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Corporate lobbying chief Alice Perry is frontrunner for Labour’s conference committee [1]
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Date: 2023-07
The leading candidate for election onto the Labour Party conference committee is a director at a corporate lobbying firm that represents Serco, Barclays and Blackrock.
Alice Perry is running for a place on Labour’s Conference Arrangements Committee (CAC), which decides who says what and when at the party’s annual meeting in October.
Since January, Perry has been an associate director at Cicero. The company promises to help its clients – which include the Police Federation and several City institutions – tackle “changing legislation” using its “extensive networks across the political and regulatory landscape”.
While Perry does not list her role at Cicero on her Labour election statement, the firm views her political experience as advantageous to its lobbying. It boasts of her “strong relationships across the Labour Party” and her involvement “in drafting three general election manifestos” on its website.
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Last month, Perry hosted Labour leader Keir Starmer and the party's chair, Anneliese Dodds, at the offices of her lobbying firm, tweeting that it had been “lovely to welcome @Keir_Starmer, @AnnelieseDodds and the fab @LabourParty team to @CiceroGlobal today for a breakfast roundtable”.
CAC members are elected annually by delegates at the party conference to run the following year’s event. The committee sets the agenda for the conference, which in turn shapes Labour’s policy.
If Perry is elected this autumn, she will organise the 2024 conference. As she says, this will take place “shortly before, or immediately after” the next general election – which pollsters suggest Labour will win. The conference would then be of “historic significance” in setting the next government’s policies, Perry points out.
Perry is currently the forerunner in the race, having been backed by both ‘Labour to Win’ and ‘Open Labour’, respectively the leading ‘moderate’ and ‘soft left’ Labour groups.
Cat Hobbs, the founder and director of anti-privatisation campaign group We Own It, warned that lobbyists having close links to political parties is “how democracy gets bought and sold – and it’s totally unacceptable”.
This was echoed by Rose Whiffen, a senior research officer at anti-corruption organisation Transparency International UK, who said: “When lobbying companies hire staff with such close connections to political parties, it begs the question if they are being recruited for their skills, their address book, or possibly both.”
Lobbyists inside Labour
Many lobbying firms are hiring Labour-connected staff to show clients they have influential “networks” in an increasingly likely Labour government.
Last month, Starmer’s former chief of staff, Claire Ainsley, became a senior adviser to WPI Strategy, a lobbying firm set up by one of David Cameron’s former advisers.
WPI says it specialises in “influencing change” using its “highly experienced team drawn from the most senior roles in government”. Its clients include Pennon Group, owner of South West Water, which was fined £2m in April for illegally dumping sewage in the sea.
The recent hiring spree has also put lobbyists inside Labour Party structures.
Abdi Duale was elected to Labour’s controlling National Executive Committee (NEC) in September, as part of the ‘moderate’ slate. In the same month, he took up a directorship at lobby firm FTI Consulting.
FTI offers clients “direct advocacy” with “elected and appointed policymakers”. Former Labour MP Gemma Doyle, a director of a key Labour ‘moderate’ group, Progressive Britain (formerly Progress), also works for FTI, whose clients include Palantir, the American spy-tech firm that is chasing contracts in the NHS.
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[1] Url:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/lobbying-labour-alice-perry-election-conference-arrangements-committee/
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