College Public Policy

Posted by Warwick Smith on 22 March 2010

Just emerging from a series of radio and TV interviews on the weekend’s lobbying scandal … except it wasn’t. There was no lobbyist to be seen. Rather a few MPs willing to be paid to do things which most right-minded people would think were just plain wrong. As Nick Clegg said yesterday (I paraphrase), what does it take for these people to wake up and smell the coffee? This issue is not about lobbying. It’s about MPs taking money to represent interests that have nothing to do with their jobs or their constituencies. It is intellectually bankrupt for MPs, whose colleagues were at fault, to respond by calling for the statutory registration of lobbyists. They need to sort out their own mess.

Do they think that people are stupid enough to believe that this is about lobbying? All the usual suspects have been there, opportunistically seizing the main chance, arguing for further regulation of lobbyists. The reality is that the majority of lobbying consultancies abide by the APPC and PRCA codes, the former of which includes an independent disciplinary procedure, and publish lists of their lobbyists and clients on line for anyone to view; and that 80% of lobbying is done by full time employees of the same companies, charities, trade unions and trade associations which also retain the services of people like us at College Public Policy. They seem to get ignored in all this.

We’re happy to have the debate about whether there need to be changes in regulation; whether statutory would work better than voluntary (most evidence to the contrary); how we best bring within the ambit of regulation of whatever kind the non-consultancy lobbyists; and so on. But, please, let’s do it in a way which at least remotely reflects what goes on in the real world.

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