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Where To Now For Lobbying?
Tamasin Cave
DATELINE: 11/9/09
Some six months on, the government is still wrestling with how it's going to reform the lobbying industry. It has broadly two choices. It could force lobbying into the open with a statutory register of lobbyists, as recommended by the public administration select committee in January and supported by 200 backbenchers.
If so, we could soon know who is lobbying whom in government and which areas of public life they are seeking to influence, whether it's defence procurement decisions, climate change policy, private healthcare contracts or tax breaks for the super rich.
A statutory register would also go some way to fulfilling Gordon Brown's stated aims for political reform.
"In the dark recesses of power, too much information is withheld when the public should have that information," he the Today programme in the wake of the MPs' expenses scandal.
The alternative is for the government to rely on the lobbying industry to voluntarily open itself up to public scrutiny, through a system of self-regulation described by PASC as "little better than the Emperor's new clothes". According to industry sources, this is the government's favoured route.
It's worth taking a look at the progress of the industry's voluntary alternative to statutory regulation: the three lobbying trade bodies want to establish an umbrella group for all lobbyists, provisionally called the Public Affairs Council.
All lobbyists that voluntarily sign up would get a 'kitemark', a sign of professional and ethical standards and a commitment to transparency. According to the proposals those not kitemarked "could be presumed not to be compliant".
Lobbyist Mark Adams of the trade body the Association of Professional Political Consultants told PASC in July that responses to an industry consultation on the proposals were "broadly in agreement with the approach we have set out," adding: "We're very pleased with the relatively unanimous agreement for the overall approach that we are adopting."
The written responses have just been published by the APPC. Of the 13 organisations that responded, four are openly hostile to the plans, and a further two express serious reservations. So that's just under half who have a serious problem with them.
Even lobbying consultancies you would expect to be supportive – as members of the APPC – are dead against. One declares: "We remain so far from having consensus that it would be premature to establish a timetable for creating a Public Affairs Council." The suggestion of a kitemark was "not one with which we are at all comfortable".
So why tell the PASC MPs that agreement was "relatively unanimous"? Is there perhaps a silent majority of lobbyists rooting for these proposals? Or is this the APPC papering over the cracks in self-regulation to present a united front to the government?
Who knows? But it doesn't bode well for an industry-led voluntary system, should the government eventually choose to support one.
Last modified: Friday, September 11, 2009
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Previous stories
Lobbying
Who is the government really listening to?
PM hints at lobbying shake-up
PR industry expects-crackdown
The way forward on lobbying
Brown must open up lobbying to win public trust
Reining in the influence industry
Lobbyists under the spotlight
Companies 'try to co-opt sector'
Slow and shaky start for EU lobbying register
Alliance for Lobbying Transparency meeting
Legal blow to secret government lobbying
EU lobbying - it's now or never
Parliamentary Inquiry into lobbying gets underway
EU Worst Lobby Awards Go Public
