the revolving door
The sad news of New Labour’s Derek Draper’s (Mr Kate Garraway to many) recent passing has brought the issue of parliamentary lobbying back into the limelight. Draper made a reputed fortune from the dark-art of lobbying before it all came crashing down around his ears when surreptitiously recorded blatantly offering to sell access to high-profile ministers. Quite rightly, it signalled the death-knell of his political career.
There is nothing inherently sinister about seeking to influence those who devise our laws, and any citizen has the right to do so – the verb itself was coined to describe individuals who collared MPs in the public lobbies of parliament. But today, lobbying is big business: a #2bn business employing over ten thousand people and one which sees the average MP being lobbied more than one hundred times a week. Lobbying understandably covers a wide range of endeavours and takes place across a wide spectrum from charities to unions, from private companies to industry bodies. Make no mistake, these actions impact all our lives.
The rules governing the often nefarious actions are, to say the least, chaotic. The Code of Conduct for MPs, for example, states that they can’t take payment in return for attempting to influence ministers or legislation: but that they can accept payment for dispensing “advice on public policy and current affairs.” Is this merely pedantic double-speak and smoke-screening? Under the ministerial code, meetings between lobbyists and ministers have to be reported; but MPs who are not ministers have no such obligation. At best, this means dubious activity passes under the radar. In recent years both Matt Hancock and Kwasi Kwarteng were caught on camera offering their lobbying services for up to #10,000 per day, only to argue they had discussed only advisory roles. The contradictory, generous interpretation saw both escape sanction scot free. Speaking of scot free, Tory MP Scott Benton, was ‘stung’ by The Times offering to lobby ministers on behalf of the gambling industry whilst proactively leaking confidential information.
The irony of ironies has to be the ‘transparency’ offered in the Lobbying Act of 2014 by the then PM, David Cameron, who several years later shamelessly contacted numerous ministers seeking Covid funding for the collapsing finance firm Greensill Capital. Needless to say, he was found not to have broken the current lobbying rules. Witnessing Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton dismiss Laura Kuenssberg’s pointed questions this weekend further highlights the need for better regulatory control: the registering of all lobbying activity across public servants, ministers, MPs and civil service staff, needs to be undertaken without delay.
Sadly, with the revolving door spinning merrily, and one in five newly elected Conservative MPs having previously worked in lobbying or PR, reform doesn’t appear to be particularly high on anyone’s agenda.
