped recruit two fellow peers to the company’s advisory board.
Once Lady Bloomfield had stepped down from government, she was given share options, which could prove highly valuable later this year when Terrestrial Energy launches its shares publicly for the first time on an American stock exchange, with an estimated value of $1bn (£770m).
Jonathan Rose, a political integrity expert at De Montfort University, said there were questions “about whether she has always acted with openness and accountability”.
He said the meetings in 2018 with ministers and Bloomfield’s appointment as an adviser shortly afterwards, for which she received share options, raised “serious questions” about whether she had broken the House of Lords rules, which he said the Lords commissioners for standards “should investigate as a matter of urgency”.
Bloomfield said she had been “scrupulous” in her declarations and “strongly” maintained she did not breach the code of conduct.
‘Ambushed’
Bloomfield, now a Conservative whip and shadow Welsh minister, joined the Lords in 2016 after being nominated by David Cameron when he quit Downing Street. She ran Tory fundraising from 2006 to 2010.
In the House of Lords, Bloomfield developed an interest in nuclear energy and took up a fellowship that provided her with knowledge of and access to the industry.
Her support for Terrestrial Energy appears to have begun around April 2018, when she met the then junior business minister Richard Harrington with executives from the company, including its CEO, Simon Irish, according to official documents gained through freedom of information legislation. The meeting was organised after Bloomfield contacted Harrington. She noted that she had “no commercial interest” with Terrestrial Energy at that time.
Beforehand, Whitehall officials said they had been “ambushed” by Bloomfield to hold a meeting. They wrote in an email to the business minister that she “strongly represents the views” of the company and that it was “apparent from previous correspondence” she would be “lobbying [for] the best interests of Terrestrial Energy”.
They noted that Bloomfield had already introduced the company to officials working with Alun Cairns, the then minister responsible for Wales.
Officials’ notes of the meeting with Harrington said Terrestrial Energy had pushed for government grants to be given to companies developing reactors.
Two months later, on 5 June 2018, Bloomfield and another Terrestrial Energy executive met Stuart Andrew, a junior minister in the Wales Office. An official’s notes show they pressed for Terrestrial Energy’s reactors to be developed in Wales.
Bloomfield had helped to secure the meeting with Andrew and sent the Wales Office documents drawn up by Terrestrial Energy to promote its case.
Later the same month, she was appointed an adviser to the company. On 21 June, Terrestrial Energy awarded her share options, a right to buy shares in the company at a fixed price after a set period of time.
She told the Guardian that she took the options for the role instead of a fee because Terrestrial Energy had yet to make a profit.
Members of the House of Lords are not permitted to provide parliamentary services in return for payment.
Bloomfield said she had “no financial involvement or interest in Terrestrial Energy” when she organised either of the meetings and there was therefore no breach of the House of Lords’ rules.
At issue is whether she had started discussing a commercial role with Terrestrial Energy when she attended the meeting with the Welsh minister on 5 June. When asked, Terrestrial Energy and Bloomfield both declined to answer this question.
She described the April meeting with Harrington as purely “educational” about next-generation nuclear technologies, but declined to provide any details of her meeting in June.
Rose said: “I think there are serious questions to answer about whether at the time of the June meeting she had agreed to accept a payment or incentive in the form of the share options – particularly given how quickly they were granted after.”
‘Grant/financing opportunities’
In late July 2019, Bloomfield was appointed to Johnson’s government as a Lords whip. Her duties included speaking in debates on behalf of a few departments if their minister was unavailable, including for the energy department.
She said she relinquished the share options and her role in Terrestrial Energy on her appointment. However, she continued to support the company while a minister.
Until February 2020, one of Bloomfield’s frontbench colleagues in the Lords was Ian Duncan, a climate minister in the energy department.
She said that when she stood down from the advisory board she “replaced” herself with Lord Duncan and another peer, John Browne, the former BP chief executive. Duncan’s appointment began in October 2020. Browne did not start his role until February 2023.
In April 2021, Anne-Marie Trevelyan, an energy minister at the time, held a meeting with Irish. Trevelyan met the Terrestrial Energy chief executive “on the recommendation” of Bloomfield, according to an email from an official in Trevelyan’s private ministerial office.
A readout of the meeting days later shows Irish asked if the government would consider “grant/financing opportunities” and adapt the scope of a government-funded programme on nuclear fuel development. Trevelyan, the readout says, expressed interest in his proposal.
Bloomfield said it was “unlikely” she would have only recommended Trevelyan meet Terrestrial Energy. Trevelyan did hold other meetings with nuclear companies, including with companies that are partners of Terrestrial Energy, but Bloomfield declined to give any further details on other recommendations she may have given.
In April 2022, Bloomfield attended a meeting of the all-party parliamentary group on small modular reactors, which was hearing a presentation from Terrestrial Energy. Bloomfield declared she was formerly on the company’s advisory board. She cited having previously introduced Terrestrial to a minister in 2018, “when there was a very firmly closed door!”, according to minutes of the meeting.
‘Deeply concerning’
Bloomfield returned to the company in August 2023, less than three months after leaving government, and was awarded fresh share options as remuneration for a role as an “ad hoc consultant responsible for future fundraising and headhunting suitable individuals to join the firm”.
Susan Hawley, a campaigner and director of Spotlight on Corruption, said: “That she went on to be rehired by the company having played such an apparently useful role to the company as a minister is deeply concerning and suggests that further investigation is in order.”
Bloomfield said she went through “all the proper channels”. She added that she had received approval from the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (Acoba), which regulates jobs taken up by former ministers.
Bloomfield said to the Acoba committee she had had no official contact with Terrestrial Energy while a whip. She does not appear to have told the committee about her attendance at the all-party parliamentary group meeting in April 2022 or about her role in hiring two peers to the company’s advisory board, while she was a minister.
A spokesperson for Terrestrial Energy said: “We trust and require that our employees and advisers always operate in line with all relevant laws, ethics policies, regulations and codes of conduct that apply. We would take any breaches of those rules by our representatives very seriously.”
They added they were aware of the Lords code of conduct and had been assured by Bloomfield that she had “only ever acted for us in accordance with that code”.
From the backbenches, at times declaring her role as an adviser to Terrestrial Energy, Bloomfield has continued to speak in the Lords on the merits of advanced modular reactors, a version of which the company is developing.
