The Conservative Party has announced that it would “introduce new rules to stop central government bodies using public money to hire lobbyists”; the plan is part of its proposals on ‘cutting the democratic deficit’. This newfound Tory commitment to do something about transparency and accountability is to be welcomed. The question is: does it get to the heart of the issue?

 

When the issue of public bodies hiring lobbyists was first raised by the Tories, back in 2008, the lobbyists were appalled. The Association of Professional Political Consultants (APPC) – the main lobby body for lobbyists – reportedly urgently sought a meeting with shadow cabinet office minister Nick Hurd after he told The Times that “the hiring of lobbyists by government bodies to grab more government cash is a financial scandal.”

 

Hurd’s comments followed the circulation of a Conservative Party research document which found that state-funded agencies spent more than £9.7m on at least 71 contracts with lobbying firms over five years. Hurd has proposed that a Tory government emulate the USA’s 1989 Byrd Amendment, which banned US government agencies from hiring lobbyists.

 

In 2009, the Taxpayers Alliance issued a report claiming that arms of government spent some £37m in 2007-08 on lobbying other arms of government. Taxpayers’ money was being used by public sector bodies and by publicly-funded think tanks and charities on political lobbying, said the Alliance’s Matthew Sinclair, who found this “shocking”.

 

However, what the report didn’t reveal is that the £37m represents a tiny fraction of the £1.9bn UK lobbying industry – the vast majority of whose income comes from private businesses. If anything “distorts decision-making in favour of the interests and ideological preoccupations of a narrow elite”, to quote the report, it is corporate use of lobbyists.

 

The budgets of Alcohol Concern or The Campaign for Better Transport – both mentioned in the report because they receive some public funding – are dwarfed by the vast amounts spent by the alcohol and car industry on influencing government. Ban public funding of public interest campaign groups – as proposed by the Taxpayers Alliance – and you leave industry-funded lobbyists to monopolise debate and capture government.

 

Of course, the Taxpayers Alliance is itself a right-wing lobby group created by some of the best known Conservative think-tanks (the Institute for Economic Affairs, the Centre for Policy Studies and the Adam Smith Institute are all represented on its advisory board). It has a ‘donate’ option on its website, but it’s impossible to tell whether it is funded by thousands of members or by a handful of big corporations, since the Alliance is not transparent about its funding – which is odd, since they claim to be campaigners for transparency.

 

In fact, in his speech launching the Conservative proposals on government lobbying government, David Cameron went further than lobby groups like the Taxpayers Alliance, saying: “I believe that it is increasingly clear that lobbying in this country is getting out of control. Today it is a £2bn industry that has a huge presence in Parliament. The Hansard Society has estimated that some MPs are approached over one hundred times a week by lobbyists. Much of the time this happens covertly. We don’t know who is meeting whom. We don’t know whether any favours are being exchanged. We don’t know which outside interests are wielding unhealthy influence.”

 

If the Tories are serious about tackling this, they need to take serious steps to require that lobbying companies, lobby groups and even think tanks and civil society groups are open about their lobbying activities and funding.

 

David Cameron went on to add that covert influence in politics is not “a minor issue with minor consequences. Commercial interests – not to mention government contracts – worth hundreds of billions of pounds are potentially at stake.” He is quite right to highlight this issue. But in doing so, he broadens the vista from the narrow question of public bodies hiring lobbyists to the wider, and much more significant, issue of lobbyists’ influence on the award of public sector contracts. The main beneficiaries of these are, of course, big businesses.

 

A major factor fostering the lack of trust in the political process is the suspicion that big business has too much influence. Full lobbying disclosure – for both public and private sector organisations, and affecting big business, lobbyists and even campaigning groups – is the place to start. This would begin to create a level playing field, and allow citizens to make up their own minds about how policy is made.