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Simon Jones' Story Repeated

Ellie Keen — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 22:31:02 +0000

A decade since the death of Simon, we look back on the campaign to bring Euromin to justice. Simon was well known in the Brighton community – as well as a writer for SchNEWS – and it was this community who combined with his family to mobilise and form the Simon Jones Memorial Campaign…

In 1998 Simon Jones was sent to one of the most dangerous jobs in the country, one he had no training for. Simon had been killed by a profiteering gangster, James Martell, whose company, Euromin, ran the dock where he died. Complicit to the crime were the employment agency Personnel Selection which sent him to his death without any checks or references.

On 1st September 1998, which would have been Simon’s 25th birthday, the Simon Jones Memorial Campaign went into action. Thirty protesters shut down the dock where Simon was killed, climbing two 80-foot towers with banners reading “Simon Jones RIP” and “Casualisation Kills”.

That evening, a packed meeting in a Brighton pub decided it couldn’t stop there. “A lot of the people at the meeting had casual jobs,” said Emma, Simon’s girlfriend at the time of his death. “People were furious that employment agencies could get away with taking half your wages without even making sure the job they sent you to was safe.” Two days later Personnel Selection was occupied and a “Murderers” banner hung from its window.

In March 1999 the MP George Galloway gave a speech in parliament calling for the prosecution of Euromin over Simon’s death. Afterwards campaign supporters occupied the Department of Trade and Industry’s offices – those supposed to regulate employment agencies.

The campaign kept up the pressure by targeting the Health and Safety Executive a few weeks later. But this time security guards were waiting for an attempted occupation – and looked on while thirty members of the campaign turned round, walked onto Southwark Bridge and blockaded it for three hours.

The result of the campaign was a complete climb down by the state. The Crown Prosecution Service had refused to prosecute anyone over Simon’s death all along. In March 2000 two High Court Judges ordered the CPS to reconsider this decision – the first successful judicial review of a decision not to prosecute for manslaughter over a workplace death in British legal history. The judges described the CPS as behaving “irrationally”, “failing to address the relevant law” and adopting an approach that “beggared belief”. They told the CPS to review its decision “with dispatch”.

Nine months later, after a spirited picket of the CPS where a campaign supporter was arrested and locked up for demanding someone who had killed his mate got arrested and locked up, the CPS finally agreed to prosecute.

The trial of Simon’s killers took place in November 2001 and resulted in conviction on health and safety charges but aquittal on the charge of manslaughter. Following the verdict the campaign issued a statement saying:

“We are painfully aware that in 21st century Britain the fight for the most basic of workers’ rights – the right not to be killed or injured at work – is still being fought. Without direct action James Martell and Euromin would never have faced prosecution in the High Court for Simon’s death. As long as this government and its agencies refuse to take action against companies that profit from casualisation at the expense of their workers’ lives we will continue, where necessary, to break the law so that justice will prevail.”

Simon Jones Memorial Campaign www.simonjones.org.uk

Britain: Rising Fuel Prices Blight Millions

Ellie Keen — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 23:25:00 +0000

There are many ways in which poverty affects people’s quality of life. One of these is the ability to keep warm. The recent hike in oil and gas prices has seen a sharp increase in what is termed fuel poverty in the UK. The consumer group Energywatch estimates that about 4.4 million are now affected by fuel poverty, amounting to one in six people in Britain.

People are deemed to live in fuel poverty when they need to spend more than 10 percent of their income to heat and light their house. However, this rough definition is only part of a more complex situation that also involves a number of deprivations. These include poor housing stock with bad insulation and inefficient heating systems, rising fuel prices and low incomes. Fuel poverty therefore provides a good indication for the general level of poverty in society.

Based on the figures of Ofgem, which regulates electricity and gas markets in the UK, the last time fuel poverty levels were as high was in 1999, a period affected by broad world economic turmoil. Figures then fell until about 2005, but started to rise in the following years.

For many, fuel poverty is a question of life and death. The sick, the disabled and older people on low incomes are especially affected. Every year, tens of thousands die because they cannot afford to adequately heat their homes. Some 93 percent of these so-called “excess” winter deaths occur among those over the age of 65. Last winter, there were an estimated 23,900 such deaths.

Fuel poverty cannot be regarded separately from the general rise in poverty. The recent turbulence on the world markets following the US credit crunch crisis is leading to a further increase in attacks on the living conditions of millions, as the major corporations and banks seek to offset their losses onto the backs of the working class. In addition, many small and medium-sized companies are facing severe difficulties, if not being driven to the wall. This will have a devastating impact on the lives of millions of workers, increasing poverty in general and fuel poverty in particular.

This general trend can be seen in the pricing policies of the six corporations that dominate the energy markets in Britain. The latest rise in fuel poverty is directly linked to a hike in prices by these major energy suppliers. Three have raised their prices significantly this year. British Gas, the UK’s biggest power provider, announced increases in gas and electricity bills of 15 percent. Npower raised its electricity prices by 12.7 percent and gas by 17.2 percent, and EDF Energy put up its electricity tariffs by 7.9 percent and gas bills by 12.9 percent. E.On, Scottish Power and Scottish & Southern Energy are expected to follow soon. These increases will inflate household energy bills by well over £100 a year, pushing the average yearly cost to more than £1,000. It is estimated that each 1 percent increase in energy bills sends 40,000 more households into fuel poverty.

At the same time, the energy companies are making massive profits. There are many indications that the recent price hikes are nothing but a shameless attempt by these corporations to line their pockets. They seek to justify the consumer price hikes by pointing to a rise in wholesale costs for oil and gas on the world markets. While the energy companies claim they are simply passing on these extra costs to the customer, at best this is only half the truth. According to consumer groups, the current rises faced by domestic customers are far above the increased wholesale costs faced by these corporations.

British energy suppliers are holding the working class to ransom. For example, EDF claimed that “wholesale gas prices had risen 117 percent since February last year, with electricity up 90 percent over the same time,” whereas Ofgem put these figures at 31 percent for gas and 40 percent for electricity.

Research sponsored jointly by UNISON, the public service trade union, and the National Right to Fuel Campaign found that the average household prices charged to customers had increased by £2.3 billion more than the costs of producing and selling the electricity and gas that was supplied. In other European countries, such as Germany and France, price rises have been on a far lower level, even falling in some cases.

Consumer groups are demanding the government order a Competition Commission investigation into whether there has been “tacit collusion” by the power suppliers that dominate the UK market. Allan Asher, chief executive of Energywatch, told BBC News 24 that the entire energy market should be reviewed by the Competition Commission. “The price rises we’ve seen are not justified,” he said, adding, “There’ll be more, but sadly the market is not working well and that’s leading to consumers paying much, much more than they need to.”

Following a meeting between Alistair Darling, the chancellor of the exchequer, and Ofgem last week, a spokesman said the chancellor was “not minded” to call for an inquiry after “he had been reassured the market was working properly.”

This response reflects the contemptuous attitude of the government to the problem of fuel poverty. In 2001, the government announced a target to eradicate fuel poverty for all vulnerable and low-income households by 2010 and all other households by 2016. But in practice, it was adding to the problem by raising VAT (value-added tax) on consumer bills. A research commissioned by the Energy Efficiency Partnership for Homes—a group of 700 industry bodies concerned with domestic energy efficiency—pointed out that electricity prices surged by 39 percent and gas prices by 61 percent between 2003 and 2006.

The eradication of fuel poverty and poverty as a whole is only possible through ending the domination of society by the transnational corporations, including the energy companies. The economy must be organised not for the profit of a few but to meet the needs of all; bringing the utility companies under the democratic control of the working class to guarantee that every household receives the basic necessities of heat and light.

SPBE Gains Lobbying Access to Scottish Parliament

Tim Holmes — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 16:44:45 +0000

The Scottish Parliament Business Exchange, which was condemned by the Standards Committee of the Scottish Parliament in 2002 as failing to ‘provide sufficient transparency or accountability’ has facilitated access to the Parliament for the Industry and Parliament Trust. The Trust is a forum based in Whitehall which facilitates contacts between corporations, lobbyists and members of the Houses of Parliament and parliamentary staff.

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.

The Chief Executive of the Parliament Paul Grice stated before the Parliament’s Standards committee that ‘Access through the programme could not be called “privileged” in any sense of the word.’ This is not quite how McGirk saw it. In her article for The Bridge, she writes that she had ‘two full days geared on the inner workings of the Scottish Parliement with the sole aim of getting me up to speed with how it works and how I might help my company better engage with it – I felt privileged!’(p. 16) McGirk relates that she ‘even’ got the opportunity to dine with MSps ‘providing a useful networking opportunity to begin the process of building relationships with them – all good stuff for someone in a role like mine’. In conclusion McGirk notes that she has ‘been convinced of the value of engaging with Government’. ‘So much so’ she says that ‘I have already signed up to attend forthcoming Study Programmes for the UK and European Parliaments’. The connection with the arms industry is also apparent in the account by Chris Shaw, Deputy Principal clerk in the Clerk’s Department, House of Commons. His IPT fellowship took him to BAe Systems where he saw part of the process of assembling the Eurofighter (a project of four partners including Finmeccanica) and also ‘saw their prototype Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) developed rapidly in response to a change in MoD requirements’. (p. 9) Shaw seemed impressed if not overawed with his placement, seeking to apply what he saw to fostering ‘a more corporate approach’ in the public sector. ‘If a corporate approach can overcome all manner of country and cultural barriers to deliver fast jet aricraft’, he concludes, ‘ it shouldn’t be impossible for us to combine to achive an equally good – if marginally less exciting – product for the MPs we work for.’ Leaving aside the question of whether the Eurofighter is a ‘good’ or ‘exciting’ product, there is little recognition that the actual ‘corporate’ culture of BAe Systems is one that involves routine bribery and corruption at the highest levels as part of a huge lobbying effort alongside ethically dubious employment of spies and agents provacateur in the movement against the arms industry.

The IPT has been in existence for thirty years and was the model upon which the SPBE was based. In Scotland the SPBE attempted to have a more inclusive feel by co-opting a member of the Scottish Trades Union Congress and by insisting that – despite the use of the word ‘business’ in the title it really wanted to promote understanding of the world outside Parliament and not just the corporate world. The IPT is not so bothered by such niceties, stating that ‘It exists to promote industry and commerce and the efficient and effective administration of government’ This is achieved, it says by promoting ‘mutual understanding’ between legislators and ‘wealth generators from all sectors of business’. Typically enough ‘wealth generators are conceived of as the people who own and run corporations rather than the people to work to create the wealth. The IPT is, in other words, a lobbyists dream come true.

In case the impression is given that it is only arms firms that are welcomed to this process, the Trust advertises its new members in the latest edition of its magazine as including Bayer-Schering Pharma Ltd, Britvic, Compass Group, Gallaher and T-Mobile (p. 23). All of these firms in the pharma, food, tobacco and communications businesses have lobbying objectives which will be served in part by joining the Trust.

The SPBE itself claims to have ‘no connection with lobbying in any form’ and at ‘all times operates in an open and transparent manner’. Neither of these statements appears to be true. Devin Scobie (Interim Director until the end of January 2008) is himself a lobbyist. From 1999-2004 he worked in the Edinburgh office of GPC the lobbying firm which employed disgraced lobbyist Derek Draper (and which was part of the lobbying multinational Fleishman Hillard, in turn owned by the advertsising and PR giant Omnicom). Clients there included Pfizer, also a member of the SPBE. From the beginning Pfizer’s lobbyist Lynda Gauld was involved with the Exchange, later becoming its convenor. From June 2007 Gauld joined Scobie at the new lobbying firm he created in late 2006 called Caledonia Consulting. When Scobie became the interim director of the Exchange he remained managing director of Caledonia. Documents released under the Freedom of information Act also show that Scobie was one of the very few commercial lobbyists to secure a pass for the Scottish Parliament. In effect then the SPBE is almost a front for Caledonia Consulting – not quite the same as having ‘no connection’ with lobbying.

Caledonia recently courted controversy by employing a former Labour minister who was jailed for setting fire to curtains at a central Edinburgh hotel at a Scottish political awards ceremony. Mike Watson, joins a number of former MSPs at the firm.

Scobie himself is reluctant to describe himself as a lobbyist in the press, claiming that ‘I don’t really consider myself a lobbyist, I consider myself a business consultant… The clients that I work with want to understand how parliament operates,they want to understand how the committees are set up. It’s not a case of saying, “Devin, get closer to MSP X or Y”.’ On Caledonia’s website he is a little more open saying that prior to 2004 he ‘spent most of his working life in public affairs and communication consultancy’. But in December 2003 while still working at GPC, Scobie described an alleged alternative view of him as ‘an evil lobbyist’ who:

Lunches for Scotland
Tries to persuade, cajole and otherwise influence
Stays in the shadows
Lives in the Scottish Parliament
Preys on unsuspecting MSPs
Pretends we don’t exist

And makes lots of money from poor, down-trodden clients…

Whatever the truth, the SPBE is now run in effect as a lobbying outfit. Concerns about transparency are not abated by the fact that Caledonia do not disclose their clients, so it is difficult to tell if any of them are involved in the SPBE and consequently whther there are any conflict of interest issues. The Association of Professional Political Consultants is the lobby industry body set up to resist lobbying transparency. It operates a self regulatory code which requires disclosure of clients and forbids the holding of parliamentary passes. Caledonia is not a member. The relationship between Gauld, Scobie and the SPBE/Caledonia has never been clarified. Nor has there been any information forthcoming about how conflicts of interest might be managed in the absence of the disclosure of Caledonia’s clients. The SPBE is on other words certainly not open and transparent. It appears however, to be shielded by the powerful Chief Executive of the Parliament Paul Grice. If the SNP government wants to move towards transparency and openness it is he who will have to be out-manouevred.

We've been suckered again by the US. So far the Bali deal is worse than Kyoto

JamieSW — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 11:38:44 +0000

“After eleven days of negotiations, governments have come up with a compromise deal that could … even lead to emission increases. … The highly compromised political deal … is largely attributable to the position of the United States which was heavily influenced by fossil fuel and automobile industry interests. The failure to reach agreement led to the talks spilling over into an all night session …”(1)

These are extracts from a press release by Friends of the Earth. So what? Well it was published on December 11th – I mean to say, December 11th 1997. The US had just put a wrecking ball through the Kyoto Protocol. George W Bush was innocent; he was busy executing prisoners in Texas. Its climate negotiators were led by Albert Arnold Gore.

The European Union had asked for greenhouse gas cuts of 15% by 2010. Gore’s team drove them down to 5.2% by 2012. Then it did something worse: it destroyed the whole agreement.

Most of the other governments insisted that the cuts be made at home. But Gore demanded a series of loopholes big enough to drive a Hummer through. The rich nations, he said, should be allowed to buy their cuts from other countries(2). When he won, the protocol created an exuberant global market in fake emissions cuts. The western nations could buy “hot air” from the former Soviet Union. Because the cuts were made against emissions in 1990, and because industry in that bloc had subsequently collapsed, the FSU countries would pass well below the bar. Gore’s scam allowed them to sell the gases they weren’t producing to other nations. He also insisted that rich nations could buy nominal cuts from poor ones. Factories in India and China have made billions by raising their production of potent greenhouse gases, so that carbon traders in the rich world will pay to clean them up(3).

The result of this sabotage is that the market for low carbon technologies has remained moribund. Without an assured high value for carbon cuts, without any certainty that government policies will be sustained, companies have continued to invest in the safe commercial prospects offered by fossil fuels rather than gamble on a market without an obvious floor.

By ensuring that the rich nations would not make real cuts, Gore also guaranteed that the poor ones scoffed when we asked them to do as we don’t. When George Bush announced, in 2001, that he would not ratify the protocol, the world cursed and stamped its feet. But his intransigence affected only the United States. Gore’s team ruined it for everyone.

The destructive power of the US delegation is not the only thing that hasn’t changed. After the Kyoto Protocol was agreed, the British environment secretary, John Prescott, announced that “this is a truly historic deal which will help curb the problems of climate change. For the first time it commits developed countries to make legally binding cuts in their emissions.”(4) Ten years later the current environment secretary, Hilary Benn, told us that “this is an historic breakthrough and a huge step forward. For the first time ever all the world’s nations have agreed to negotiate on a deal to tackle dangerous climate change.”(5) Do these people have a chip inserted?

In both cases the United States demanded terms which appeared impossible for the other nations to accept. Before Kyoto, the other negotiators flatly rejected Gore’s proposals for emissions trading. So his team threatened to sink the talks. The other nations capitulated, but the US still held out on technicalities until the very last moment, when it suddenly appeared to concede. In 1997 and in 2007 it got the best of both worlds: it wrecked the treaty and was praised for saving it.

Hilary Benn is an idiot. Our diplomats are suckers. United States negotiators have pulled the same trick twice and for the second time our governments have fallen for it.

There are still two years to go, but so far the new agreement is even worse than the Kyoto Protocol. It contains no targets and no dates. A new set of guidelines also agreed at Bali extend and strengthen the worst of Al Gore’s trading scams, the clean development mechanism(6). Benn and the other dupes are cheering and waving their hats as the train leaves the station at last, having failed to notice that it is travelling in the wrong direction.

Though Gore does a better job of governing now that he is out of office, he was no George Bush. He wanted a strong, binding and meaningful protocol, but US politics had made it impossible. In July 1997 the Senate had voted 95-0 to sink any treaty which failed to treat developing countries in the same way as it treated the rich ones(7). Though they knew this was impossible for developing countries to accept, all the Democrats lined up with all the Republicans. The Clinton administration had proposed a compromise: instead of binding commitments for the developing nations, Gore would demand emissions trading(8). But even when he succeeded he announced that “we will not submit this agreement for ratification [in the Senate] until key developing nations participate”(9). Clinton could thus avoid an unwinnable war.

So why, regardless of the character of its leaders, does the United States act this way? Because, like several other modern democracies, it is subject to two great corrupting forces. I have written before about the role of the corporate media (particularly in the US) in downplaying the threat of climate change and demonising anyone who tries to address it(10). I won’t bore you with it again, except to remark that at 3pm eastern standard time on Saturday there were 20 news items on the front page of the Fox News website. The climate deal came 20th, after “Bikini-wearing stewardesses sell calendar for charity” and “Florida store sells ‘Santa Hates You’ T-shirt”(11).

Let us consider instead the other great source of corruption: campaign finance. The Senate rejects effective action on climate change because its members are bought and bound by the companies which stand to lose. When you study the tables showing who gives what to whom, you are struck by two things(12).

One is the quantity. Since 1990, the energy and natural resources sector (mostly coal, oil, gas and electricity) has given $418m to federal politicians in the US(13). Transport companies have given $355m(14). The other is the width: the undiscriminating nature of this munificence. The big polluters favour the Republicans, but most of them also fund Democrats. During the 2000 presidential campaign, oil and gas companies lavished money on George Bush, but they also gave Al Gore $142,000(15), while transport companies gave him $347,000(16). The whole US political system is in hock to people who put their profits ahead of the biosphere.

So don’t believe all this nonsense about waiting for the next president to sort it out. This is a much bigger problem than George W Bush. Yes, he is viscerally opposed to tackling climate change. But viscera don’t have much to do with it. Until the American people confront their political funding system, their politicians will keep speaking from the pocket, not the gut.

References:

1. Friends of the Earth UK, 11th December 1997. Kyoto Deal Will Not Stop Global warming. Press release.

2. Through Emissions Trading, Joint Implementation and the Clean Development Mechanism.

3. See Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation, September 2006. Carbon Trading: A Critical Conversation on Climate Change, Privatisation and Power. Development Dialogue 2006, no 48. http://www.dhf.uu.se/pdffiler/DD2006_48_carbon_trading/carbon_trading_we…

And:

Michael Wara, 8th February 2007. Is the global carbon market working? Nature vol 445. p 595.

4. Department of the Environment, Transport & The Regions, 11th December 1997. Historic Agreement Reached In Kyoto On Climate Change. Press release 509/Environment.

5. No author, 15th December 2007. Deal agreed in Bali climate talks.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/dec/15/bali.climatechange4

6. United Nations Climate Change Conference, 15th December 2007. Decision -/CMP.3
Further guidance relating to the clean development mechanism.
http://unfccc.int/files/meetings/cop_13/application/pdf/cmp_guid_cdm.pdf

7. You can read the Byrd-Hagel Resolution at http://www.nationalcenter.org/KyotoSenate.html

8. You can see how these two issues were played against each other in this statement by the Senate Republican Policy Committee: http://rpc.senate.gov/_files/ENVIROmw102197.pdf

9. CNN, 11th December 2007. Clinton Hails Global Warming Pact. http://edition.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1997/12/11/kyoto/

10. See in particular George Monbiot, 2007. Heat: how to stop the planet burning. Chapter 2. Penguin, London.

11. http://www.foxnews.com/, viewed at 8.21pm UK time, 15th December 2007. Updated on the hour.

12. http://www.opensecrets.org/ gives an almost-comprehensive account.

13. http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.asp?Ind=E

14. http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.asp?Ind=M

15. http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/recips.asp?Ind=E01&Cycle=2000&reci…

16. http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/recips.asp?Ind=M&Cycle=2000&recipd…

Growing Political Row Over “Imposition” of New EU Chemicals Boss

Tim Holmes — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 17:13:16 +0000

Next Monday the new head of the fledgling European Chemicals Agency will be formally appointed in Helsinki, the home of the new Agency.

Despite the formal announcement, the European Commission is facing a growing political row over its “imposition” of a business-friendly candidate to head the Agency.

The Agency is tasked with implementing REACH – the highly controversial chemical legislation that was adopted by the EU in December 2006, after years of lobbying by the chemical industry to water it down. The Agency will be hugely influential as it will oversee how 30,000 industrial and everyday chemicals that are used by the public are regulated within the EU.

The Commission’s candidate of choice is Geert Dancet, a Belgian-born economist who is currently the Interim Director of the Agency. He is a twenty-year career bureaucrat from the Commission, who critics argue will be its “puppet” and not be independent enough.

Since 2004, Dancet has headed the REACH Unit within DG Enterprise that was instrumental in formatting the chemical legislation that has been criticised by green groups as being compromised by the chemical industry.

Members of the Management Board of the Chemicals Agency from Member States argue that the selection process for his job was rigged by the Commission against candidates who would take a more critical stance against the chemical industry.

An investigation by SpinWatch has found the name of one of the strongest candidates – Ethel Forsberg, the head of Kemi, the Swedish Chemicals Agency, was removed by the Commission before the short-list of two was sent to the Management Board to decide who to pick. The short-list comprised of Dancet and Anne Lambert, the UK’s deputy permanent representative to the EU, who was not specialised in chemicals policy.

“We knew the Commission had sent three names to the Commissioners, to the College of Commissioners”, says Dr Odile Gauthier, from the Ministry of Ecology and Sustainable Development in Paris, the French delegate on the Management Board. “None of us in France, and I think it was the same in every country, thought that something would happen at the level of the Commissioners. We were very upset because we felt the Commission was imposing its own candidate.”

Dr Thomas Jakl, the Austrian delegate from the Federal Ministry for Agriculture, Forestry, Environment and Water Management in Vienna adds: “The whole management board was quite upset by being confronted by a short-list that contained only two members, knowing that there were other people who were qualified to appear on the short-list”.

The rejected candidate, Ethel Forsberg, says “I was surprised I was not on the list. After one interview I was told that I was on the proposed short-list”. She adds: “It is hard for me not to be aware that Sweden is one of those member states whose chemical policy is quite radical. I don’t know if that was worrisome to someone if I was connected to such a chemical policy.”

When Dancet appeared before the European Parliament’s influential Environment Committee last month British MEP Caroline Jackson said he had “too cosy a relationship” with the Commission.

Several environmental NGOs, including Friends of the Earth Europe, had written to the Commission asking for a formal review of Dancet’s appointment, although this week the Commission rejected their complaint as “inadmissible”.

Lobbying Inquiry: MPs Give Evidence

Tim Holmes — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 19:37:24 +0000

The first session of the Select Committee Inquiry into lobbying kicked off on Thursday morning (29 Nov) with evidence from three MPs: John Grogan, Peter Luff and Stephan Pound. The Inquiry is looking into the transparency of the lobbying industry, the effectiveness of recent attempts at self-regulation, and whether or not the rules for those in Parliament and government should be changed.

In May, Grogan joined forces with the Association of Professional Parliamentary Consultants (APPC) to encourage the 20-25 per cent of the lobbying industry firms that currently refuse to participate in self-regulation to sign up to the recognised codes of conduct.

Peter Luff, a former lobbyist at Bell Pottinger firm Good Relations, repeatedly took the industry line. In his written evidence to the Committee, he fails to see that there is a problem and has accused the APPC of seeking to “promote concern about this issue [of transparency in lobbying] with a view to enhancing the commercial prospects of its own members.”

The reason given for Stephen Pound being called was because he once said: “lobbying is the most flagrant waste of money in modern politics.” This was a point expanded on later by Committee Member Charles Walker MP, also a former lobbyist. The suggestion being that the problem with lobbying is not that it’s too influential but that it much of it is ineffectual (and presumably therefore not worth investigating).

Grogan began by explaining his central concern: that for self-regulation to work, all lobbying firms need to subscribe to the two major principles of self-regulation – publishing clients and not paying MPs and peers. Bell Pottinger was cited as a case where only some clients were made public while client confidentially was deemed necessary for others on the grounds of national or private security issues.

In the US, Gorgan continued, it would be entirely unacceptable for a lobbing firm to keep secret the fact that it was working for foreign governments when former members of political parties were on the staff. Bell Pottinger, for example, employs among others Tony Blair’s former pollster and it has represented the governments of Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. “The idea that they should be working for foreign governments without declaring it is an affront to our democracy,” he said.

“Openness and transparency are vital in lobbying,” agreed Luff. His central and often repeated point, however, was that the industry doesn’t pose a problem and that in fact, if anything as an MP, he’s too aware of lobbyists, “the industry is sometimes too transparent”. However, “there are cases when confidentiality really matters,” he said. According to him, lobbyists provide not access but vital advice because businesses, unlike NGOs, don’t know how to talk to Government.

“Influence is very widely spread in our society,” Luff claimed. Again, there’s no problem with privileged access – any promises by lobbyists that they can provide access for paying clients are “generally exaggerated”. At one point former lobbyist Charles Walker on the Committee also underlined this “need to deconstruct the myth of access” created by lobbyists. Luff, however, did admit that MPs live in the real world. “We know people; we have friends. Regulating for this is terribly difficult.”

Luff, the most eager of the three MPs, went on to say: “Defining lobbying is the most difficult challenge this committee faces – where does it begin and end?” Pound sensibly disagreed. (If you follow the passage of regulation in the US, it’s clear that a broad and slippery definition of lobbying was one of the key issues that held up introducing rules on transparency). Chairman of the Committee Tony Wright seemed to agree that the Committee should be focusing instead on the interface between Parliament and anyone trying to influence it rather than trying to define it.

Self-regulation works, according to Luff, because lobbyists abide by certain rules. Key among these is that they disclose the identity of their clients when making representations to minister and officials. When asked what would happen if this rule was broken and the person lobbied was kept in the dark, Luff replied “good point.” There are no sanctions.

Watch it here.

Sunshine Laws to Track European Lobbyists

Tim Holmes — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 17:40:04 +0000

A lone tree stands at the traffic circle between the steel and glass office buildings of the European Parliament in Brussels. A sign below the tree, planted by the Society of European Affairs Professionals (SEAP), reads: “Important issues must be resolved by discussion and decision, with determination, patience and dedication.”

In early October, a small group of activists charged that more than any of these virtues, it was money and secretly wielded influence that was deciding important issues. At a lunch-time protest, the activists covered the tree with dozens of yellow paper cut-outs of the Euro, and held up a sign of their own: “End Lobbying Secrecy.” The activists charge that powerful industry groups such as SEAP, which represents more than 200 corporate lobbyists, exert undue influence on European legislative decisions, operate in secret and avoid oversight.

“Nobody knows who’s actually lobbying on behalf of whom,” says Caroline Lucas, a British Member of the European Parliament (MEP), who came out the official buildings to join the activist protest. “There’s a massive corporate lobby here, but it’s secretive and it has access to the Commission in a way that we, as parliamentarians, frankly can only dream of. There is no kind of register — I think it is absolutely crucial. That’s the only way to ensure that people have confidence in the system, in the decisions that are made here.”

The system now includes more than 15,000 lobbyists who work in Brussels to aggressively lobby the dozens of major European Union (EU) institutions that control tens of billions of Euros in funding as well decide the strict environmental, labor and financial rules that govern the 27 EU member countries. Some 90 percent of these lobbyists are believed to work on behalf of industry, with civil society groups such as environmentalists and trade unions making up less than ten percent. Together they spend an estimated 750 million Euros ($1 billion) a year to influence the European bureaucrats.

An hour after the protest at the tree, the activists joined hundreds of staff and lobbyists at a parliamentary hearing room to listen to the first ever hearing on the regulation of lobbyists within the EU system. Representatives of companies ranging from Daimler-Chrysler, the car manufacturer, and Kraft, the processed food giant, squared off against consumer and environmental groups including Friends of the Earth and Public Citizen.

The parliamentary hearing followed a March decision by the more powerful European Commission (which is the executive branch of the European Union, rather like the White House, see box) to begin maintaining a voluntary registry of lobbyists. Part of the European Transparency Initiative, voluntary registration is scheduled to begin in spring 2008. If it hasn’t proven effective after a year, the Commission may consider compulsory registration.

Estonian Siim Kallas, the commission’s anti-fraud czar, who issued the “European Transparency Initiative” is a strong advocate for regulating the industry. “Brussels and Washington are widely recognized as the two lobbying capitals of the world. In both places, legislation is being drafted affecting the lives and economic interests of hundreds of millions of citizens,” he wrote in an op-ed for the February 6, 2006 Wall Street Journal. “It’d be arrogant, and indeed a sign of ignorance, to claim that European politicians can’t be corrupted.”

The Commission’s transparency initiative also proposes that lobbyists produce financial disclosure estimating their annual revenue, with a percentage breakdown of which clients or donors pay what. “Because there is nothing wrong with lobbying, there should be nothing to hide,” wrote Kallas.

Much, however, remains undefined: The European Transparency Initiative has a broad definition of who is a lobbyist and what must be recorded as lobbying activity. And since lobbyists don’t have to tell parliamentarians or bureaucrats which companies employ them, it is nearly impossible to monitor or assess the impact of their lobbying efforts.

Also, the European Commission’s initiative does not necessarily apply to lobbyists who meet with members of the European Parliament, who play a lesser, although critical role, in the European system of government. The Parliament’s rules will be drawn up by the more industry-friendly Alexander Stubb, a Finnish MEP, who is the rapporteur on lobbying for the European Parliament’s constitutional affairs committee. Stubb recently told Public Affairs News, an industry magazine, that there was no need to create a mandatory system. “Because my view on lobbying is if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

The current system, under which lobbyists receive a one-year pass to enter the European Parliament premises after signing a code of ethical behavior, was sufficient, he continued. “In my three years, and having seen probably around 500 different lobbyists in my office, I’ve encountered zero abuse of the code of conduct and I think it’s worked quite well,” he said.

Later this year, Stubb’s committee will vote on a report that will be attached to the transparency initiative, and will recommend what rules should cover lobbying in the parliament. (In theory the Parliament could even mandate stricter regulation than that laid out by the European Commission.)

U.S. Lobbyists

Large and influential as the EU lobbyist industry is, it is dwarfed by its U.S. counterpart. There are some 35,000 registered lobbyists in the United States, who recorded expenditures of $2.61 billion in 2006, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington, DC-based non-profit.

Craig Holman, a registered lobbyist from Public Citizen, another Washington, DC-based non-profit, was invited to testify to the parliamentarians on October 8. He explained that under the U.S. model, created in 1995, a lobbyist is defined as a person who receives significant pay for lobbying activity, makes more than one lobbying contact in a six-year period, and dedicates at least a fifth of his or her time to lobbying activity for a particular client. These lobbyists have to list whom they contact for which client, as well as the amounts and sources of their income.

Passed in September, a new U.S. federal law dramatically curtails the kind of gifts lobbyists can give lawmakers. For example, it restricts breakfast meetings to coffee and doughnuts, dinners to “finger foods,” and bans sit-down dinners.

The Center for Public Integrity, also a Washington, DC-based non-profit, reports that rules for U.S. federal lobbyists are weaker than those in all but a handful of states. For example, 37 states require some detailed information on each lobbyist’s expenses, while the federal government does not. Some 24 states also have independent ethics commissions that include members of the public or retired judges to investigate and enforce lobbying rules.

Conflicts of Interest

Lobbyists have been at the heart of several major U.S. political scandals in the last few years, despite the fact that they are much more heavily regulated than their European counterparts. Last year alone, 22 members of Congress and their staff were indicted for corruption, some of it related to lobbying.

The most notorious example of lobbying excess is Jack Abramoff, who pleaded guilty in January 2006 to three criminal felony counts related to corruption of public officials and defrauding Native American tribes. In addition, from 1995 to 2001, Abramoff’s law firm was paid at least $6.7 million by the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) for helping to draft policy that allowed manufacturers to maximize the Marianas’ status as a U.S. territory: The islands were able to label their products “Made in the USA,” and at the same time were exempted from U.S. immigration and labor laws. Abramoff’s dealings with a Russian energy company were also subject to a Federal Bureau of Investigations inquiry. Executives of Naftasib funneled millions through Abramoff to influence votes in the U.S. Congress on legislation that helped make it possible for the International Monetary Fund to bail out the faltering Russian economy.

While such major scandals have yet to hit Europe, a number of minor incidents have illustrated flaws in the system. For example, several parliamentarians and top European bureaucrats have been accused of taking “revolving door” jobs with industry when they quit their government jobs. After serving as European director general for enterprise, Jean-Paul Mingasson became general adviser at UNICE, the European employers’ federation; on leaving his post as European environment director-general, Jim Currie joined British Nuclear Fuels Limited.

In January, Amsterdam-based organization Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) exposed that Rolf Linkohr, a 25-year veteran MEP, made a similarly questionable transition. After playing an active role in parliamentary committees responsible for energy issues, Linkohr went on to direct a commercial lobbying consultancy: the Center for European Energy Strategy (CERES). Its clients are large energy corporations.

While Linkohr was running CERES, he was also appointed as a special advisor to European Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs. “CERES’ corporate clients can be expected to receive advice from Mr. Linkohr and his colleagues about how to advance their commercial interests vis-a-vis EU energy policies. Providing such advice and analysis is likely to be Mr. Linkohr’s main source of income,” wrote CEO in an open letter to Piebalgs. “At the same time, Linkohr is supposed to provide the energy commissioner with advice about how to shape EU energy policies to serve the public interest.”

When Kallas, the anti-fraud czar, received the CEO letter, he asked all 55 special advisers to the Commission (some of whose identities were secret!) to confirm there was no conflict of interest between their roles. When Linkohr did not reply within the deadline, he was fired.

Others in the public relations and lobbying industry have been caught using ethically questionable tactics. Cancer United, a group launched in Brussels in October 2006, invited MEPs to join its advisory board. The group claimed to represent a coalition of doctors, nurses and patients advocating for equal access to cancer care in the European Union. It turned out that Cancer United was a front group set up for pharmaceutical giant Roche by public relations firm Weber Shandwick. (Roche makes Herceptin for breast cancer, Avastin for bowel cancer and Tarceva for lung cancer.) When the Guardian newspaper (UK) revealed Roche’s role, members of the Cancer Union’s advisory board hastily resigned.

Lobbyists Fight Initiative

At the October European Parliament hearing, industry representatives denied that Europe could have U.S.-style scandals. For one thing, they claimed that parliamentarians cannot take private donations toward their election campaigns — a major source of corruption in the U.S. (This is not completely true, as industry does funnel money into elections in several countries in Europe, such as Finland and the Netherlands, although at a much smaller level than in the United States.)

Lyn Trytsman-Gray, a lobbyist for Kraft and president of SEAP, warned that U.S.-style regulation imposes an undue burden on industry. “We spend 40 to 60 man days in the U.S. to comply with federal disclosure,” she told the hearing. (Public Citizen’s Holman publicly questioned her estimate, saying that filling out the necessary forms took him four hours every six months.)

Thomas Tindemans from Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe opposed financial disclosure, arguing that it would conflict with confidentiality laws in several European countries. “Public disclosure for clients of lawyers should be refined,” he said.

Curiously, some industry lobbyists spoke in favor of a mandatory regulation of lobbyists. “We don’t oppose a voluntary system, but we don’t see how it would work,” said José Lalloum of the European Public Affairs Consultancy Association (EPACA). He noted refusal to sign the register would put lobbyists at a competitive disadvantage.

This rather surprising opinion is a trick, says Paul de Clerck of Friends of the Earth Europe, who was also invited to speak on the panel. “The lobbyists are playing a dirty game. They have been lobbying against a mandatory system, and now that they have got a voluntary system, they have started to demand a mandatory system [as a diversion].”

De Clerck was also representing the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation (Alter-EU), a coalition of civil society activists who staged the protest at the tree outside the European Parliament. The group demanded a series of reforms including mandatory registration, ethics rules for lobbyists and a code of conduct for European Union officials, as well as an independent monitoring system with effective sanctions. Alter-EU also sought balanced representation in the 1,000-odd European Union advisory bodies that are currently dominated by corporate lobbyists. Finally de Clerck recommended a three-year “cooling-off” period before European Union officials who retire or resign can conduct lobbying activities.

After the three-and-a-half hour hearing ended, rapporteur Stubbs said he was leaning toward the activist demands to increase oversight of lobbyists. But, he drew laughs at the conclusion of the hearing, when he added that he was “open to lobbying on that question.”

National Lobbyists

While the European Parliament debates reform in Brussels, some European countries have already acted. Hungary, Lithuania and Poland recently introduced mandatory registration. But activists in these countries say that the process has not been very successful so far.

Adam Foldes, from the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union, estimates that fewer than half the lobbyists in his country have signed up. “The government only has 176 registered individuals and organizations who claim to have taken part in a total of 26 acts of lobbying. Most of them handed in blank forms. And I know that the real lobbyists, who are the most active, have not even registered,” he told CorpWatch. The Hungarian government has the authority to impose fines of up to Euro 40,000 ($56,000) but has so far levied none.

Pratap Chatterjee is an advisory board member of the Corporate Europe Observatory, which paid for his trip to the European Parliament hearings. He is also managing editor for CorpWatch.

Business, As Usual

Tim Holmes — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 09:34:08 +0000

Under the strapline “Our conference can provide an exciting place to do business”, there was a revealing pie chart in the Labour party’s conference guide that gave a breakdown of who now attends the annual gathering.

It is: 10% elected representatives, 20% media, 30% Labour party delegates and visitors, and – top of the list – 40% from the commercial and corporate sector.

So when Gordon Brown and his ministers received their standing ovations, the largest group clapping was the companies looking forward to doing business with this government.

Now that biblical references are de rigueur in the party, it seemed to many that the moneylenders really had taken over the temple.

The rule changes bounced through the conference this week removing the right of Labour members to determine the party’s policies at the conference mean the event is now little more than a trade fair and media platform for speeches from the leader and ministers.

And it takes a remarkable feat of ingratiating contortion to consider Gordon Brown’s first leader’s speech as setting “a new tone” and offering “the possibility of a different kind of Labour government”, as Jon Cruddas and others have claimed.

While warm words of praise were bestowed on the NHS and public servants, outside in the real world we learned that in order to save the budgets of some primary care trusts, Bupa was to vet whether patients should or should not receive the treatment recommended by their consultants. Bupa will be paid from the savings made by preventing operations.

Similarly, at an almost surreal fringe meeting at the conference, we heard from the government’s adviser on welfare reform, the obviously suitably qualified venture capitalist David Freud, that a similar principle was to be applied to getting people off benefit and into work. While 40,000 jobs are to be cut at the Department for Work and Pensions, private sector companies are to be given the role of forcing the long-term unemployed into work. The firms will make their profits from the benefits saved.

Meanwhile, despite the declaration of a new social housing programme, behind the scenes immense pressure was being applied to delegates to ensure that what was possibly the last resolution ever to be debated at a Labour party conference actually reversed existing conference policy, which calls for councils to be treated fairly in the distribution of resources for building houses.

On the morning we hear of the children of eastern European migrants being racially abused on our streets, how does Gordon Brown’s slogan of “British jobs for British workers” sit with those urging “a more positive message on migration”?

Playing tactical games over the timing of the election also reflects an approach to politics where policies are too often determined for party advantage, and even the stability of the government is risked for the same reason.

Caution suggests current poll leads result more from a combined sense of relief at Blair going and the rejection of an incompetent, passé alternative than they do from a belief in the government being committed to real change. John Major and 1992 come to mind.

The scenes of Buddhist monks in Burma losing their lives in a struggle for democracy are a stark reminder that democratic politics should be about more than developing subtler forms of spin and party game-playing.