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How Cameron’s vow to clean up lobbying turned into a loophole-ridden sham
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“This is a government and a party that has been consistently tough on lobbying,” Boris Johnson boasted in Parliament yesterday in response to an attack from Keir Starmer over the return of “Tory sleaze”. As proof of this toughness, the prime minister cited the register of lobbyists introduced in 2015 under David Cameron’s government.

So what did MPs of all parties say at the time about Cameron’s register?

“Chronically bad”, “glaringly inadequate”, “deliberately evasive”, “disingenuous”, “an exercise in box ticking” and “a dog’s breakfast”. The way the government had steam-rollered the inadequate legislation through was “shoddy” and “contemptuous of the public”, Parliament heard.

I spent a decade campaigning, alongside a coalition of NGOs, for transparency rules for lobbyists. Our central demand was a straightforward and robust register of lobbyists, such as exists in countries around the world. A register that would make public just who is bending the ear of government and what they are after, whether that’s a corporate tax break or a slice of the NHS.

A register provides a small window into government, but a necessary one, if we are to be meaningfully informed and involved in how this country is run.

The “dog’s breakfast” we ended up with was a fake register. A sham. It covers only a tiny fraction of the thousands of lobbyists operating in the UK and then demands that they reveal nothing meaningful about their interactions with government. Take a look. You’ll see, for example, that a mozzarella cheese company used a lobbying firm to approach some unnamed minister about something in 2015, but not a mention in six years of the government dealings with BP, Amazon or Philip Morris.

What are the loopholes?

The loopholes are glaring. Lobbyists don’t have to declare who they lobbied, or what they discussed. They only have to register if they are a third-party lobbyist for hire – not if they’re directly employed by a company to lobby on its behalf, as Cameron was. Even then, the rules catch only those who lobby ministers and permanent secretaries (almost no one in the latter case), not those who lobby political advisers, most civil servants or regulators. And lobbyists can also avoid registration if their lobbying work is part of a larger contract, for example for management consultancy or legal advice.

This was all by design. Cameron only pretended to regulate lobbying. A case of being seen to act.

At the start of our campaign, around the time Cameron gave that speech about lobbying in 2010, I was buoyed by the evidence of public concern and parliamentary support, and the overwhelming evidence that the system was being abused. My inexperience gave me a naive confidence in the power of rational argument to win through.

The biggest problem isn’t lobbyists – it’s government

I thought the biggest problem we had were the thousands of professional persuaders that make up the UK’s £2bn influence industry. True, these lobbyists used every tool in their box to head off regulation: false arguments and dire warnings; phoney solutions and backroom dealings with ministers. They also courted us, tried to co-opt us, and called us names: “conspiracy theorists” and more puzzlingly, “unwashed”.

But what I quickly learned is that the biggest block to reform is at the top of government. Indeed, even the lobbyists who once fought us now acknowledge the act was “unfit” and are calling for tougher regulation to restore public trust.

[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/how-camerons-vow-to-clean-up-lobbying-turned-into-a-loophole-ridden-sham/