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Coalition Review -Lobbying
This is a blog post by Francis Ingham, Chief Executive of the PRCA
The next big scandal waiting to happen’. That’s how the Prime Minster described lobbying two years ago. It’s a pithy line – probably too pithy for its own good, given how frequently it’s been thrown back in the PM’s face.
The coalition agreement included a commitment to introduce a statutory register of lobbyists – something that had been in Labour and Lib Dem manifestos, though not in the Conservative one. Two years on, the government crawls towards implementing that commitment. And in doing so, it is winning plaudits neither from the industry it seeks to address, nor from that industry’s critics.
Why is that?
It’s because – as I told the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee recently – the government’s plans have compromise stamped all over them. In attempting to find something that both halves of the government can just about agree on, they have reached a lowest common denominator that will fail to meet the government’s own stated objectives (‘greater transparency’), and fail to carry anyone with them.
The weakness of the current plans stems from the fact that the government has identified the wrong problem. It believes that public affairs consultancies lobby minsters direct; and that while doing do, they are secretive about the identity of their clients. The government is wrong on both counts.
It is wrong to believe that consultancies lobby ministers – they might introduce clients to decision makers. They certainly explain to clients how the government process works. They will advise on how best to present arguments. But they do not themselves lobby, as ministerial diary data shows.
Secondly, the government is wrong to believe that consultancies hide their clients – on the contrary, the vast majority of public affairs consultancies not only list their clients on their own websites; not only boast publicly when they are retained by new clients, but also tend to belong to one of the organisations that regulate the public affairs industry (including our own organisation), as a requirement of which they sign up to a Code of Conduct, and are compelled to declare who they work for.
So the problem with the government’s current plan is that it simply will not ‘ensure greater transparency’ – the people it will capture within its remit are transparent already.
There is a route forward – one which we have pressed on Mark Harper, and which a recent poll found a majority of parliamentarians support. The government should broaden its plans, not just to include public affairs consultancies, but also to include the roughly 80 per cent of the lobbying industry that works for an in-house team. People who work for the CBI, or the TUC, or for charities, or for private sector companies. Everybody who lobbies professionally.
That genuinely would be a step change in increasing transparency in the lobbying industry. Even now, it is not too late for the government to do the right thing, change course, and meet its own objectives. It is rare for a membership body to urge the government to interfere more, not less. But on this occasion, that is precisely what ministers should do.
Click here to download the full PDF of ‘Coalition Review’ –as printed in the 10 May 2012 edition of The House Magazine.
