lobbying | ukwatch.net

Tesco and BAA coy over lobbying in the face of evidence

tim — Mon, 19 May 2008 15:40:44 +0000

The penultimate evidence session of the current Parliamentary inquiry into lobbying offered a strange mix of obfuscation and revelation. In the first of two separate sessions were representatives of three of the UK’s most powerful companies; Lucy Neville-Rolfe for Tesco, Tom Kelly for BAA and Chris Brinsmead for AstraZeneca.

The Committee of MPs, said its chair Tony Wright, had called them in to find out what they get up to in terms of lobbying, and how they would feel about transparency regulations to open up the world of lobbying to greater public scrutiny.

The next hour and twenty minutes of questions and answers had a familiarity to it, certainly from the point of view of the Committee and anyone who’d listened to previous sessions with lobbyists. Answers were guarded, questions were side stepped and the witnesses were defensive. This despite Tony Wright’s reassurance that lobbying could be seen as a good thing, and a warning at the top of the session for the three to avoid being ‘coy’ in their responses. “Don’t come here to lobby us,” Wright advised. “I want you to tell us like it is”.

Many would be hard pushed to recognise the picture then painted by the witnesses. All three, it seems, were working not for profit, but for the public good, whether it was working to prevent climate change or helping the Government to encourage more science students. According to Neville-Rolfe, Tesco has a ‘dialogue’ with Government (it’s all about dialogue) to explain what they think should be done to help Britain. “It’s a win, win” for Tesco and the country, she said. Similarly Brinsmead saw his drug company working “to the same ends” as the NHS.

Given this ‘constructive dialogue’, one wonders why the Association of British Pharmaceutical Industry, of which Brinsmead is the President, needed to draw up a lobbying ‘battle’ plan, which Tony Wright had got his hands on. In it, according to Wright, the ABPI talked about ‘deploying ground troops’ to ‘weaken political and professional defences’, after which it planned to ‘follow through with high precision strikes on specific regulatory enclaves in Whitehall and Brussels.’ Quite a different picture of lobbying.

On the issue of the revolving door and privileged access to decision-makers, Tom Kelly, who was Tony Blair’s spokesman at No10 until he moved to BAA, suggested that MPs were vastly overstating his role in Government and therefore his access and influence. In response to a question about the size of his contacts book, Kelly – the man who replaced Alastair Campbell - replied that they extended as far as the press officers of Government departments.

All of which led Tony Wright to say, at the beginning of the next session, that it had been quite difficult to work out how central lobbying is to these three companies. The second session heard from John Sauven of Greenpeace, Owen Espley of Friends of the Earth, and Tim Hancock of Amnesty.

Information flowed much more freely during this next hour, with evidence of lobbying by BAA, Tesco and the nuclear industry all under the spotlight. The previous assertion by the corporate representatives - that open dialogue with Government was necessary for better public policy making - was also put into some doubt by Espley describing the lobbying activities of the Confederation of British Industry.

In July 2005, he explained, Friends of the Earth requested details of meetings between the CBI and the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) that had taken place shortly after the last General Election. At the time, Friends of the Earth was concerned that the CBI had been making exaggerated claims over the costs of environmental regulation, claims the Government seemed to be taking at face value. Requests by Friends of the Earth under the Freedom of Information Act of details of meetings between the CBI and the then DTI had been refused.

At the beginning of May 2008, however, the Information Tribunal ruled that the government should disclose the information, stating: "In our view, there is a strong public interest in understanding how lobbyists, particularly those given privileged access, are attempting to influence government so that other supporting or counterbalancing views can be put to government to help ministers and civil servants make best policy." Clearly making the case for lobbying transparency regulation.

Had lobbying by the nuclear industry had an impact on the Government’s decision to support a new nuclear energy programme, the witnesses were asked by Gordon Prentice MP. John Sauven pointed to the extraordinary lobbying power of the nuclear industry just from the revolving door. Former MPs, MEPs and Ministers Jack Cunningham, Richard Caborn, Ian McCartney, Brian Wilson and Alan Donnelly are all now employed by the nuclear industry with obvious influence. By contrast, Sauven went on, the first public consultation on nuclear power had been rejected by the High Court for being deeply flawed.

One of the cases of improper lobbying Sauven recounted was the collusion that went on between the Department for Transport (DfT) and BAA over the consultation on Heathrow expansion, where the two bodies, having made their decision, then attempted to reverse engineer the outcome. This “almost fraudulent” process only came to light after sifting through a lot of requests under the Freedom of Information Act. It was only from this information that concerned MPs and campaigners were able to piece together just how embedded and how influential BAA was in the DfT.

The obvious imbalance in lobbying resources between local community groups and companies like Tesco was also raised by Espley. Quoting a report by Friends of the Earth into how supermarkets get their way in planning decisions (PDF), he described a case in Dartford where developers lobbied to change the area’s Local Plan to include specific proposals which would allow for a new Tesco. The Plan was duly changed. It was only after a Public Inquiry that permission for the new development was withdrawn, the proposals “having not been the subject of full statutory examination” in the words of the Planning Inspector.

Espley asked the Committee to remember the local communities “meeting on a wet Tuesday evening in their community centre”, without the small army of lawyers, planning specialists, PR consultants and seemingly unlimited funds Tesco and others employ. People who bother to get involved in civic matters need to know that the system is working for them too, he said. It’s not a case of corporate versus community – none of the witnesses were anti-business - merely that for the public to have faith in decision-making, there needs to be more transparency.

The sum of these two sessions finally brought some clarity to the inquiry. Back in January Paul Flynn MP, voiced his frustration with witnesses from the lobbying industry: “We’re not really getting to the truth on this,” he said. This week’s complete lack of candor from the corporates – coupled with hard evidence from experienced NGOs - exposed the Committee to some truths and the urgent need for transparency in lobbying.

The latest session can be watch on Parliament TV (available for 28 days after the session). A transcript of the session will be available on the Public Administration Select Committee's Inquiry into Lobbying webpage.

Unhealthy Influence

eddie — Sat, 10 May 2008 13:41:56 +0000

As MPs on Thursday question former Health Minister, Lord Warner, over his lobbying activities, the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency (ALT)[i] calls for the system for monitoring the revolving door between Westminster, Whitehall and business to be radically tightened.

Lord Warner, who currently holds paid jobs with 7 private sector companies, many in the health field, has been called to give evidence to the current inquiry into lobbying alongside former Sports Minister Richard Caborn MP, who is a paid consultant to nuclear services company Amec[ii], and Stephen Haddrill, Director General of lobbying body the Association of British Insurers (Thursday 8 May 2008).[iii]

Lord (Norman) Warner was until December 2006 Health Minister with responsibility for NHS delivery, which included overseeing the troubled NHS IT programme. A member of the House of Lords, his current, paid private sector jobs include:

· Non-executive Chairman of UK HealthGateway, a company which aims to facilitate private contractors' access to NHS contracts

· Adviser to Xansa, a technology firm, and Byotrol, an antimicrobial company, which both sell services or products to the NHS

· Adviser to DLA Piper, which advised Ministers on the £12billion NHS IT project

· Part-time adviser to professional services company, Deloitte

· Adviser to private equity investment group, Apax Partners.

Lord Warner is just one of a number of former Department of Health officials to have recently gained employment in the private sector. These include:

· Former Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt landed two paid jobs with Boots and a company that owns 25 private hospitals earlier this year.

· Former Health Minister Alan Milburn MP is a paid member of the Lloyds pharmacy's Healthcare advisory panel, and Pepsico’s nutritional advisory board.

· Former Public Health Minister Melanie Johnson became an advisor to the lobbying organisation, the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry in 2006.

While all Ministers have to consult the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments prior to taking a job in the private sector, the system has come in for much criticism for reasons including the limited time banning them from lobbying Government, and the lack of checks on whether former ministers and senior civil servants are following the advice of the committee regarding restrictions on lobbying.

Prof David Miller of SpinWatch, a member of the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency said: “There is a now a real need for the public to know in whose interests officials are working - the public’s or those of the businesses who hire them. Across all sectors, the revolving door is clearly out of control and a longer ‘cooling off’ period urgently needs to be introduced. If we are to protect services like the NHS, we need tougher rules to ensure that companies are not given privileged access to Government and that any lobbying by them is out in the open.”

For further information please contact Tamasin Cave on 07973 424 015; tamasin@SpinWatch.org. Alliance for Lobbying Transparency website: www.lobbyingtransparency.org

*involNotes to editors*

[i] ALT is an alliance of civil society groups who are concerned about the growing influence of lobbying on decision-making in the UK. It is campaigning for the regulation of lobbyists, and improved ethics regulation for politicians and public officials to raise standards and restore public trust in decision-making. www.lobbyingtransparency.org

ALT’s key demands are:

· A mandatory public register of lobbyists, with full financial disclosure

· Enforceable ethics rules for all lobbyists

· Enhanced rules on ethics for politicians and public officials on the so-called ‘revolving-door’ syndrome between lobbyists and public bodies; and to halt privileged access to decision makers.

Current members of the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency are: Action Aid; Campaign Against Arms Trade; Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom; Corporate Watch; Enough’s Enough; Friends of the Earth; Greenpeace; National Union of Journalists; Pesticides Action Network; Platform; SPEAK Network; SpinWatch; Unlock Democracy; War on Want; and World Development Movement.

[ii] According to the Register of Member’s Interests, Richard Caborn MP is paid up to £75,000 for his role as a consultant to Amec.

[iii] The current Parliamentary inquiry into lobbying is being conducted by the Public Administration Select Committee. For details, visit: http://www.parliament.uk/parliamentary_committees/public_administration_...

Legal Blow to Secret Government Lobbying

tim — Tue, 06 May 2008 22:04:39 +0000

The Department of Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) has lost an appeal to keep secret its meetings with business lobbying group the Confederation of British Industry. The case has dragged on for three years and originally concerned secret meetings between the CBI and BERR, which was formerly known as the Department of Trade and Industry.

Friends of the Earth asked for information about a series of meetings between Digby Jones, then boss of the CBI and Alan Johnson, DTI minister, as well as a corporate jolly for senior civil servants and CBI staff. Last year the Information Commissioner ordered the DTI to release most of the information requested.

But BERR, including Minister of State for Trade and Investment Digby Lord Jones of Birmingham - previously known as Digby Jones, boss of the CBI - appealed the decision to the Information Tribunal.

The Tribunal ruled yesterday that most of the information requested by FoE should indeed be released.

Phil Michaels, head of legal at Friends of the Earth, said: "The Tribunal has recognised the strong public interest in members of the public having access to lobbying records and has recognised that transparency is particularly important where a group like the CBI has privileged access to Government to push their views. It is crucial that the Government now changes its outmoded culture of secrecy."

A spokesman for BERR said: "We believe that there are circumstances where it is in the public interest to protect the 'thinking space' necessary for good public policy formulation and to enable the Department to have a private discourse with external organisations."

The judgement reads in part: "In our view, there is a strong public interest in understanding how lobbyists, particularly those given privileged access, are attempting to influence government so that other supporting or counterbalancing views can be put to government to help ministers and civil servants make best policy. Also there is a strong public interest in ensuring that there is not, and it is seen that there is not, any impropriety."

BERR claimed that making such meetings public would have a chilling effect on meetings between it and lobby groups. The Tribunal said it viewed such possible effects with sceptism.

BERR has 28 days to comply with the ruling or to take an appeal to the High Court.

The victory is a big filip for the wider movement, led by the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency, to force the UK government to introduce more transparency into its dealings with lobbying groups. ALT is calling for compulsory registration of lobby groups and a record of their meetings with politicians and civil servants.

The full judgement is available as a 44 page pdf - follow the link below.
http://www.informationtribunal.gov.uk/Documents/decisions/DBERRvIC_FOEfi...

Open Stormont? Lobbying Transparency for Northern Ireland

Ellie Keen — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 08:56:42 +0000

Lobbying in Northern Ireland has not developed as rapidly as in Scotland in part because of the suspension of the assembly between 2002 and 2007. But the lobbyists are certainly picking up the scent of lucrative contracts now the Assembly is back in action. Journalists too are beginning to see that lobbying is a potential news story as the Belfast Telegraph – not renowned for its anti establishment reportage – helped to claim the first ministerial scalp in the history of the Assembly when Ian Paisley Jr was forced to resign over a lobbying scandal.

As a result, the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency (ALT) found a receptive audience at a busy debate in Belfast on the 3^rd of April. Organised as a fringe meeting at the Annual Delegate Meeting of the National Union of Journalists, the event was co-sponsored by the Northern Ireland Government Affairs Group (NIGAG) is the lobbyists lobby group formed in 1999 following the Good Friday Agreement.

David Gordon of the Belfast Telegraph addressed the meeting by telling the story of the role of investigative journalism in the downfall of Ian Paisley Jr. In effect operating as a lobbyist for key business interests Paisley was forced out from his ministerial post in February 2008. This welcome reminder of the power of the press to unearth corruption and make it pay was followed by the Telegraph launching its 'Open Stormont' campaign – another welcome sign of democratic politics in the North. The five proposals of the campaign are:

A review of the Assembly's current approach to publishing MLA pay and expenses, focusing on the much more detailed disclosures issued by the Scottish Parliament.
That MLAs should publicly declare in the register of interests details of family members on their payrolls. This reform has been favoured by the Assembly's Standards and Privileges Committee, but there are concerns that it will not take effect until 2009.

The Belfast Telegraph sees no reason why it should not be introduced immediately on a voluntary basis by the parties, pending a formal rule change.

A review of constituency office rental arrangements, with independent rental valuations for offices that have been rented from family members and political parties.

This review should also focus on phasing out the practice of allowing MLAs to claim rental expenses for premises owned by relatives - bringing Stormont into line with the House of Commons.

A pledge from all the Stormont parties that the secrecy surrounding their donations will finally end in 2010, with no further slippage on the target date.
A commitment by all the Assembly parties that there will be no dilution of the Freedom of Information Act.[1]

All of these would help to open up Stormont, and the Telegraph and its investigation editor Gordon are to be applauded for helping to bring a little light and transparency to the Northern Ireland. Given the role of lobbying in the Paisley affair, it might also be wise to add a lobbying register to the list of demands.

Back at the fringe meeting, lobbyist Will Chambre was representing the Northern Ireland Government Affairs Group, the lobbyists lobby group. Chambre was there to argue against transparency and in defence of the lobbying industry. He seemed a little nervous and somewhat hesitant making his case – subverting the traditional image of the lobbyist as smooth talking fixer. Chambre undermined his case further by his nerve wracked delivery of the view that it was the ‘quality of the message’ and not the ‘size of the back hander’ which was important in lobbying.

In the debate that followed, the ALT suggestion that lobbyists should be regulated was challenged from the floor by one of the prime movers behind NIGAG Glyn Roberts (Vice chair of NIGAG, formerly of the Federation of Small Business and now lobbyist for the NI Independent Retail Trade Association). Roberts revealed that NIGAG had investigated such an idea when it set up and it was informed by counsel that a body like NIGAG would meet too many legal challenges to have a legally binding system of penalties. Roberts in effect made the point for campaigners for transparency since, as I pointed out in my response, this is exactly why binding regulation needs to be introduced by a law making body such as the Northern Ireland Assembly. The Open Stormont campaign is a sign that Northern Ireland is currently leading the charge on transparency in these islands. The experience in Dublin. London, Cardiff and Edinburgh is that there is little appetite for transparency amongst the political class and it takes a scandal of the kind that has engulfed Ian Paisley Jr. (and latterly his father the outgoing First Minister of Northern Ireland) to move opinion in favour of effective action.[2]

Chambre learned his lobbying at the knee of one of the key fixers of the Westminster lobby scene – Doug Smith the conservative party member who runs All Party Parliamentary Groups and a string of lobby firms. Smith once famously defended lobbyist payments to MPs by saying ‘MPs can't be expected to give us the detail as a labour of love, can they?’ Chambre runs Chambre Public Affairs a lobby company that does disclose its clients in the register of the Association of Professional Political Consultants (APPC). But they don’t disclose how much they are paid by GlaxoSmithkline for example. Nor do they tell us the techniques they use. Do they for example use the third party technique in which respectable sounding organisations – such as patient groups for example – are used as a ventriloquist’s dummy to mouth the policy positions preferred by the corporation that funds them?

Or do they get involved in setting up fake front groups with names suggesting a disinterested approach such as institute of this or foundation for that? We simply don’t know the answer to either question, but it is noticeable that along with the big pharma clients Chambre also works for a number of patient groups. Chambre do not disclose which pharma companies fund their patient group clients. However, according to company disclosures, we can tell that Chambre works for

Sanofi Pasteur MSD who fund the British Heart Foundation and Jo’s Trust, both clients of Chambre PA[3]
Lilly (part of Eli Lilly) which fund Rethink also a client of Chambre.[4]
GlaxoSmithkline who fund the British Heart Foundation and Jo’s Trust both also clients.[5]
Boehringer Ingelheim who fund the British Heart Foundation also a client.[6]

We have no means of knowing what the relationship is here or whether there is a conflict of interest – another reason why transparency is necessary. There is a further point which is that Chambre also work for Northern Health & Social Services Board which is responsible for both health and social care in the north of Northern Ireland. This leads to potential conflict of interest as both the patient groups and the pharma companies which pay Chambre have a vested interest in influencing the behaviour of the Board in relation to say Autism or mental health, both areas where Chambre clients have interests.

Notes

[1] David Gordon ‘Belfast Telegraph to push for transparency in the Assembly Belfast Telegraph, Wednesday, March 19, 2008 http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/article3532658.ece

[2] See David Gordon ‘Paisley Jnr must reveal full extent of lobbying for developer: SDLP’, Belfast Telegraph , September 20, 2007; David Gordon Civil service concerns at Paisley jnr lobbying Belfast Telegraph, Friday, January 18, 2008 http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/article3348975.ece ; David Gordon Few tears as Paisley Jnr finally falls on his sword But resignation is not end of the matter, vow enemies of the fallen Junior Minister Belfast Telegraph, Tuesday, February 19, 2008 http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/politics/article3445125.ece; ‘Role of FOI legislation in Minister’s downfall’ Investigations correspondent David Gordon argues that the Freedom of Information Act played a key role in bringing down the junior minister Belfast Telegraph, Tuesday, February 19, 2008 http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/politics/article3445136.ece; David Gordon ‘Paisley is facing Commons inquiry: First Minister's payments to son to be investigated’ Belfast Telegraph Thursday, February 21, 2008 http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/politics/article3452962.ece; David Gordon ‘Paisley linked to son's lobbying’ Belfast Telegraph, 17/4/2008

[3] http://www.spmsd.co.uk/doc.asp?catid=380&docid=705

[4] http://www.lilly.co.uk/Nitro/newTemplates/general/Content_IT_LBCT.jsp?page=1471

[5] http://www.gsk.com/responsibility/cr_issues/patient-groups/uk-patient-organisations.htm

[6] http://www.boehringer-ingelheim.co.uk/medicines/patient_group_support.html

Secrecy and Corporate Dominance -

Ellie Keen — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 19:30:30 +0000

A study on the composition and transparency of European Commission Expert Groups

Executive Summary (the rest of the report can be found here)

The European Commission’s Expert Groups play an influential role in shaping policies at EU level in the crucial early stages. They are involved in drafting and commenting on EU legislation covering awide range of policy issues, including, for example, energy and climate change, and the import/export of dangerous chemical substances. The composition of the Expert Groups, and the interests that are represented,will to a large degree, determine the outcome of the consultation. The input provided by such Expert Groups often forms the backbone of the Commission’s proposals and through a process
that often involves very little change, eventually become adopted as European legislation.(1)

For example, currently, Expert Groups controlled by lobbyists representing commercial interests are playing a key role influencing critical policy-decisions such as the EU definition of ‘clean coal’ (a possible ‘alternative’ in order to reduce CO2 emissions) and whether/how the EU should promote biotechnology or agrofuels.

So far, in spite of this crucial role, very little has been written about Expert Groups; their place in the decision-making process, their influence, composition and methods of operation.

It is clear from theCommission’s own Register of ExpertGroups that there are more than1,200 Expert Groups advising the EuropeanCommission, but the exact number is likely tobe far higher. The lack of transparency concerning their number, composition and meetings means that these powerful consultative bodies are able to operate away from the glare ofpublic scrutiny.

The Commission’s online register of Expert Groups has existed since 2005, but it fails to provide the names of the individual members and the organisations they represent, making it impossible to assess the balance in representation. The register moreover is neither up-to-date nor complete.

Therefore, concerned about improving the democratic quality of EU policy-making, ALTER-EU has conducted an analysis of a sample of 44 Expert Groups. The 44 Expert Groups were chosen based on a range of key policy areas identified by the ALTER-EU member groups carrying out the analysis as being of particular importance due both to the EU’s legislative role and the need for the wider public interest to be reflected in policy-making.(2) These areas can be categorised as environment, energy, agriculture, consumers, health, water and biotechnology. In testing the legitimacy of Expert Groups according to theirmake-up, the analysis only focused on Expert Groups in which industry was represented and excluded those composed of only government representatives.(3)

The aim of this research is to provide an initial indication of the extent to which the composition of Expert Groups in key public interest policy areas provides a balanced representation of concerned stakeholders, or whether lack of transparency has allowed for certain interest groups to dominate and thereby benefit from privileged access to decision-making processes within European institutions.

As most of the information needed for analysing these questions is not in the Commission’s register, nor anywhere else in the public domain, formal requests to the European Commission were made using the EU “access-to-documents” directive (1049/2001).

The aim was to obtain the membership lists, reports and meeting minutes for these 44 Experts Groups, data which according to the “access-to-documents”directive should be available to EU citizens upon request. So additionally, this allowed an assessment of the effectiveness of this directive as a means of providing the publicwith policy-related information.

Unfortunately, this experience was not positive. In total, information was provided on 29 of the 44 expert groups investigated, with full details provided for just 14 of the groups (see also table 1). In many cases, no explanation was offered as to why the missing data had not been provided.

While in 60% of the cases the European Commission released the names of the Expert Groups’ member organisations (25 of 42)(4), only in 43% (18 out of 42) of the cases were the names of the individual members released in addition to the organisation names. The Commission used a range of flawed arguments for withholding the names of Expert Groups’ members, including “commercial interests” and “personal data protection.” Both the European Ombudsman and the European Court of First Instance have last year rejected the Commission’s arguments for withholding lobbyist names and in unmistakable terms called upon the Commission to disclose names of lobbyist.

The Commission’s failure to provide us with the requested information obviously also constituted amajor hurdle for our research project, reducing the sample of expert groups whose composition we could include in our analysis.

Basing conclusions on these sample findings, two major shortcomings with the EU decision-making process emerge. First is a serious lack of transparency surrounding key bodies involved in decisions-making and a very worrying degree of secrecy with the Commission seemingly reluctant to provide full and accurate information on the nature, composition and workings of Expert Groups. The problems encountered in obtaining relevant information amount to a systematic failure by the Commission to be open and transparent.

Another transparency failure confirmed by ALTER-EU’s research is that the Commission’s online register of Expert Groups is seriously incomplete and outdated. To add insult to injury, some of the Expert Groups that are listed in the register do not actually exist. They are included because one of the Commission’s Directorates-General (DGs) asked for and got permission for establishing the group and a budget for its functioning, but the group was never actually established.

As table 1 shows, the composition of a significant number of Expert Groups in our sample proved to be seriously unbalanced. In a range of key public interest policy areas, Expert Groups appear to be dominated by representatives fromthe business sector. These findings raise serious concerns over the democratic quality of decision-making within the European Commission. On a number of pressing policy issues, such as biotechnology, textiles and climate change for instance, the European Commission is formulating European policies based almost exclusively on the advice of those stakeholders who have a direct commercial interest and whose judgment might not be themost objective ormost suited to serving the common good.

Despite covering only a small sample of the Commission’s expert groups, these cases of industry dominance are not only very serious in their own right: the findings are likely to be indicative of a broader problemwhich the Commissionmust take determined action to address. This could start by undertaking a broad review to identify which Expert Groups are controlled by industry (or by any other special interests), and result in dissolving Expert Groups with a seriously problematic unbalanced composition. Strong safeguardmechanisms against privileged access and unbalanced composition of Expert Groups must be developed. To help avoiding corporate capture of Expert Groups the Commission must provide full transparency around the creation of new Expert Groups and establishing an open and fair process for selecting Expert Group members.

In summer 2007, the European Commission on several occasions made clear its intention to improve transparency around the Expert Groups. For example, in June 2007, during the “third joint Parliamentary meeting on the future of Europe” EU Commission President Barroso said that a list of the organisations represented on the Expert Groups, as well as the names of the individuals that participate, would become publicly available in 2008.(5) This statement was repeated by EU Commission Vice president Kallas during a hearing in the European Parliament.(6) Such statements are certainly encouraging and need to be followed by swift action, not only to provide this basic level of transparency but also to prevent commercial lobbyists fromdominating the membership of Expert Groups.

It is clearly necessary, given the strong influence of Expert Groups, for the European Commission to make changes in response to the situation uncovered by this research. In order to adhere to the EU’s own declarations on ‘good governance’ and ‘participatory democracy’,(7)

ALTER-EU recommends that the European Commission acts immediately to:

1. Disclose on internet themembership and key documents of all Expert Groups;
2. Ensure full transparency around the creation of new Expert Groups;
3. Ensure an open and fair process for selecting the Expert Groups’membership;
4. Devise strong safeguard mechanisms against privileged access and unbalanced composition of Expert Groups;
5. Dissolve all Expert Groups that are controlled by industry or by any other special interests;
6. Conduct a broad review on the composition of all Expert Groups.

Table 1

Overview of the findings:

On the effectiveness of the Access to Documents Directive

• In 34% of all cases, the European Commission failed to provide any information about the Expert Groups;
• In 34% of all cases the European Commission only provided partial information.
• The Commission only provided a complete and satisfactory response in 32% of the cases.
• In only 36% of the cases the European Commission provided information within the prescribed 15 working days.
• In only 43% of the cases the European Commission provided names of organisations and individuals that were represented in Expert Groups.

On the composition of the expert groups (based on the scant information provided by the Commission).

• Over 25% of Expert Groups appear to be controlled by corporate interests:more than half of all theirmembers (including governments) are industry representatives.
• In 64% of the Expert Groups being studied, business interests appear to be over-represented: industry representativesmake up more than 50% of the non-Commission and non-government members.
• Only 32% of the Expert Groups sampled appear to have amore balanced allocation of stakeholders.
• One Expert Group (4%) was unbalanced in favour of NGOs.

Table 2:

The Corporate-Controlled Expert Groups revealed by the survey:

1. Competitiveness in Biotechnology Advisory Groupwith Industry and Academia (CBAG)
2. High Level Group on Textiles and Clothing
3. Supervisory Group of the voluntary commitments of carmanufacturers
to reduce CO2 emissions
4. Informing Consumer BehaviourWorking Group
5. Coal Combustion Clean Coal and efficient coal technologies, CO2 capture
6. Alternative fuels
7. Changement Climatique et Industrie

Notes

1 Between 1986 and 1995, 80%of the Commission proposals got adopted – Simon Hix, ‘The Political System of the European Union’, Palgrave 1999, p. 60
2 Corporate Europe Observatory, Friends of the Earth Europe, Food & Water Watch and Spinwatch
3 For more information about the methodology for our research project, see page 10-12.
4 Two out of the 44 groups investigated have never been convoked and never had any members. Consequently, we do not count them here.
5 See MEP Jens-Peter Bonde’s reaction to this announcement. http://www.bonde.com/index.php/bonde_uk/article/bonde24241
6 Discussion on the European Transparency Initiative in the European Parliament’s AFCO committee, 16 July 2007. See also: http://www.bonde.com/index.phtml?sid=487&aid=24241
7 The White Paper on European Governance (latest version: 25.07.2001) proposes opening up the policymaking process to get more people and organisations involved in shaping and delivering EU policy. TheWhite Paper promotes greater openness, accountability and responsibility for all those involved. The Commission underlines its intention to “reduce the risk of the policymakers just listening to one side of the argument or of particular groups getting privileged access […].”The importance of involving civil society organisations in consultation processes is explicitly stressed.

"The public has no right to know"

tim — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 12:52:37 +0000

We're now about halfway through the Parliamentary inquiry into lobbying- the first in the UK for 17 years. When it was announced, Peter Bingle (head of lobbying firm Bell Pottinger Public Affairs) made it known what he thought of the inquiry: "There is no point rehearsing in public the view that we welcome the inquiry. We don't," he said. "The real issue is that the industry needs a public voice with the ability to make a convincing case and to disarm the doubters."

Bingle got the opportunity to make his case during the latest inquiry session. He was called to give evidence alongside lobbyist Mike Granatt of Luther Pendragon, both as representatives of lobbying firms opposed to greater transparency and the disclosure of clients. In a separate session, MPs also heard from Eben Black, a lobbyist with law firm DLA Piper and Richard Schofield of the Law Society. For lobbyists opposed to greater regulation, Bingle and Granatt made a good case for the introduction of transparency rules.

Both alleged (and were backed up later by Black) that the current system of self-regulation was not fit for purpose. The code of conduct operated by the Association of Professional Political Consultants (APPC)- which, in a bid to increase transparency, requires members to disclose their clients on a register - was regularly being breached, they said. Granatt suggested that lobbying firms that didn't want to reveal certain clients merely set up separate companies which weren't members of the APPC. "It’s a slippery business," noted MP Gordon Prentice.

Much of the session was devoted to the ethical conduct of lobbyists. Reputation was everything in this business said Bingle, claiming that Lord Bell (chairman of Bell Pottinger, pictured) wouldn't allow them to do anything that might damage their reputation. He went as far as saying that it was because Bell Pottinger operated to the highest standards that they were the biggest lobbying firm in the UK. Paul Flynn MP wasn't impressed: "You've worked for mass murders, racists, people who've oppressed their own people...Doesn't the public have a right to know who your clients are?" he asked. No, replied Bingle, "the public has no right to know." In contrast, Eben Black advocated the introduction of a mandatory register of lobbyists and their clients held by Parliament, it being the only way to supersede the current rules for lawyers on client disclosure. This he said was superior to today's voluntary system, which isn't monitored and includes no sanctions.

Former lobbyist and member of the select committee Charles Walker MP then attacked Black's suggestion of transparency regulations with some now well-rehearsed arguments from the industry. 1) How can you have a register of lobbyists when it's so hard to define what constitutes lobbying? Black came back with a very neat definition of 'lobbying'. 2) The financial burden of regulation would squeeze out smaller operators in the industry. Black again: "What financial resources would we need to put our names and clients on a register?" 3) More openness and transparency would lead not to greater public trust but further scandal and public cynicism. Black, a former Sun journalist, disagreed: "If there was more openness, there would be fewer stories," he said.

Black obviously made an impression on Walker unlike Mike Granatt who he suggested had become "rather toxic in the private sector" since his resignation over the news that he had lied to journalists while spokesman for client Michael Martin, Speaker of the House of Commons. At the end of the session Walker approached Black and said: "If I was the Speaker, I would have hired you. Well done."

EU Lobbying - Open Letter to Barrosso

eddie — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 21:03:03 +0000

To: Commission President José Manuel Barroso

Cc: Commission Vice-Presidents Siim Kallas and Margot Wallström, Secretary General Catherine Day

From: Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation (ALTER-EU)

Date: Brussels, 13 February 2008

Subject: Implementation of European Commission lobbying register

Dear President Barroso,

We have grave concerns over the way the Commission is currently developing the lobbying
register that you announced in the 2007 communication: Follow-up to the Green Paper
‘European Transparency Initiative’.

As you may know, the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation (ALTER-EU)
is a broad coalition of over 160 public interest groups, trade unions, academics and public affairs
firms, advocating, among others, effective measures that will allow public scrutiny of EU
decision-making.

When we recently met with your services to present ALTER-EU’s benchmarks for the EU lobbying
register (attached to this letter), we learned that in the Commission’s current specifications for
the register, two crucial pieces of information are missing: the register will not include the names
of individual lobbyists and it will lack meaningful information on how much money is spent on
lobbying.

When Vice-President Kallas presented the European Transparency Initiative, he underlined that
increased transparency on lobbying will help ensure that an Abramoff-style scandal never happens
in the EU. We wish to alert you that with the very limited information requirements currently
proposed by your services, the register would not permit journalists and others to expose such
types of lobbying scandals.

We do not understand why your services wish to exclude lobbyists’ names from the register.
Existing lobbying transparency registers in the US and Canada contain the names of individual
lobbyists, as does the register of the European Parliament. If the new EU lobbing transparency
register does not allow the identification of individual lobbyists, it cannot serve as a tool to
investigate ‘conflicts of interest’ and ‘revolving doors’. Leaving out lobbyists’ names would put
the credibility of the European Transparency Initiative at stake.

We also wish to alert you that financial disclosure in broad ranges of € 50,000 or – even worse –
flexible ranges of 10% of the total lobbying income of a lobby firm¹, could allow big lobbying
funders to hide within seemingly wide strategic alliances. For example: a company spends
€ 50,000 on a lobby campaign and enlists two other companies who symbolically support that
campaign with € 1,000 each. The system would not distinguish between large and small donors
within the strategic alliance, and the register would thus fail to provide transparency. The US
register shows that it is possible for lobby firms, with little administrative effort, to report their
lobbying income related to each of their clients every six months, rounded off to the nearest US
$ 10,000 (which compares to bands of € 7,500 ).

If the EU register will not answer simple questions like “who are the lobbyists?” or “how much
money is spent on lobbying by whom?”, it would be useless.

Three years have passed since the Commission first announced a lobbying transparency register.
As EU Member States are in the process of ratifying the Lisbon Treaty, we feel it is more
important than ever for the Commission to show its commitment to deliver greater transparency in
EU decision making. We hope that you will instruct your services to go forward and launch a
register that will list the names of lobbyists, the interests they represent, and the finances involved.
These are the three most basic, objective data for public scrutiny.

ALTER-EU has been broadly supportive to the European Transparency Initiative so far. We wish
to continue supporting your efforts to deliver greater transparency, and thus hope that you will
ensure the register prepared by your services will meet basic transparency benchmarks. Needless
to say, if the Commission register were to be practically useless for transparency purposes, we
would have to reconsider our support.

On the basis of our recent discussion with your services, we would like to meet with you as soon
as possible.

Yours sincerely,

The ALTER-EU Steering Committee:

- Paul de Clerck (Friends of the Earth Europe)
– William Dinan (Spinwatch)
– Marc Gruber (European Federation of Journalists)
– Ulrich Müller (LobbyControl)
– Jorgo Riss (Greenpeace European Unit)
– Erik Wesselius (Corporate Europe Observatory)

The Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation (ALTER-EU)

www.alter-eu.org / info@alter-eu.org

1. With an annual lobbying income of around € 2 mn in 2007 for a medium sized lobby firmt, a range of 10% would imply that
each category would represent € 200,000 . Consequently, lobby contracts for an amount of € 5,000 would be in the same category
as contracts for € 190,000 , rendering the information useless.

Time to Shed Light on Lobbying

Ellie Keen — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 01:30:35 +0000

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 '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. 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 2005. 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. Only a mandatory system requiring disclosure of clients, fees and the issues on which they lobby can correct this. The trend on lobbying throughout western countries is all one way. Lobbying rules are being introduced –for example in Poland and Hungary and at the European Commission - or tightened - in the US, Canada and Australia.

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. As a result groups like the Association of Professional Political Consultants can never represent more than a fraction of the field, meaning their self regulatory approach simply cannot work.

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 . In addition two of Lighterlife’s directors were also directors of TOAST. TOAST 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 APPC would do nothing to solve such problems. The lobby firm involved with TOAST is an APPC member and it discloses in the APPC register that it has TOAST and Lighterlife as clients, but not the relation between them. The case of TOAST also shows why it is important not only to regulate lobbying firms but also campaigning groups and even charities.

One of the key lobbyists who encouraged big business support for Labour and was subsequently elevated to the Lords was Dennis Stevenson. One of his first acts on becoming the chair of the board at Pearson in the 1990s was to stop political donations. Instead funding was channelled to think thanks to lobby for policy outcomes. This was part of a major expansion of think tanks across the narrowed political spectrum with Demos, IPPR, the Social Market Foundation and others advocating the business friendly policies favoured by their funders. The think tanks are able to get close to ministers and key figures at party conferences and other events – to act as lobbyists in other words. Any measures to address privileged access and lobbying transparency must include these kinds of policy actors, as well as commercial consultants, in-house lobbyists and campaigning NGOs.

These problems 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 last 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 and enhanced ethics regulation. No amount of self-serving rhetoric from the lobbyists can disguise that.

David Miller is Professor of Sociology at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow and co-founder of Spinwatch.org. His Latest book (with William Dinan), A Century of Spin: How Public Relations Became the Cutting Edge of Corporate Power has just been published by Pluto. He gives evidence before the Public Administration Select Committee on Thursday 24^th January

The Bosses Want to Buy Politics Wholesale

Ellie Keen — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 01:48:34 +0000

When corruption stories emerge, they are usually presented as being about individual rotten apples. While a few together create a general atmosphere of sleaze, there is always the search for the specific bribe.

It is occasionally the case that one business boss may pay a politician for a specific favour. That in a sense is retail corruption. But most of the corruption around access to politicians is in fact wholesale.

Behind the brown envelopes stand a network of big businesses spending huge sums on lobbying for their interests. Lobbying is well organised corruption.

Lobbyists hate being called lobbyists. “Public affairs consultant”, “government relations adviser”, “political communications strategist” are the preferred respectable introductions in polite company.

It is a big business in itself. There are over 50 such firms dotted around in the streets around the House of Commons, with an estimated turnover of £10 million a year.

In addition, across the European Union (EU) there are some 15,000 people working as lobbyists over European legislation. A personal favourite is the European Public Affairs Consultancies Association (EPACA) whose sole purpose is to campaign against any attempt to get lobby companies to be more transparent.

Networking

Lobbyists joke that, “The way to a man’s ‘aye’ is through his stomach” and argue that there is indeed such a thing as a free lunch. The “old Labour” stalwart Aneurin Bevan described it as “gastronomic pimping”. Meetings, briefings and “networking” are all the preferred methods. Sometimes donations are involved and sometimes the willing politicians can be persuaded without money changing hands.

When the Tories were in power, the lobbyists tended to be linked to the Tories. After over a decade of a Labour government, the leading firms are staffed with people tied to the Labour Party.

Gordon Brown’s fundraiser Jon Mendelsohn has a career path that highlights the relationship between lobbyists and the parliament.

Mendelsohn was an adviser to Tony Blair from 1995 to 1997. After Labour’s 1997 election victory, Mendelsohn together with two other self-confessed Blairites set up the LLM Communications lobbying firm.

Then in August this year Mendelsohn was appointed as Labour’s director of general election resources.

When one is in power one gets friends in low places. The gangster Al Capone once called capitalism the “legitimate racket of the ruling class”.

In fact, corruption is the logical outcome of the way that society is organised. The business community is presented as just one lobby group of many that enter the political field as equals. In reality, they are economically vastly more powerful. Moreover, since payments are the way business is done, it is also the way business does politics.

Since capitalism is based on competition, this creates pressure on each company to develop strong relations with the state and to cut others out to gain advantage. Often the methods used are secretive and underhand, and lie on the border between legality and illegality.

For instance, in the gambling dens of the stock market, cheating at gambling is frowned upon. But insider trading – where traders use their privileged “insider” knowledge to gamble and sell – is profitable. One study of 172 mergers on the US stock exchange found that there was insider dealing in all of them.

There are different bosses who have different interests. That is one of the reasons corruption develops – the different interests of the competing bosses competing for access.

This means that while corruption is logical it is not always healthy for all bosses in the system. If one set of capitalists is more successful at influencing politics in their interest, inevitably others will do badly.

The real victims of all this are of course ordinary people. Neoliberalism normalises the fact that the unaccountable power of wealth and money is the deciding factor for everything. Donations scandals are a sign of how integrated Labour has become to the interests of the bosses.

Every free lunch, every networking opportunity means another city academy, or another cut in services, or another favour for the bosses.

Crisis

Often it is in periods of instability that corruption comes to the fore. At one level during periods of economic crisis the pressure for business to get an inside edge increases.

More fundamentally, changes in power and political crisis often bring the relations between politics and business to the foreground.

They reveal that a system built on exploitation, theft and competition will put the political system as much as everything else at the service of the market.

Corruption scandals can often blow over as the initial media frenzy dies down and politicians regain their posture. But they can also feed into people’s anger against the system. Across the world the crises sparked by corruption have mobilised people to bring down governments.

Labour’s latest scandals should not just be an example of their duplicity. It should be a spur to build a different sort of politics.

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.

Labour ‘conspired with phone companies'

Ellie Keen — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 23:28:59 +0000

Labour conspired with mobile-phone companies to let them impose high bills on consumers for international calls, according to documents obtained by The Times.

Frank messages involving civil servants and a minister detail how Britain led a dogged campaign to prevent Europe imposing swingeing cuts in “roaming” charges.

At one point, when negotiations suggested that the EU would impose a tough line on the companies, a civil servant e-mailed Vodafone to say: “UK still not happy bunnies.”

Consumer experts were appalled by the disclosures, under the Freedom of Information Act, which show that the Government and phone businesses acted in concert to fight compulsory price cuts.

The EU finally imposed maximum rates per minute of 34p for international calls and 17p for receiving a call in a foreign country. These rates were less drastic than operators had feared. MEPs had been pressing for 27p and 10p respectively.

The documents show that Britain’s lead negotiator regularly e-mailed major mobile companies. At an early stage, he told BT: “Fight goes on.” He warned Vodafone about an initiative by a senior European official, adding: “I assume we want to avoid at all costs!”

When an inaccurate report circulated that a deal had been reached, he quickly e-mailed Vodafone from a railway station in the evening to reassure them that it was “nonsense”. On another occasion, he told Vodafone: “We may have to change our colours.” And he alerted T-Mobile that the German presidency was keen for an “early agreement irrespective of content”.

Mobile-phone companies mounted a tireless lobbying campaign after Viviane Reding, the EU telecommunications commissioner, first suggested forcing down roaming charges last year.

Ewan Sutherland, a leading telecoms policy consultant, said: “I hadn’t fully appreciated that [the Government] had gone over to the Dark Side to that extent. The Government simply did not see it as an issue for the public. They clearly are trying to defend the position of the operators and the revenue of the operators.”

Alyn Smith, a Scottish Nationalist MEP who fought for the price cuts, said: “There was no question that the UK line was favouring the multinational businesses and not the European consumer.”

Industry experts privately believe that Labour owed the operators a favour. Gordon Brown’s economic success relied heavily on an auction of 3G mobile phone licences in 2000 that raised £22 billion. He used the windfall to reduce debt and help to borrow for public spending while operators have struggled to recoup their investments.

The contrast with the Government’s treatment of consumer organisations is stark. David Harrington, of the Communications Management Organisation (CMO), representing users, sent the Department of Trade and Industry a document calling for regulation to reduce roaming charges. He received the response: “Thanks; well no one could accuse you of being wishy-washy on this issue!” The official then asked why the CMO had failed to note the risk that cheaper international calls might result in more expensive domestic charges or phones.

Minutes of a meeting last November between Margaret Hodge, when she was the Industry Minister, and Orange state: “MH thought that the industry could have moved faster and earlier but said that she was two thirds on their side!” The minutes appear to come from her office.

Nick White, vice-chairman of the International Telecommunications Users’ Group, derided her stance. “What a lovely political balancing exercise – six months pregnant usually means you produce a baby,” he said. “It is clear from the documents that the frequency and closeness of the dialogue between the mobile operators and the UK Government throughout the whole roaming debate was intense.
“The chatty personal style of the relationship with the operators and the sheer regularity and frequency of it is extraordinary compared with the frequency and formality of the relationship which the Government has with customers.”

Lobbyists on the Defensive

Ellie Keen — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 23:18:20 +0000

Parliamentary scrutiny is unwelcome amongst industry insiders and seems to have triggered infighting. Bell Pottinger’s Peter Bingle, writing in PR Week said, “there is no point rehearsing in public the view that we welcome the inquiry. We don’t. I have yet to meet a member of the industry who does”. He blames the inquiry on lobbying trade association, the Association of Professional Political Consultants (APPC) which has been publicly attacking lobby firms which are not members. The APPC is supposed to police the industry and requires that its members sign up to a code of conduct, although membership of the group is voluntary.

The research group, Spinwatch has made a submission to the Inquiry and asked other groups, including Corporate Watch to sign on to it. Spinwatch is calling for the committee to recommend the following simple rules on all lobbying:

· A mandatory system of electronic registration and reporting for all lobbyists with a significant annual lobbying budget. This must include disclosure of resources expended in lobbying campaigns, which itemises expenditure by outside interests (clients and their agents) on each piece of legislation they have lobbied on. Reports must be made available in a fully searchable, sortable and downloadable online database.
· Enforceable ethics rules for lobbyists (for instance prohibiting employment of officials or their relatives for lobbying purposes).
· Enhanced ethical rules on members interests, on the role of All Party groups, and stricter regulation of outside interests.
· Recording of formal and informal meetings between elected members, officials and lobbyists and logging of correspondence (to be made available in a fully searchable online database).
· An extended ‘cooling off’ period – one year – before ministers, elected members and senior officials across the public sector can start working for lobby groups or lobbying consultancies.

Lobbying is an essential part of the way corporations exert power over society by influencing government. Without more information it is almost impossible to gauge the extent of that power, and it is the very secretive nature of the business that gives such cause for concern. We have nothing but a scandal-ridden industry’s insistence that it has cleaned up its act. Enforced transparency for the lobbying industry, as suggested by Spinwatch’s rules, is essential if Britain is to fulfil its claim to be a democracy.

Edelman’s Timely Scandal

Just as the lobbyists were gearing up to present the tired old line that, in spite of previous mistakes, the industry has now cleaned up its act, another lobbying scandal has broken out.

This time public relations multinational, Edelman, is in the spotlight over its lobbying of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) in 2006, on behalf of its client company Pelcombe. Pelcombe, an“employment solutions provider”, subsequently picked up contracts from the DWP for retraining the unemployed. Edelman however had failed to disclose Pelcombe as a client: a breach of the lobbying code of conduct. According to the Sunday Times, Pelcombe’s account was being handled by the Edelman director Heather Rogers, otherwise known as Heather Hutton, wife of John Hutton MP, then secretary of state at the DWP.

The Sunday Times was alone amongst the national press in considering the story newsworthy.