25 January 2008 

The second session of the Public Administration Select Committee Inquiry into Lobbying saw three members of the new Alliance for Lobbying Transparency underline the urgent need to reform the rules governing lobbyists.

Giving evidence were Prof. David Miller and Dr William Dinan of Spinwatch and the University of Strathclyde, and Peter Facey, director of Unlock Democracy.

“This inquiry is part of a wider discussion about the disconnection from politics and the political process,” said Peter Facey opening the session. “What’s particularly worrying,” he said, “is the public perception that in politics powerful interest groups have a great deal more influence than ordinary voters.”

24 January, 2008 

A major new campaign aiming to open up the opaque world of lobbying launches today.

The latest abuse by lobbyists concerns an obesity charity financed by the weight loss industry, which misled MPs over its funding - uncovered just days before the Government is due to launch its obesity strategy.

ALT, the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency , a coalition of civil society groups, is calling on the Government to introduce rules that require the disclosure of lobbying activities, allowing greater public scrutiny and improving the accountability of Parliament.

Members of ALT have been called to give evidence today to the Public Administration Select Committee Inquiry into lobbying. David Miller and William Dinan from Spinwatch will argue that industry self-regulation is incapable of providing adequate transparency in lobbying and is unlikely to command widespread public confidence.

They will draw the Committee’s attention to recent examples of lobbying malpractice, including the charity TOAST (The Obesity Awareness & Solutions Trust) , a lobbying group funded by the weight loss industry, which misled MP’s over its sources of funding.

The Center for Public Integrity (CPI) has produced a very valuable resource that details every untrue statement made by the US administration in the build up to the invasion of Iraq.

Under the title "Iraq: The War Card - Orchestrated Deception on the Path to War" they have made available a searchable database, of 380 000 words, containing all the statements leading to war that can now be seen to be palpably lies.  It is a resource detailing propaganda on a grand scale. As the administration has largely avoided detailed scrutiny of this effort the CPI are surely right to claim that " this project provides a heretofore unavailable framework for examining how the U.S. war in Iraq came to pass."

The database is available on the CPI website. 

Just over two years ago, I gave a talk on climate skeptics and included in passing the fact that the organization, the Science Media Centre, networked with known skeptics, including those from the LM crowd.

In the audience at the Royal Society of Chemistry event was science writer, Vivienne Parry, who is on the board of the SMC. Parry asked me to justify my comments and said, in an email “if you have any material which you think demonstrates bias, political/corporate pressure or whatever in relation to the SMC - send it to me, and we will discuss it at the next SMC board meeting.”

I sent the SMC a dossier of material on various aspects including the issue of bias, especially in relation to its work on climate and genetic engineering. My concerns were dismissed by the SMC’s board. In an email Alan Winter Chairman of the SMC board wrote “Whilst we note your concerns, we are reassured by the overwhelmingly positive feedback we have had about the Director and her team from the hundreds of leading scientists, press officers and journalists who make regular use of the Centre.”

Sadly for the SMC the ugly head of bias has surfaced again, but this time on nuclear power. Earlier this month, the British government gave the go ahead to a new generation of nuclear power plants. In response the SMC issued a press release, entitled “Major energy and engineering institutions support new nuclear build”. This was picked up by the Nuclear Industry Association which ran the same headline on its website.

 10 January 2008

As the British Government announces the go-ahead for a new generation of nuclear power plants in the UK, Nuclear Spin reveals the pro-nuclear covert campaign underway in British schools.

For example, in 2006, the national curriculum was changed so that it became compulsory for schools to teach all 14-16 year olds about nuclear power. The move was largely sparked by a report for the Department for Trade and Industry written by the Nuclear Skills Group, made up of Government officials and a panel of six ‘independent members’.

In the report only one, Paul Thomas, was said to be working for BNFL. But NuclearSpin has discovered that two more members were also working for BNFL.

One of the nuclear industry’s largest education projects is called Energy Foresight, run by Young Foresight, which in turn has been paid hundreds of thousands of pounds by nuclear organisations to develop a set of teaching materials “that present radioactivity and related issues in personal and social contexts.” Energy Foresight’s material’s have been criticized by independent nuclear consultant John Large as “a blatant piece of propaganda… it misleads”.

For more on this go here 

Stephen Carter

Quick fixes aimed at driving the media agenda became the hallmark of Tony Blair’s decade in Downing Street and the cumulative damage which they inflicted on both the authority of Parliament and the standing of the civil service caused widespread unease within the Labour Party.

Early last summer, as he outlined a vision for his Premiership, Brown and his aides did much to promote the idea that the new administration would rein in unaccountable political advisers and put the levers of power back in the hands of civil servants.

The subject of the Aarhus Convention goes to the heart of the relationship between people and governments. The Convention is not only an environmental agreement, it is also a Convention about government accountability, transparency and responsiveness.

The Aarhus Convention grants the public rights and imposes on Parties and public authorities obligations regarding access to information and public participation and access to justice.

David Miller, 9 January 2008

The Lobbyists who run the SPBE: Scobie and Gauld (middle and right)

Writing in the IPT magazine The Bridge, Devin Scobie of the SPBE notes that facilitating the access was not easy: 'Establishing... that an IPT led Programme was a charitable cause and thereby eligible to book meeting rooms in the Parliament took some time but is now firmly in place' (January-March 2008, p. 16.).  Amongst those attending the IPT led programme in Edinburgh was Jane McGirk, lobbyist for SELEX Sensors and Airborne Systems UK .  This is an arms firm (part of the Finmeccanica Group the privatised former Italian state company which now owns Westland Helicopters) which produces 'sensing solutions for fighters, transporters, helicopters and Unmanned Airborne Vehicles (UAVs).'  They also produce 'high power lasers for long range designation of ground targets (selected for the Lockheed Martin Sniper pod and Joint Strike Fighter EO targeting system)' and  'long range target identification systems'.  These weapons are currently used in Iraq and Afghanistan, where the academic research has suggested that more than half a million people have been casualties since March 2003.