British MP: I Was Misled About Five Eyes UFO Consultations
British Member of Parliament Clive Lewis says the Ministry of Defence misled him when it claimed that the United Kingdom does not cooperate with its Five Eyes allies on UAP phenomena. Behind the dispute, reported on August 29, 2026, lies a trail of documents gathered over several years, some of them contradictory.
Clive Lewis, the Labour MP for Norwich South and a former shadow defense secretary, said in a conversation that he had been "definitely misled" when the Ministry of Defence (MOD) claimed that the United Kingdom does not take part in joint UAP consultations with its Five Eyes allies. The statement comes from a conversation between Lewis and Peter Skafish, head of the Sol Foundation, an American UAP research institute, which Liberation Times reported on August 29. According to Lewis, members of the alliance have publicly acknowledged that they cooperate on the subject, which contradicts the ministry's answers.
The dispute stems from written parliamentary questions Lewis submitted in July and August 2025. They were answered at the time by Luke Pollard, then Minister for the Armed Forces: according to him, the ministry has not conducted or commissioned any UAP studies since 2013, and in 2009 it stopped investigating sightings after finding not a single military threat among more than fifty years of reports. On international cooperation, Pollard stated only that the ministry has not participated in any international working group specifically focused on UAP since May 2023. When Lewis asked whether cooperation within the Five Eyes UAP Caucus was continuing, Veterans Minister Louise Sandher-Jones did not answer yes or no, but referred back to Pollard's earlier statement.
Meanwhile, a trail of documents built up over several years points in a different direction. In August 2020 the Pentagon established the UAPTF, a Navy-led task force that was later replaced by the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO). In June 2025, John Greenewald, who runs the website The Black Vault, published U.S. Navy emails showing that an introductory meeting between the UAPTF and Five Eyes representatives was being organized in late 2021. According to New Zealand correspondence provided to Liberation Times by Australian UFO researcher Grant Lavac, British officers Owen Rimmer and Annabelle Janes were to take part, alongside representatives from Australia, Canada and New Zealand, in the event planned for November 30, 2021, and then for December 8. The correspondence shows that the meeting was postponed, but there is no evidence that it actually took place in 2021.
What we know and what we don't
In any case, there was a Five Eyes meeting in 2022: Pentagon spokesperson Susan Gough confirmed this in an email dated June 2025, adding that it was held by AARO, not the UAPTF. The Pentagon did not disclose which countries attended, and did not answer Lavac's repeated questions about whether this was the meeting postponed from 2021. According to an official Pentagon agenda, however, the first Five Eyes UAP Caucus Working Group was held on May 24, 2023, with the United Kingdom listed among the participants alongside Australia, Canada and New Zealand. The ministry's Defence Intelligence Secretariat later confirmed that two British officials attended the meeting, which is also recorded in an Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) decision. In June 2024, Gough told Liberation Times that AARO continues to consult with its Five Eyes partners on UAP matters, but did not say whether every country took part in every later discussion. After the names of Rimmer and Janes became public, the ministry, in its response of July 31, 2025, citing national security and international relations, refused to confirm or deny whether it holds UAP correspondence related to them.
The documents do not directly contradict Pollard's statement, which specifically concerned participation after May 2023, and the Pentagon's 2024 statement does not prove that Britain was present at every subsequent consultation either. What can be established as fact, however, is that British officials took part in the consultations both before and during the May 2023 meeting, that AARO described the exchanges with Five Eyes partners as ongoing, and that the ministry has to this day not stated clearly whether Britain's involvement continues. A similar contradiction has also surfaced in Australia: on July 19, 2023, the defense department categorically denied having attended the May meeting, then on December 15 it reversed this, acknowledging that a representative of the Australian Embassy in Washington had not only been present but had also presented at the meeting.
Lewis's move is also unusual because in the British legislature the UFO topic has so far surfaced mainly in the House of Lords, in a 1979 debate and in Lord Sarfraz's 2021 intervention; few elected MPs have engaged with it in such depth. Exactly what the Five Eyes partners share with one another on UAP, and to what extent Britain is currently involved, remains an open question in the House of Commons for now. Source materials: image transcript document
The sober take
In their own analysis, the authors of the Liberation Times article stress that the documents that have come to light do not directly contradict Pollard's answer, because it specifically concerned participation after May 2023; the ministry has not officially stated whether the earlier consultations of 2021–2023 continued. This is therefore the publication's own interpretation, not an official position of the MOD.