Members of the Scottish parliament are calling for an inquiry into North Sea safety regulators, alleging they have failed to properly monitor the operations of Shell.

The move comes ahead of a report being published by Aberdeen’s sheriff court into an accident on Shell’s Brent Bravo platform in 2003 when two men died.

It follows revelations in this newspaper that a senior Shell consultant, Bill Campbell, told the oil company as far back as 1999 that employees had been falsifying maintenance documents relating to North Sea platforms. Shell rejects the allegations of tampering with paperwork.