19 January 2012

The government is expected to announce its plans for a statutory register of lobbyists tomorrow (Friday 20 January). Ahead of publication of its consultation, Tamasin Cave of the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency said:

"The devil will be in the detail. We need a robust, compulsory register to reveal: who is lobbying whom, what they are lobbying about, and how much is being spent trying to influence our politicians. And it needs to be overseen by a body independent of the industry.

Anything less and we can assume that the government is putting the interests of its friends in the influence industry above public demands for full transparency.

David Cameron has voiced deep concerns about lobbying in the UK getting 'out of control'. The government must now tackle this £2billion industry and bring their activities into the open. Britain needs to catch up with other countries and allow real public scrutiny of lobbying with a robust register of lobbyists. Only then will we be able to fully understand the impact they have on the way this country is run."

The Alliance for Lobbying Transparency is calling for a robust statutory register, which would require lobbyists – whether companies or trade unions, lobbying agencies or law firms, and larger charities (above a minimum financial threshold) – to regularly declare on a public register:

• Names of individual lobbyists;
• The special interest lobbying (either the employer or agency clients);
• Public body being lobbied;
• Information on any public office held by lobbyists within 5 years (to reveal the 'revolving door')
• Area of policy they seek to influence, whether legislation, regulation or 
public contract;
• Amount of money spent on lobbying (good faith estimate). This will reveal scale, disparities and trends in lobbying.

Nicholas Jones

19 January, 2012 

Without the ability to use the Freedom of Information Act to probe the Metropolitan Police and the Crown Prosecution Service, the Labour MP Tom Watson doubts whether a House of Commons select committee would have made the progress it did in exposing the cover-up over the phone hacking scandal at the News of the World.

He fears that the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government is trying to find ways to restrict the scope of the Act – a move recommended by the former Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O’Donnell, and a view echoed by the former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair.

By using repeated Freedom of Information requests the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee forced the Metropolitan Police and the Director of Public Prosecutions to reveal the contents of their hospitality registers which contained details of social engagements with News International executives.

By using the Act, the committee gained the disclosure of information which otherwise would “still be hidden” and which was far more revealing than could have been obtained by parliamentary questions to ministers.

Nicholas Jones 9 January, 2012 

If the cursory level of questioning of the Sun’s editorial executives is to be any guide, David Cameron has little to fear from the Leveson Inquiry’s brief to make recommendations on the “future conduct of relations” between politicians, media proprietors and newspaper editors.

Dominic Mahon, editor of the Sun, who was among five executives who gave evidence (9.1.2012), faced only a superficial inquiry about Rupert Murdoch’s involvement in the Sun’s endorsement of the Conservatives at the 2010 general election.

Mahon was similarly not pressed to give any details of his four meetings with the Prime Minister in the twelve months since the general election; nor was there any probing of the Sun’s political campaigning on behalf of the government.  In August 2010 Cameron was given two-page spreads in the Sun to launch a hotline to expose “benefit scroungers” or another in October 2010 for the re-launch of the Prime Minister’s campaign on behalf of the “Big Society.”

Nicholas Jones 27 December, 2011

Having focussed initially on the grievances of celebrities and distressed relatives, the Leveson Inquiry into media ethics will start taking evidence in the New Year from newspaper proprietors and executives and the repercussions are likely to become increasingly uncomfortable for David Cameron.

Unanswered questions over the extent to which the Prime Minister was aware of illegal phone hacking at the News of the World are also bound to return to the political agenda if the Metropolitan Police decides to lay charges against the paper’s ex-editor Andy Coulson or any of the other seventeen former employees of News International who have been arrested and are currently on bail.

Because the opening stages of the inquiry concentred on the experiences of those who had suffered at the hands of media intrusion – and the ongoing unresolved dispute among journalists over who-knew-what about the extent of phone hacking – Cameron has been largely insulated from any further damaging fall-out from his decision to hire Coulson in May 2007 as the Conservatives’ media strategist, and then take him into Downing Street as the government’s director of communications after the 2010 general election.

Nicholas Jones 21 December, 2011

After another a week which began with the Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne trailing his own Parliamentary announcements – this time on the future of the banking industry – a Conservative MP close to the Prime Minister has defended the practice of government by leaking.

Nick Boles, a founder member of the Notting Hill Set of Conservative activists who backed David Cameron’s bid for the Tory leadership, has told fellow MPs that the “public’s right to know” was more important than giving the House of Commons “a monopoly on first communication of the government’s decisions.”

He readily acknowledged – and defended – the fact that modern government had become “a leaky sieve”.  But it was, for example, because George Osborne’s proposals in the autumn statement had been trailed so effectively in advance, that the public’s “awareness and understanding” of the difficulties of the current economic situation was “far higher” than if nothing had been released in advance.

 Nicholas Jones, 11 December, 2011

“Gullibility” is the word which Chime Communication’s chairman Lord (Tim) Bell is reported to have implied when trying to explain away the ineptitude of senior members of his staff in allowing themselves to get caught in a newspaper sting.

Bell has condemned what he considered was an “unethical, underhand deception” by undercover reporters from the  Independent’s Bureau of Investigative Journalism in tricking Tim Collins, managing director of Bell Pottinger Public Affairs, into believing they were agents for the government of Uzbekistan.

Collins and two senior colleagues were caught on camera “boasting” how top lobbyists could “influence the Prime Minister. (Independent, 6.12.2011)

But Collins is no stranger to the black arts of journalism: he was the Conservative Party’s spin doctor who briefed political correspondents in advance of on John Major’s “Back to Basics” speech at the 1993 Tory conference – a briefing which backfired because of Collins’ guidance that Major was intent on rolling back the permissive society.

8 December 2011

Following this week's revelations about lobbying, the Independent reports today that "the trade body which represents the UK's public relations and lobbying industry is to investigate Bell Pottinger over claims made by executives during a business pitch to undercover reporters".

A rival lobbyist, Mark 'stand up for lobbying' Adams, has made the complaint to the Public Relations Consultants Association (PRCA), one of three trade bodies running the lobbying industry's system of self-regulation. 

Adams states: "I am a strong proponent of self-regulation for the lobbying industry...Ideally Bell Pottinger will clear their name and demonstrate they have done nothing wrong. But if they have behaved in an unethical manner, then the appropriate sanctions should be taken against them."

The toughest sanction available to the PRCA is that they terminate Bell Pottinger's membership. That's it. And you thought the Press Complaints Commission lacked teeth.

8 December 2011

As demonstrators shut down Washington's K Street, the historic home of the US lobbying industry, new research from the US shows how corporations are paying more for lobbyists than they are in taxes. The report by Public Campaign finds, for example, that General Electric — one of the top 10 most profitable companies in the world — got a net tax rebate of $4.7 billion between 2008 and 2010. Meanwhile, it spent $84 million lobbying Washington. 

At the moment, we have no comparable figures for companies in the UK. Unlike their US colleagues, lobbyists in Britain aren't forced to make public who they are lobbying in government, which areas of policy they are seeking to influence, and crucially, how much money they are spending in the process.

People aren't yet protesting outside the London offices of the UK's major lobbying firms, but public demands for the Coalition government to finally introduce its proposed compulsory register of lobbyists are getting much louder.

Tamasin Cave, 6 December 2011

Claims of influence and access by lobbying firm Bell Pottinger have been met by an astonishing denial from Downing Street, the prime minister's official spokesman telling reporters today:

“It simply isn't true to say that Bell Pottinger or any other lobbying company has influenced government policy... I am challenging this idea that this company or any other lobbying company have influenced policy.”

It’s in the interests of lobbyists to advertise their influence on politicians, and in politicians’ interest to deny it. But is there any truth in the government’s claim; should lobbying firms just shut up shop and go home?

Leaving aside the too-many-to-mention UK government policies covered in the fingerprints of lobbyists, and the obvious truth that companies wouldn't pay for lobbying if it didn't work, there are a number of studies that explain why companies invest in lobbying. (Most are from the US, which says a lot about the transparency they have in lobbying stateside, and how little knowledge we have of our industry here, clothed as it is in secrecy).

• American corporations currently spend about $3.5 billion/year on lobbying.  It has been estimated by the right-wing Cato Institute that the value of the resulting corporate welfare is about $90 billion/year.

• A recent study shows that the rate of return for money spent on lobbying for corporate tax benefits alone is between 6 and 21 times.

• Another study demonstrates that firms which lobby ‘significantly outperform non-lobbying firms with respect to increased market value of equity'.  This can be as high as adding another 2% per year to returns.    

• Related to this, the Economist reports that an index based on the amount of lobbying that American firms do has outperformed the broader market since its creation in 2008. “The results have been stunning,” reports the Economist, “comparable to the returns of the most blistering hedge fund".

• According to a study on the connections between lobbyists and politicians in the US, it’s been found that the most 'politically connected' lobbyists, those with the closest relationships to senators, suffered a 24% fall in revenues when 'their' senator left office. The value of direct access to influential Cabinet ministers has been estimated at £112,000.

Tamasin Cave, 6 December 2011

Wow! This is reminiscent of the old Tory days of sleaze. A Conservative government at the heart of yet another lobbying scandal. Last month’s led to the resignation of the defence secretary. This one leads to the Prime Minister himself.
 
One of the lobbyists caught by today’s investigation by the Independent / Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Tim Collins, is the chief lobbyist at Bell Pottinger Public Affairs. He is caught on camera boasting of his contacts:
 
“I was in the Conservative research department with David Cameron and George Osborne… I was in the Shadow Cabinet under two or three leaders, again with David Cameron and George Osborne… I've been working with people like Steve Hilton, David Cameron, George Osborne, for 20 years-plus. Edward Llewellyn, who's the Prime Minister's chief of staff, was my deputy in Central Office for a long time. Steve Hilton was my deputy in a different capacity. I know all these people. There is not a problem in getting the messages through to them.”

We all know how it works now.