Theresa Villiers: Ex-environment secretary failed to declare Shell shares
www.bbc.co.uk
Theresa Villiers apologises for not declaring a stake in the oil firm worth at least £70,000 before.
  • @C4d@lemmy.worldEnglish
    21•1 year ago

    It’s all very Yes Minister. I can hear Sir Humphrey and Bernard treating it as an irregular verb now:

    “I’ve made an oversight, you have a conflict of interest, they are guilty of insider trading”

    • @Syldon@feddit.ukEnglish
      14•1 year ago

      She is the scapegoat. Sunak’s family gained £1b from oil companies when he issued the 100 licenses recently. This just shows they are all grifting. Some are getting more than others though.

      • @C4d@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2•1 year ago

        The oil thing is particularly intriguing. If I recall correctly the costs involved in exploration work can be used to mitigate against the windfall tax (I’m not sure though - someone please check).

        • @Syldon@feddit.ukEnglish
          8•1 year ago

          The BBCs take on the windfall tax. Inews did this article. Archive link. These are all well and good and explain the Tory spin on the windfall tax system. The reality is vastly different. Shell has paid no tax at all either windfall or standardised.

          Weforum dug up the figures. The government introduced cop out clauses and believe it or not large companies are taking advantage of just that. Sunak’s family benefit massively from oil profits, just as a matter of interest.

  • AutoTL;DRBEnglish
    4•1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    A former environment secretary has revealed she failed to declare tens of thousands of pounds of shares she held in oil giant Shell while in the role.

    Ms Villiers, MP for the London seat of Chipping Barnet, alerted the Commons authorities “as soon as she realised this”, the spokesman said.

    This was more than a year before she was appointed to the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) under Boris Johnson in July 2019, a role she held until February 2020.

    On 2 August, she registered a fifth stake over the amount in Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust, with records showing she held it between 6 and 20 July this year.

    When Ms Villiers joined Defra, she told the department about her shares and offered to put them in a “blind” trust, where she would not have known how the money was invested, the spokesman said.

    Asked about the omission on Sky News, Chief Secretary to the Treasury John Glen described it as an “oversight on her part” and insisted the former minister has been “very clear” in apologising.

    I’m a bot and I’m open source!