Labour ministers met fossil fuel lobbyists 500 times in first year of power, analysis shows
Government ministers met representatives from the fossil fuel industry more than 500 times during their first year in power – equivalent to twice every working day, according to research.The analysis found that fossil fuel lobbyists were present at 48% more ministerial meetings during Labour’s first year in power than under the Conservatives in 2023.The government defended the meetings, saying ministers held meetings with a wide range of representatives from “the energy industry, unions and civil society to drive forward our clean energy superpower mission”.The findings have raised concern among critics about the extent of the fossil fuel industry’s influence over government at a time when ministers are trying to lower bills and transition to a more sustainable energy system.A report from the International Energy Agency in 2023 found that fossil fuel companies still had “minimal” engagement with the global clean energy transition, contributing just 1% of clean energy investment globally.
Carys Boughton, of Fossil Free Parliament, which carried out the research, said fossil fuel corporations were being given a “backstage pass to government”.“These lobbyists should have no place in ministerial meetings about the energy transition, taxing profits or cutting our bills – it’s in their interest to sabotage these talks.”The analysis, which is based on the government’s published record of ministerial meetings, found:Ministers at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) met fossil fuel lobbyists 274 times, with industry figures present at almost a quarter of meetings.During the same period DESNZ ministers met trade union representatives 61 times.Ed Miliband, the secretary for energy and climate change, met fossil fuel lobbyists 91 times – with a third of all his meetings attended by industry figures.
Three fossil fuel companies: BP, Shell and Equinor, met ministers 100 times between them.Fossil fuel lobbyists attended almost every government meeting about the energy profits levy, a temporary windfall tax on the “extraordinary profits” of North Sea oil and gas companies.Carla Denyer, the Green party MP for Bristol Central, said: “Instead of listening to scientists, communities affected by flooding, or parents desperate to secure a safe future for their children and grandchildren, this government is prioritising lobbyists and profits for oil and gas giants.These revelations must mark a turn away from the grubby politics of fossil fuel lobbying.”Sign up to Down to EarthThe planet's most important stories.
Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essentialafter newsletter promotionThe government insisted the findings were “misleading”, saying many of the firms listed also had clean energy investments and that these were often the focus of the discussions,A spokesperson added: “Our priority is a fair, orderly and prosperous transition in the North Sea in line with our climate and legal obligations, and we are working with the sector to protect current and future generations of good jobs,We need to replace our dependency on unstable fossil fuel markets with clean, homegrown power controlled in Britain, to protect bill payers, drive growth and boost our energy security,”Several major fossil fuel corporations have been criticised for cutting their green investments in recent years amid a global pushback against climate action galvanised by the election of US president Donald Trump,Katrina McDonnell, a campaigns manager at the Good Law Project, said: “Keir Starmer promised a government of service, but that doesn’t mean bowing the knee to corporations making money out of climate catastrophe.
It’s time for Starmer to stop cosying up to polluters and put people first.”This article was amended on 16 October 2025.Owing to an error in supplied information, an earlier version said Ed Miliband met fossil fuel lobbyists 250 times during Labour’s first year in power; this should have said 91 meetings.
French woman in mother of all trademark battles with DC Comics over parenting app Wondermum
A French woman is involved in the mother of all battles with DC Comics for naming her family advice app Wondermum.Lise Sobéron received a letter from the superhero comic book company’s French lawyers on 1 April this year demanding she stop using the name because of its alleged similarity to Wonder Woman.“When I got the letter, I rang my close friends and said: ‘Very funny, guys,’ thinking it was an April fool,” she said. “Then I contacted the lawyers’ office and realised it was no joke. They told me DC Comics objected to the name Wondermum
Louder than Bombs: Joachim Trier’s thorniest film might be his best
Long before Joachim Trier made the Oscar-winning The Worst Person in the World and this year’s festival megahit Sentimental Value, there was 2015’s Louder than Bombs: a far stranger, slipperier film worth watching for Isabelle Huppert’s spectral turn alone. She plays a character also called Isabelle, a renowned war photographer whose secrets haunt her family three years after her sudden death.Her teenage son Conrad (Devin Druid) still daydreams in class about the car crash that claimed her life, imagining her final, panicked moments. His brother Jonah (Jesse Eisenberg) and father Gene (Gabriel Byrne) know (and conceal) the truth: that her fateful, split-second swerve was an act of suicide.The film’s cacophony of grief and anxious romance erupt within upstate New York, 6,000km away from the Nordic, millennial anomie of Joachim’s informal Oslo trilogy
Creative Australia awards Khaled Sabsabi $100,000 grant months after dumping from Venice Biennale
Creative Australia has awarded a $100,000 grant to artist Khaled Sabsabi, months after he was controversially dumped and then reinstated by the federal arts body as Australia’s representative for the 2026 Venice Biennale.The grant – one of 16 made under Creative Australia’s Visual Arts, Craft and Design Framework – will fund the creation of a new body of work for a solo exhibition opening in March 2027 at Adelaide’s Samstag Museum of Art, which will also include Sabsabi’s Venice Biennale work.In August, Sabsabi was also awarded a grant by Create NSW for a major new work in western Sydney.The two commissions represent a silver lining in a tumultuous year for Sabsabi, a Lebanese-Australian artist from western Sydney. In February, he and curator Michael Dagostino were announced as Australia’s representatives for the prestigious Venice Biennale; less than a week later they were sacked, after criticism by the Australian and the then shadow arts minister, Claire Chandler, over Sabsabi’s use of imagery in previous artworks of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah
‘The vocals were on another level’: how Counting Crows made Mr Jones
Our first four records had been mostly made in houses in the hills above Los Angeles. August and Everything After was our first major label album, so it was a pretty big deal. Our advance was $3,000 each; I bought a 1971 cherry red VW Karmann Ghia convertible and drove it to LA.I would get up every morning and listen to Pickin’ Up the Pieces by Poco, which is like the Beatles doing country music. I also had this Benny Goodman album that I was listening to a lot – my dad had picked it up as a free giveaway at a Texaco station when I was a kid
‘A palette unlike anything in the west’: Ben Okri, Yinka Shonibare and more on how Nigerian art revived Britain’s cultural landscape
To mark a new exhibition at Tate Modern, leading British-Nigerian cultural figures trace the impact of their heritage on their work, and consider its growing influence on the world stageSome primal energy was unleashed among Nigerian artists in the years leading up to independence. The century-long reign of colonialism was nearing its end and the people of Nigeria, with its over 300 tribes, its ebullient energy, were poised for a new future in which they would determine the shape and context of their lives.And the people who most articulated that double position, that paradox of modernity and tradition, were artists in all their stripes. Artists across the country, in constant dialogue with one another, created works that evoked their traditions but in a contemporary context. Artists such as Yusuf Grillo in the north, Bruce Onobrakpeya from the midwest, Ben Enwonwu from the east and Twins Seven Seven from the west were remaking the dream of art in a rigorously Nigerian context
Perfume Genius: ‘I really like body hair! I like a bush. I didn’t even notice Jimmy Fallon censored mine’
The singer on looking like Amelia Earhart, the time he set his mother’s house on fire and his beef with the Octopus Teacher guyEveryone was talking about your pubic hair after it was censored on The Tonight Show. Should we all be showing more or less bush?More! I really like body hair. I like a bush. I like the whole deal. I’m sure if I didn’t have a bush, they wouldn’t have censored it
‘When I was a child, everyone used it’: woman blames Johnson & Johnson talc for her cancer
Cost of taking over British Steel rises to £235m, government says
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An unexpected unemployment rate rise puts the RBA odds-on to cut the cash rate – but it’s a headache for Jim Chalmers
Adani denies claims it sold ‘below-market coal’ leading to Queensland missing out on hundreds of millions in royalties