David Miller (Glasgow, Spinwatch): When it was announced that Tony Blair was to be paid $500,000 per year to work for JP Morgan Chase it was said by the Advisory Committee on Business Interests that "he should not be personally involved in lobbying government ministers or officials on behalf of his new employer or its clients." This betrays a serious misunderstanding of lobbying. It is a misunderstanding encouraged by the lobbying industry in their current efforts to deflect MPs from introducing elementary transparency rules.
The Public Administration Select committee is currently in the early stages of an inquiry into lobbying, which is the best chance for more than a decade of progress towards transparency on lobbying. Unlock Democracy's Peter Facey, Spinwatch's William Dinan, and myself, gave evidence to it on Thursday on behalf of the newly-founded Alliance for Lobbying Transparency. The arguments for transparency are unassailable. They are founded on the widespread public mistrust of the political process and of the influence of corporations within it - as shown by the Power Inquiry in 2006. On top of this is the reluctance of many lobbying and PR firms to disclose who they work for and on what. They trade on access and are protected by secrecy.
Lobbying is much more widespread than is recognised. It is not just the 'face time' between lobbyists and decision makers. Blair will be 'personally involved' in lobbying simply by advising his new employers. Underlying the misperception is the idea that lobbyists are only found in lobbying firms. This is false. The lobbying consultancies which became a feature of public life in the 1980s are only a small fraction of the industry. Also involved are in-house practitioners, think tanks, 'front groups', charities and non government organisations.
One indication of the lack of transparency in lobbying is the case of TOAST (The Obesity Awareness and Solutions Trust) which used a PR agency called The Whitehouse Consultancy to recruit parliamentary 'patrons' and to raise the issue of obesity on Parliament. TOAST admitted on its own site that it was engaged in lobbying, noting that it had been 'extremely successful'. The charity claimed to be ‘completely independent' and to ‘derive its income from individual donations and membership fees'. However, an investigation by Spinwatch revealed that almost all of it funding came from a diet company called LighterLife, and two of LighterLife's directors were also directors of TOAST. It was, in other words, a kind of ‘front group'. No fewer than nine of the twenty one parliamentary patrons have now gone on record stating that they were not told of the links between TOAST and LighterLife. Dr Ian Gibson MP stated: "I was absolutely not aware of this connection and my initial reaction is to be pretty cheesed off."
The obvious conclusion from this affair is that lobbyists come in may guises and do not always disclose their links, clients and motives even to the MPs and others who they recruit to support them. A voluntary system of self-regulation as proposed by the lobbying industry trade bodies would do nothing to solve such problems. The case of TOAST also shows why it is important not only to regulate lobbying firms and in-house lobbyists but also campaigning groups and even charities.
The problems surrounding lobbying are compounded by issues of privileged access to MPs, ministers and civil servants. We are seeing a complex nexus of relationships fostered by the revolving door in which former politicians like Blair (or Thatcher or Major before him - and this week Patricia Hewitt's consultancy with Boots and advisory work for Cinven) or civil servants take up lucrative positions with corporations in order to secure business interests. Allied with the revolving door are other symptoms of privileged access such as secondments into and out of the civil service for business people. This can mean that organisations seeking government contracts or market advantage can have someone on the inside taking part in procurement or policy development processes.
The only way to ensure transparency, to begin to combat the revolving door and end privileged access to policy making is to introduce mandatory disclosure measures for lobbyists and enhanced ethics regulation. No amount of self-serving rhetoric from the lobbyists can disguise that.
