At the TPA, we've just released another new report, Taxpayer funded lobbying and political campaigning. Mara MacSeoinin wrote up the idea of abolishing taxpayer funded lobbying for the Star Chamber recently using Conservative research into the extent that public sector bodies have been hiring political consultancies.
Our research builds on that work and not only looks at more contracts with lobbying firms but also at the amounts paid to big taxpayer funded trade associations - the Local Government Agency, the Association of Police Authorities and the NHS Confederation - and the amount paid to support political campaigns. In total, we found around £38 million of taxpayer funded lobbying and political campaigning, despite adopting a conservative methodology that left out less clear cut examples like publicity budgets used for PR and big charities that received a lot of money and did a lot of campaigning but whose primary purpose was policy delivery - like Oxfam.
That £38 million is just about the amount that all three main parties spent through their central campaigns at the last General Election, a huge amount of money in political terms. It buys an awful lot of power. Alcohol Concern get over half a million pounds. Action on Smoking and Health nearly £200,000. The Family Planning Association get £130,000. A group that the Local Government blog exposed trying to start a partisan campaign, the Campaign for Better Transport, get over £400,000. These are important voices in our public debate, often the first people that the media will go to for an independent opinion on new government policies, but they aren't remotely financially independent.
Even think-tanks get significant taxpayer funding. The New Economics Foundation, whose ranking of different countries I wrote about recently on this blog, get at least £601,518, Demos get £553,004 and the IPPR at least £350,330.
As we mentioned in the report, there are three big problems with taxpayer funded lobbying and political campaigning:
- It distorts the public policy process in favour of the interests and perspectives of a narrow political elite.
- It slows adjustments in the direction of policy in response to changing circumstances.
- It increases political apathy among the public, particularly because taxpayers are forced to fund views with which they may seriously disagree.
The Conservatives have said (PDF) that they intend to stop government lobbying government. If they're serious about that pledge they should cut the spending identified in our report. Then they should put in place spending transparency so that the public can know how their money is being spent and this kind of wasteful and undemocratic use of public money can be stopped before it takes hold in future. It is vital that they take a strong line so that taxpayer funded politics doesn't continue to undermine . Just banning the hiring of external consultants will probably just force public sector organisations to be a little more inventive and take the work in house or outsource it to outright campaigns.
