A leading MP has slammed the government for misleading parliament and failing to disclose controversial meetings between diplomats and oil industry bosses.

At the request of this website, Green MP Siân Berry used a formal question to ask the minister for details of meetings between embassy staff in seven oil rich countries, and Shell and BP employees. In his response, foreign office minister Stephen Doughty didn’t provide any such details, claiming that “Information on specific meetings is not held centrally”. However, Freedom of Information requests disclosed to this website shortly before Mr Doughty’s answer was given showed that the department did, in fact, hold at least some of this information, and subsequent disclosures have revealed more of it, as documented in an investigation published this week.

Siân Berry criticised the minister for fobbing her off, saying: “It is appalling that the Foreign Office has concealed these meetings from MPs. 

“Hiding these meetings is more evidence that the Government’s priorities continue to align with the wealthy fossil fuel giants directly responsible for accelerating climate change, and not with protecting the people who will suffer from its impact and the harm to the environment and nature.” 

“Instead of suppressing climate national security reports, and helping the likes of Shell and BP expand their dirty oil schemes, I urge this Labour Government to show a shred of leadership and stand up against these polluting vested interests. The cost of inaction is too great.” 

In our investigation, published on Monday after more than a year of wrestling documents from the Foreign Office through the Freedom of Information Act, we revealed that British diplomats around the world have worked hard to help Shell and BP open up new oil and gas fields, despite the moratorium on drilling new oil and gas fields in the North Sea. 

Findings included the fact that British diplomats in Indonesia met with BP staff 16 times in the two years to May 2026 to discuss the oil giant’s (ultimately successful) bid for controversial contracts to open up new Liquified Natural Gas fields in West Papua, the heart of the world’s third biggest rainforest. We also revealed that:

  • British Embassy staff in Caracas met with Shell six times in the year before the US-led coup in Venezuela opened the path for the oil giant to take on vast oil and gas drilling contracts;
  • British embassy staff in the African country of Mauritania have met with BP more than 40 times in recent years, as BP bid - ultimately successfully - for the right to drill a vast new gas field in the seas off the country; 
  • In February 2026, as BP sought rights to open up a new gas field in Uzbekistan, the company’s Azerbaijani vice president for the Caspian region was appointed an honourary OBE at the British embassy in Baku.  
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In the UK, much of foreign policy is shaped by powers the government has inherited from the King, rather than those they have been allocated by MPs. As a result, the Foreign Office is significantly less accountable to MPs than its equivalents in other democracies, leaving big business and lobbyists freer to shape the agenda. 

Had Mr Doughty’s answer been true - that the foreign office doesn’t know who embassy staff around the world meet with - this would imply there isn’t even proper ministerial oversight of what our ambassadors are up to. In practice, it seems like it wasn’t really true - the department simply couldn’t be bothered with parliamentary scrutiny. 

It’s not clear whether Mr Doughty knowingly misled parliament with his answer, or whether - as seems more likely - he himself was misled by civil servants. However, the Ministerial Code states that “ministers who knowingly mislead Parliament will be expected to offer their resignation to the Prime Minister.”

Responding to the wider findings of the investigation, the writer Anthony Barnett said: “the British empire became a petro-empire. It’s important to think of it as a modernising force - it pioneered aerial bombing. Behind the gentlemanly façade, there was a serious, hard edged, modern culture. This is a shadow of that empire.”

The foreign office didn’t respond to questions about whether its minister misled parliament.