Lobbying transparency: a powerful idea PDF Print E-mail
Tamasin Cave 11 November 2009

Politicians' appetite for political reform may have waned since the summer but the public’s hasn’t. The people behind the Power Inquiry have seized the baton again – and are giving the rest of us the opportunity to tell the government how things need to change. They want our ideas for democratic and political reform for their campaign.

One reform that has a realistic chance of becoming a reality is a compulsory register of lobbyists. Inexpensive and easy to introduce, it would open up overnight the world of influence to public scrutiny. In Parliament, it's backed by the Lib Dems, an influential committee of MPs, and 200 backbenchers.

This is how it would work: all lobbyists – those people paid to influence government decision-making, mainly employed by businesses – would have to declare on a public register who they are, who they are working for, and which areas of public life they are seeking to influence. The cherry on the top would be for them to also declare how much they are being paid to do this work (that way we’d know how important the issue is to them).

For the first time we’d see the extent to which the financial sector is trying to fight off proposed regulation; which private healthcare companies are targeting the NHS; how much defence companies are spending on influencing the MOD’s decisions on procurement. The list is endless. Currently we've no right to know what these lobbyists are up to.

If a register of lobbyists is something you’d like to see, tell the people at Power2010 (deadline is 30 November). If its makes it into their campaign, there’s a chance it could end up being policy.
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