Questions over Tory peer’s support for nuclear company’s UK ambitions

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.