David Cameron promised to shine a light of transparency on lobbying.
As expected, the Government has caved into pressure from the public affairs industry and ignored the revelations about covert lobbying pouring out of the Bureau, the Independent and other papers in recent months.
Its long awaited statutory register will tell us very little about who is lobbying whom and why.
A consultation document, launched today, says that ‘because government departments already publish lists of their external meetings there is no need to provide further information about specific contacts with government.’ The register will only list the firms, their clients and employees and, depending on the outcome of the consultation, certain financial information.
Lobbyists will not have to say who or what they are lobbying at a given time or reveal the policy area they are trying to influence.
As Mark Harper and Oliver Letwin, the ministers behind the consultation, should know, Government disclosure of external meetings is far from detailed – when it happens at all. Communities secretary Eric Pickles did not declare his dinner with the lobbyists at the Savoy on the hospitality register for his department, because he considered the dinner ‘private’ – despite the presence of various captains of industry around the table.
Justice secretary Ken Clarke said the same thing to the Bureau about his dinner with Bell Pottinger and private security firm G4S, though he later changed his mind and declared the meal.
Neither do ministers declare meetings with lobbyists that take place at party conferences, as these are deemed ‘party political’ despite the lobbyists’ public declarations of their intentions to influence policy.
Welcome suggestions in the consultation include a proposal for the register to be managed and enforced by an independent body and for lobbyists to disclose if they have previously held positions as ministers or senior civil servants. Companies and organisations will also have to declare how much public funding they have received in the last financial year and from what source.
But this is not enough.The US has a special register for firms lobbying on behalf of foreign governments. Firms must publish their contracts, including financial details, and list every contact made with a member of government and the media, including the time, date, method of contact and subject. Lobbyists with domestic clients have less stringent conditions, but they are still expected to indicate who they are lobbying.
Ahead of publication of today’s consultation, Tamasin Cave of the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency said:
“The devil will be in the detail. We need a robust, compulsory register to reveal: who is lobbying whom, what they are lobbying about, and how much is being spent trying to influence our politicians. And it needs to be overseen by a body independent of the industry. Anything less and we can assume that the government is putting the interests of its friends in the influence industry above public demands for full transparency.’
David Cameron famously said he would ‘shine the light of transparency’ on those who attempt to buy influence over government. Too bad the light has turned out to be a key ring torch.
