Political and Constitutional Reform CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by Central Lobby Consultants Ltd
Who we are
1. Central Lobby Consultants Ltd is a commercial government affairs consultancy set up by Helen Donoghue in 1984. The current directors are Helen Donoghue (managing), Frank Cranmer and David Walburn (non-executive).
2. We are not registered with the UK Public Affairs Council nor are we registered with the Association of Professional Political Consultants. We are, however, registered on the European Transparency Register and with the European Public Affairs Consultancies’ Association (EPACA).
3. We have no desire to give oral evidence but we would, of course, be happy to do so should the Committee wish.
Lobbying
4. We regard lobbying, so long as it is carried out in accordance with the law and with due regard for Parliamentary privilege, as an entirely proper and honourable activity which has benefits both for the client and—potentially—for government. A technically-competent lobbyist who understands the machinery of government and Parliament and the process of legislation should make it easier for the client to present a reasoned case to ministers and civil servants and, in doing so, should enable the client to bring to the attention of ministers and civil servants issues that they might otherwise have overlooked
5. We have no problem whatsoever with the idea of transparency: if, as we contend, lobbying is an honourable activity there is no reason why it should not be subjected to scrutiny like any other kind of interaction with government. No lobbying firm that conducts its activities in a proper manner has anything to fear from a register: any firm that does not conduct its activities in a proper manner should not be in business.
The Government’s Proposals
6. We can see the reasoning behind the initial definition that “Lobbyists should mean those who undertake lobbying activities on behalf of a third party client or whose employees conduct lobbying activities on behalf of a third party client”; however, if the purpose of a register is to bring transparency to lobbying it needs to go further than that.
7. First, “lobbying activities” need to be interpreted very strictly. There are several law firms (some of them parliamentary agents) that have expanded into general government relations work and which attempt to claim solicitor-client privilege for activities which are, in reality, lobbying rather than legal advice. We would obviously not argue for the total destruction of solicitor-client privilege; but that privilege should not be extended beyond legal advice given strictly in relation to the legal affairs of the client concerned. If it is to be effective, a compulsory register should do exactly what it says on the tin, with only very limited exceptions.
8. Secondly, there is a problem in relation to the proposal to exclude those who engage in lobbying activities on their own behalf rather than for a client. Obviously, personal communications between constituents and MPs or ministers need to be excluded: were it otherwise, every constituent who wrote to his or her MP or to a minister would have to register—which would clearly be absurd. However, if the purpose of a register is transparency, it is difficult to see what meaningful distinction can be drawn between a commercial lobbying firm like ours working under contract on behalf of a third-party client and a group of in-house PR/lobbying staff working for that same client. The only discernible difference that we can see is that we are contractors while they are employees. But the end result is the same: some kind of ex parte approach is made to civil servants or ministers.
9. The consultation paper states in setting out the Purpose of the UK Statutory Register that “The Government already publishes quarterly information about Ministers’ meetings. Information about which stakeholders are meeting Ministers to put forward their views on policies is therefore already in the public domain. But under the current system, when Ministers meet lobbying firms it is not transparent on whose behalf they are lobbying” and therefore “Given that is clear whose interests they represent, it is not evident that an extension of the register to in-house lobbyists would provide any additional transparency”.
10. In response to the first point: transparent to whom? It must be transparent to the person being lobbied; otherwise, the lobbyist in question is not doing his or her job properly—and we cannot conceive of any circumstances in which a minister would agree to meet a third-party lobbyist without being told in advance the identity of the client. Presumably, therefore, that information would appear in the record of the meeting in question. If it is recorded then it should also be transparent to the public at large; if it is not, then ministerial meetings are not being recorded sufficiently thoroughly. There should be no question of a minister meeting either a public affairs company or an in-house lobbyist without the purpose of that meeting being clear from the record.
11. While we can understand the point that the consultation makes about in-house lobbyists, we cannot envisage very many situations in which we, as commercial lobbyists, would go to meetings without the client whom we are representing. On the rare occasions when we do so we make it absolutely clear to our interlocutors that we are CLC Ltd, representing XXX organisation.
12. So there is no practical difference in terms of the person being lobbied; however, there is certainly a practical difference in terms of the person seeking information about who has been lobbying. From the point of view of transparency, the merit of requiring in-house lobbyists to register would be that it would make it much easier for members of the public to access information about lobbying on individual issues.
13. Thirdly, we have doubts about blanket exclusions for charities and trades unions: surely the issue is one of transparency in relation to attempts to influence policy-making rather than whether or not the person or organisation attempting to do the influencing is paid? While we would certainly not wish to see small charities unduly burdened, we feel that the matter should be given further thought. Perhaps registration for charities could be linked to income, as is the case with the current charity auditing requirements.
14. Fourthly, while we agree that the consultation document’s basic proposals for the information to be included in the register (company registration details, names of those employed, contracted or otherwise engaged to carry out lobbying, whether anyone engaged is a former minister or senior civil servant and a list of clients) are broadly reasonable, we have three caveats:
Should not firms that employ current or former Members of the House of Commons or the House of Lords be required to state that fact? If the purpose of disclosing the presence of ex-ministers or senior civil servants is that the firm which employs them will be able to make particular use of their political contacts, then that might reasonably be applied equally to ex-MPs of recent vintage—and it would certainly to current MPs and peers currently in receipt of a Writ of Summons.
Does “senior civil servant” mean precisely what it says or does it (or should it?) go wider than that? At CLC we currently have two employees with public service backgrounds: a former member of the Senior Civil Service and a former Principal Clerk in the House of Commons. Is there any meaningful distinction to be drawn between the two?
At what point does employees’ previous professional experience become irrelevant? Someone who leaves the Civil Service and who is immediately employed as a lobbyist will obviously have useful contacts within Whitehall; someone who last worked in the Civil Service five years ago might not.
15. Fifthly, we accept that a system of registration inevitably implies penalties for non-compliance. In our view, however, sanctions should be civil rather than criminal—and the first and simplest sanction for persistent breach should be deregistration.
16. Finally, given that it is unlikely that the Government would give the job to a Civil Service department, we agree that the register should be managed and enforced by an independent body. Of the alternatives proposed, our preference would be to extend the remit of an existing non-departmental public body to run the register. We would certainly not be in favour of an independent register run by the industry itself.
Conclusion
17. If we have any overall criticism of the proposals it is not a criticism of registration as such: we repeat that we are entirely in favour of transparency. The problem is that the consultation document seems rather confused as to the issue to which its proposals are directed: are they aimed at transparency for lobbying or transparency of lobbyists? That it is possible to draw such a distinction might be persuasive for many; in our view, however, such a distinction is untenable and has merely led to a confusion of aims, with the result that the proposed register as at present conceived will not fully achieve either purpose.
18. The register as proposed will leave unregulated a whole area of lobbying that ought to be brought under scrutiny and it will leave unregistered a whole swathe of, in effect, full-time professional lobbyists who work for major plcs, large charities, professional bodies and trades unions.
19. In short, if the purpose of the proposed register is to introduce transparency into lobbying and to allay public fears of improper approaches, then it would benefit from some very careful further thought.
February 2012