Theresa Villiers: Tory MP failed to declare £70,000 in Shell shares while she was environment secretary

The Conservatives' former environment secretary has announced that she failed to declare her tens of thousands of pounds of shares in fossil fuel giant Shell - while she still held the UK's environmental reins.

Theresa Villiers, who remains the MP for London's Chipping Barnet, only updated her register of interests last month - which revealed shareholdings worth more than £70,000 she had held since early 2018, including in oil company Shell, the Daily Mirror reported.

Villiers was the Tory secretary of state for the environment from July 2019 to February 2020, heading up DEFRA. MPs are supposed to declare shareholdings over the value of £70,000.

In a statement sent to NationalWorld, a spokesperson for Villiers said that she "deeply regrets her failure" to monitor the value of her shares. "These shares are part of portfolio which is professionally managed for Ms Villiers and for which she has never taken day-to-day investment decisions."

“It did not occur to her that any single shareholding would reach the threshold for declaration, but a legacy received in 2018 caused that to happen," they added. "As soon as she realised this, she alerted the Registrar of Members Interests and the Standards Commissioner. She takes full responsibility for the mistake."

The spokesperson said she accepted that it should never have happened, and she would endeavour to make sure it never happened again. "Nothing she has ever said or done as MP has been influenced by these shareholdings," they stressed.

They also said Villiers was not in breach of ministerial code. “When she was appointed as Secretary of State, Ms Villiers disclosed to Defra that she had a portfolio of shares which was professionally managed for her and over which she did not take investment decisions. She offered to place this in a blind trust.

"The Prime Minister’s ethics adviser said that this step was unnecessary because the portfolio was managed for her and she did not take investment decisions. So Ministerial Code requirements were complied with. Nothing she did as Defra Secretary was influenced by any of these shareholdings."

Her revelation has sparked anger from climate activists. Areeba Hamid, co-executive director of Greenpeace UK, said an environment secretary profiting directly from the fossil fuel industry was "a sign of how close the Conservative Party is with this planet-wrecking industry".

"Is it any surprise they're shutting the door to civil society while dishing out new oil and gas licences? Faced with images of horrifying wildfires and flooding, it's not what voters want or deserve," she added.

"We need a government that will stand up to vested interests and tackle the climate crisis head on, not continue to add fuel to the fire and stoke oil and gas companies' profits."

Fossil fuel investment has been in the public eye recently, with current environment secretary Thérèse Coffey last week ordering her Defra staff to cut ties with Greenpeace, after protesters from the group scaled Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's house and draped it in "oil-black fabric", in protest of his plans to grant new oil and gas licences during the climate crisis.

It came shortly after Sunak announced he planned to grant 100 controversial new oil and gas exploration licences in the North Sea. Several months earlier, his family firm had signed a billion-dollar deal with another fossil fuel giant, BP.