Cameron Penny: Why this isn't the lobbying bill we need

Cameron Penny is a financial services lobbyist. Follow Cameron on Twitter.

Last month, the Government published the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill, finally making good on a three-year-old promise. Reactions to the Bill came quickly. The Association of Professional Political Consultants (@APPC_UK), of which I am a member, rightly pointed out that the Bill would lead to less transparency than under the current voluntary code that it polices. The Guido Fawkes blog (@GuidoFawkes) noted that the Bill would only capture one per cent of lobbyists.

I tweeted Guido – or rather ‘the blog’, as they’re keen to point out Paul Staines isn’t the sole author – to thank them for supporting the APPC’s call for a stricter Bill. They got in touch to let me know they didn’t support us, and that “lobbyists are a hindrance to democracy”.

You can at least see that the blog is reflecting a commonly held public sentiment. It’s a sentiment that some people want to nurture; that all lobbyists are greasy, envelope-swapping, toffy little schoolboys in suits running between champagne lunch and expensive dinners where they manipulate the democratically elected representatives of the people.

Cameron Penny: There's been too much tribal rhetoric about welfare this week. As I know from my own experience

Cameron Penny is a financial services lobbyist, East End resident and member of the Conservative Party for over a decade. He was a senior officer of the UK’s largest university-based Conservative Association and stood as a local council candidate for the party. Follow Cameron on Twitter.

On a side street by the headquarters of Channel 4 off Horseferry Road in London there is a building. Outside homeless men sit or stand drinking. Inside the furniture is, literally, bolted down.
I know this because, for a time, it was where I was required to go in order to claim jobseekers allowance.  No one, aside from my parents, knows about this chapter in my life. Until now.

I am writing this now not because I deserve pity or concern, but because the debate about welfare reform has become increasingly personalised. Apparently I'm in good company; Iain Duncan Smith also knows what it's like to be on benefits.

I have been privileged in life. My parents worked very hard and gave myself and my siblings the best upbringing their income and personal values could provide. However, at the height of the post-Lehman crisis, fresh out of university, I found myself without work. In the interests of full disclosure I should say that whilst my background was middle class, I was also a young man in my 20s and my parents were not able to, and nor did I expect them to, support me forever.

Cameron Penny: There are three answers to our economic plight --- Build! Build! Build!

Cameron Penny is a financial services lobbyist, East End resident and member of the Conservative Party for over a decade. He was a senior officer of the UK’s largest university-based Conservative Association and stood as a local council candidate for the party. Follow Cameron on Twitter.

Often in our politics what we need and what we want are things that all parties can agree on. The differences lie in how to deliver these. So, as a starter for ten, everyone is agreed that the UK needs growth and lots of it. Particularly if the OBR's projections are to start reflecting reality at any point in the near future. We hear much from the Labour benches about the need for ever greater borrowing. This would, we are told, be spent on massive capital expenditure projects to boost the UK's infrastructure. Hoover had his dam, Balls...well we're not exactly sure but something big, with lots of concrete, perhaps some glass and a railway line or two. Either way such borrowing definitely wouldn't be spent on ever more generous public sector remuneration or pension provision...

The Conservative Party on the other hand is torn between the Chancellor and his Prime Minister who are in no rush to slash and burn for one simple reason; we're far too close to a General Election. Whilst there are others on our side who argue that what's really holding the economy back is far too much red tape. If only the most flexible labour laws in Western Europe were more akin to the 'hire and fire' culture of the USA then we'd suddenly see a return to 2, 2.5 or even 3 per cent GDP growth.

These positions merely skim the surface. They are short-term, as so much of politics is, and no party has yet to address the key weakness holding back the UK economy. At a time of stagnant growth, effective wage deflation in the private sector, an ongoing farce in the Eurozone and debt projected to reach over 85 per cent of GDP by 2018, now is the time to end the complicit deceit in our politics that is holding back growth.

Cameron Penny: Britain must remain part of the EU and complete the single market, or become a footnote in history

Cameron Penny is a financial services lobbyist, East End resident and member of the Conservative Party for over a decade. He was a senior officer of the UK’s largest university-based Conservative Association and stood as a local council candidate for the party. Follow Cameron on Twitter.

As a young Conservative, by age rather than affiliation, I was strongly opposed to the European Union. After all, our ancestors had fought wars to defend this country against the military incursions of our continental cousins. Our economy was strong, our laws clear. As it still does, to a lesser extent, Britain was the primary power for commerce. The world's capital for law and finance. What were we to gain from paying billions of pounds into a union whose political aims were far from subtle and which seemed intent on dictating everything from the shape of our bananas to how many hours you could work?

There didn't seem to be a point. But there is.

The Eurosceptics will tell you that the EU is still riven by corruption, its accounts still unsigned by the Court of Auditors and its appetite for ever more strigent regulation still unchecked. They will offer up hopes of an island which can be built again on the strength of international trading relationships and a country which can innovate and excel if only it were unshackled from the bonds of EU membership. They will screech and wail, as Professor Tim Congdon recently did, about the cost of membership - estimated to be as high as £150bn per year.

Cameron Penny: A truly Conservative approach to marriage would be to end the state's involvement in it

Cameron Penny is a financial services lobbyist, East End resident and member of the Conservative Party for over a decade. He was a senior officer of the UK’s largest university-based Conservative Association and stood as a local council candidate for the party. Follow Cameron on Twitter.

The Defence Secretary's blunt analysis of the UK's current situation is partly correct. Nearly four years since the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the ensuing financial crisis that rocked world markets, sending government deficits spiralling, depressing consumer growth and seeding the current Eurozone crisis, the UK is stuck. We face numerous challenges from tackling the deficit, kickstarting infrastructure projects, dealing with an acute housing shortage, educating our workforce for future opportunities and arguably the most pressing for our medium-term future; what do to about a "lost generation" of long-term unemployed skilled and unskilled young people.

Yet as governments across the Western world know, there are no immediate fixes to these. The Prime Minister is undoubtedly aware of this too. The major achievements of the first two years of the Coalition have been to fix long-term problems with our welfare and healthcare systems. The economic and cultural battle to undo decades of the entitlement-era where too many people were stuck, by choice or by circumstance, on the taxpayer-funded welfare carousel is going to be a long and hard one. Passing the legislation was in many respects the easier task. Getting work programme providers to deliver on the ground for the unemployed whilst consortia of GPs work out how to maximise their resources to the benefit of patients is harder.

With all these problems and more to come, not least convincing a sceptical press and public that last week's slightly tepid Queen's Speech will create "the conditions for growth", why all this fuss about gay marriage? Whether Nadine Dorries or Philip Hammond, our politicians almost fall over themselves to tell everyone that it's a non-issue for voters. Which begs the question, if it's such a non-issue why does anyone care very much about it?