Political and Constitutional Reform CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by the UK Public Affairs Council (UKPAC)
Introduction
1. UKPAC will be responding in full to the Government’s consultation paper on introducing a statutory register of lobbyists (Cm 8233). This paper, which we hope will be of assistance to the select committee, summarises the Council’s views on the main elements of the Government’s proposals.
2. The circumstances of UKPAC’s founding by the three main representative bodies in the public affairs industry—the Association of Professional Political Consultants (APPC), the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR), and the Public Relations Consultants Association (PRCA)—are referred to in section 4 and Annex A of the Consultation Paper and do not need to be repeated here. In December 2011 the PRCA withdrew its support from UKPAC, it said because of UKPAC’s failure at that point to deliver an updated, searchable, online register of public affairs consultancies and individuals engaged in lobbying. Following a change to a new IT contractor in November 2011, UKPAC launched, on 15 February, an updated register covering consultancies in membership of the APPC and relevant practitioners in membership of the CIPR. The register can be found on the UKPAC website: .
3. In view of recent public comment it should be understood that UKPAC has no special relationship with the Cabinet Office and has so far been involved in no discussion on policy relating to a register of lobbyists. In July 2010 the Chairman was introduced to the Minister for Political and Constitutional Reform by the outgoing Chairman of the Implementation Working Party, Sir Philip Mawer. It was agreed then that dialogue between the relevant Cabinet Office official and the UKPAC Executive Secretary, to share the learning of the working party and to track the lessons UKPAC might learn in seeking to establish a voluntary register, would be valuable. There was one introductory meeting and two follow up meetings between the Executive Secretary and the Cabinet Office official; these were in September and October 2010 and June 2011. The first two of these meetings are referred to in the minutes of UKPAC meetings to be found on the UKPAC website.
4. The views expressed in this response are the collective views of the independent and industry directors of UKPAC. They do not necessarily correspond with the views of the APPC or the CIPR, each of which will be responding separately to the Government’s consultation.
Summary Response to the Government’s Proposals
5. UKPAC agrees with the Government that lobbying is a legitimate activity in an open and democratic society, and indeed performs a vital role in ensuring that legislative and executive decision making takes proper account of the views of those businesses, communities, individuals and organisations likely to be affected. We also agree that current anxieties about lobbying are in danger of undermining public confidence in the decision making processes of Government and Parliament and need to be addressed.
6. The Government’s consultation paper appears to attribute these anxieties solely to an alleged lack of transparency surrounding the activities of “third party lobbyists”, and its proposed solution is accordingly limited in scope to that issue. We disagree with that analysis. In our view there is also clear and legitimate interest in the ways in which large corporations, trade associations, organised pressure groups and others seek to influence and inform policy. A statutory register which is limited to professional public affairs consultancies and consultants will therefore fail to achieve the stated purpose of restoring public confidence in the decision making process.
7. One obvious anomaly which would result from implementation of the Government’s proposals would be that a statutory regime would apply to the lobbying activities of medium-sized companies and organisations, which tend to find it most economical to use the services of a consultancy for public affairs purposes, but would not apply to large companies and organisations which have the resources to employ a permanent, in-house, public affairs team. It is also not clear whether the proposed regime is intended to apply to the large number of representative bodies such as the CBI, the National Farmers’ Union or the British Bankers’ Association. A statutory register which did not include such bodies would give a very unbalanced impression of lobbying activity in the UK.
8. UKPAC particularly regrets that the Government, in no more than a brief paragraph, has set its face against linking its proposed system for the registration of lobbyists to a code of conduct or set of guiding principles. We think it would be a significant lost opportunity if the debate which is conducted around the Government’s consultation and the Select Committee’s inquiry did not extend to address the arguments for and against setting out the standards of behaviour expected of those who lobby and, potentially, the implications if these are not met.
9. The APPC, CIPR and PRCA all operate their own codes of conduct, observance of which is a condition of membership and inclusion in their respective registers. The paradoxical consequence of implementation of the Government’s proposals would therefore be that it would be less onerous for third party lobbying agencies or individuals to observe the requirements of the statutory regime than it is now to observe the requirements of the representative bodies to which nearly all of them variously belong. In page 15 of its consultation paper the Government expresses its support for the industry’s efforts to improve standards. But ministers should take account of the risk that the industry may scale down or even discontinue these efforts if it is burdened with the additional expense of maintaining a statutory register and feels that it is being treated in a discriminatory fashion by comparison with other professional lobbyists.
10. The Government’s stated justification for limiting its proposed regime to third party lobbyists is that ministers’ meetings with direct lobbyists are transparently published in the “Who’s Lobbying” section of the website, whereas meetings with third party lobbyists are not transparent when so recorded because the client—the third party—is not known. We believe that this argument is fundamentally misconceived because it is based on a misapprehension of how public affairs consultancies normally conduct their business. The services that such consultancies provide to clients include monitoring parliamentary and government activity and policy development, alerting clients to relevant proposals and draft legislation, drafting briefing and position papers and advising clients on how representations may best be made to government or evidence given to parliamentary committees. Rarely, if ever, do the services include making such representations directly on behalf of the client. Public affairs consultants may accompany a client to a meeting with a minister, civil servant or politician, but will not normally attend in their own right. If they do, their code of conduct will require them to declare the identity of their client and the nature of his business.
11. It is therefore not surprising that a selective trawl through the www.data.gov.uk website has revealed no record of a meeting with a public affairs consultancy. If there are indeed a number of such meetings, they can easily be made transparent by imposing a requirement on Government Departments to record them by reference to the ultimate client rather than the consultancy. The establishment of a statutory register of third party lobbyists, under independent supervision, would be a wholly disproportionate solution to what is, on the most generous interpretation, a limited and arguably different problem.
12. In the paper which it intends to submit to the Cabinet Office before the close of the consultation period, UKPAC will give its responses to the more specific questions and issues raised in the consultation paper. But those responses will need to be read in the light of our fundamental doubts over the Government’s approach to implementing the Coalition agreement on a statutory register of lobbyists and with the arguments in favour of that approach which are advanced in the consultation paper.
February 2012