By Paul Flynn MP - 2nd November 2011
Paul Flynn MP warns the government is not cooperating with the lobbying industry on reforms and says "the omens are bad for the prospects of future transparency".
Will David Cameron's attempt at cleaning the parliamentary lobbying stables work where all other attempts over the past 25 years have failed?
All opposition parties promise to end the excesses of lobbyists. In government both Labour and Tory governments have bottled out.
Rich corporate lobbying exists to give further advantage to the already advantaged. Their tentacles of influence are deeply buried in the body politic. Their influence is to malignly influence decisions in favour of their rich privileged clients.
Former Labour minister Tom Watson admits that the Labour government was persuaded by lobbyists to disregard the 2009 report by the Public Administration Committee (PASC).
It called for a mandatory register for almost all lobbyists, transparency, and regulation by a body independent of both government and lobbyists. As a member of PASC in the past and present Parliament I believe PASC's call for transparency (including the names of the individuals carrying out lobbying activity and of any organisation employing or hiring them) is the minimum reform that is essential. We asked for declaration of the previous occupation and interests of lobbyists to avoid the 'revolving door' of former ministers, civil servants and government advisers trading on their contacts.
We said we believe that full information of all contacts between lobbyists and decision-makers should be published. The aim would be to cover all meetings and conversations between decision-makers and outside interests.
The government is to delay moves to clean up the lobbying industry until 2013, despite the controversy that triggered the resignation of Liam Fox.
Plans to set up a register of lobbyists, to be published next month, will not become law until 2013. In November last year, the deputy prime minister promised legislation in the current parliamentary session, which ends next spring. But it has been delayed until the following 2012-13 session by a rearguard action by some lobbying firms.
Again, lobbyists have been furiously lobbying government to delay reforms. The group Spinwatch has resorted to a FOI request to find out how many meetings have been held with the lobbying industry to delay or weaken reforms. The government is not cooperating. The omens are bad for the prospects of future transparency.
An example of the government's casual attitude to serious reform involves the failure of communities secretary Eric Pickles to declare a 5 star Savoy dinner provided by a lobbyist because that day he was eating personally, not in a ministerial capacity.
The Guardian reports the disparity in contacts. The figures show that ministers met corporate representatives on 1,537 occasions in the first 10 months of the coalition. This excludes several hundred round-table meetings where numerous companies were present.
Trade bodies, think-tanks and other interest groups had 1,409 meetings. By contrast, charities were met on just 833 occasions, and union representatives just 130 times, less than a tenth as often as their corporate counterparts.
Will government reforms again be weak and full of loopholes?
Paul Flynn has been Labour MP for Newport West since 1987
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