By Ben Pickering, a senior board member of Conservative Way Forward and a public affairs head-hunter and recruiter for Hanson Search.
There’s a saying: tell God your plans and listen to him roar with laughter. If you work in the lobbying industry today, this probably seems about right.
If David Cameron and Gordon Brown follow through with their threats to introduce statutory regulation of the lobbying industry, their own well-developed plans for self-regulation – with its voluntary code of practice and adjudication by peers – is toast.
And ironically it’s not the lobbying industry’s fault for once – it’s just that the political parties don’t seem to trust their own not to fall for sting operations like the latest one run by Channel 4’s Dispatches team.
Their stunning revelations about the alleged behaviour of former Cabinet Minister including Stephen Byers, Patricia Hewitt and Geoff Hoon have given overwhelming momentum to existing calls for fundamental changes in the way the lobbying industry behaves and interacts with government.
The Conservatives have been hugely concerned about the influence of lobbyists under Labour – particularly those seeming to cash in on hundreds of millions of pounds of government-to-government contracts over the last decade – and have been pumping out increasingly strident rhetoric about the need for greater transparency and openness, coupled with pressure on the industry to give real teeth to self-regulation or face a new statutory body (funded by an industry levy) with powers to compel and punish.
Meanwhile, Labour (in a damascene conversion to rival that of Saul of Tarsus) now wants a statutory lobbying register, listing details of meetings between lobbyists and decision-makers. This of course was the recommendation of the Commons Public Administration Committee last year to increase transparency, but after a painfully long and unexplained delay the Government rejected it (we now know why!).
The industry had already made serious headway in self-regulation, when the Cash for Questions scandal involving Ian Greer Associates in 1994 forced it to confront issues previously avoided like the plague – some eerily similar to those alleged this weekend in fact – and to take action to reassure Parliament, Whitehall and the public about its ethical standards.
That same year five consultancies established the Association of Professional Political Consultants (APPC) as a self-regulatory body with its own code of conduct, a publicly-available register of clients and a complete ban on any financial relationship with politicians. It also prohibited lobbyists from being Houses of Parliament pass holders (unless they were former MPs, in which case their work had to be made publicly known).
After a further sting investigation by The Observer in 1998, when journalists posed as representatives of a client seeking influence, the APPC set up an inquiry, conducted by a former Civil Service mandarin and a leading barrister, which made a series of recommendations designed to create a ‘compliance culture’ within the industry.
This register now has 61 members, representing over 80% of the turnover of the UK lobbying industry, and intense intra-industry discussions about increasing coverage to 100% have led to proposals for the UK Public Affairs Council (UKPAC).
This body, whose implementation team is headed by the former Parliamentary Standards Commissioner Sir Philip Mawer, aims to persuade those consultancies who have resisted membership of the APPC to join a voluntary body like the UKPAC, with a code of conduct they can influence and administer, or be compelled to adhere to a strict statutory regime funded by a levy on their profits.
In February, the CIPR hosted a packed and at times heated debate between Mark Adams, the head of Foresight Communications, and Peter Bingle, the Chairman of Bell Pottinger, putting the case for and against the UKPAC respectively. While Bingle gave a strident defence of non-disclosure of clients, the mood of the room was 98% in favour of the UKPAC and of all lobbyists being required to join it when it launches in July this year.
But events seem to have overtaken these well laid plans, and this body could end up being superseded.
The lobbying industry needs to urgently reassure lawmakers that they are capable of self-regulation (which I am convinced they are), and that all consultancies will join the UKPAC without strings attached.
Otherwise, in a year’s time, Oflob will be coming down on all of them like a ton of bricks and sending them the bill.
