guardian.co.uk,
James Ball, Rajeev Syal and Nicholas Watt, Sunday 16 October 2011
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| Pressure to speed up the introduction of a register of lobbyists grows as survey reveals minsters met corporate representatives on 1,537 occasions in the first 10 months of the coalition. Photograph: Yasunobu Sakata/sot |
Government
ministers held more than 1,500 meetings with corporate representatives in the
first 10 months of the coalition, according to a Guardian analysis which has
prompted claims of a "massive disparity" in access to ministers.
As the
Liberal Democrats indicated that they would use the resignation of Liam Fox to
speed up the introduction of a register of lobbyists, the Guardian publishes figures showing the extent of the government's links with business.
The figures
show that minsters 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, thinktanks 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.
Tamasin
Cave, of the lobbying transparency group Spinwatch, said the records of
ministerial meetings showed the wide extent of corporate networks of influence,
but she also warned they may merely scratch the surface.
"The
findings show a massive disparity in ministerial access for different types of
groups – corporate interests clearly have privileged access. But these are just
the meetings we know about: Conservative ministers in particular are meeting
outside interests in a private capacity.
"This
just can't be done when ministers are meeting those who have commercial
interests. In this context, private simply means secret."
Cave added
that her organisation was engaged in a freedom of information battle with
Cabinet Office minister Mark Harper, who is overseeing the coalition's plans to
introduce a lobbying register. Harper, she alleges, is resisting an FoI request
asking for details of his meetings with lobbyists to discuss lobbying
transparency.
William
Hague said on Sunday that the regulation of lobbyists would be examined after
the cabinet secretary, Sir Gus O'Donnell, publishes his report into Fox's links
with Adam Werritty Tuesday. "I think we'll have to take stock of that. I
think ministers will have to discuss that, but with the advantage of having
seen that report," the foreign secretary told The Andrew Marr Show on
BBC1.
It is
understood that Downing Street will implement any changes recommended by
O'Donnell. But ministers believe the Fox saga is unlikely to highlight any
systemic problems with lobbyists. "There really aren't any members of the
cabinet who operate in that way," one government source said of Fox.
Nick Clegg
and other Lib Dem minsters share this analysis. But they are planning to use
the resignation of Fox to intensify the pressure on the Tories to live up to
their commitment in the coalition agreement to introduce a statutory register
of lobbyists. The agreement states: "We will regulate lobbying through
introducing a statutory register of lobbyists and ensuring greater
transparency."
Lib Dem
sources said the review into lobbying, which is being run by Harper and the Lib
Dem deputy Commons leader, David Heath, had slowed after pressure from the
lobbying industry. One source said: "We are pushing hard on this. It ran
into a bit of push-back from the lobbying industry. Nick Clegg and David Heath
are trying to push it to give it a bit of momentum. The events of the last week
will give it a shove in the right direction."
Lib Dems
believe the prime minister has little room for manoeuvre after he described the
£2bn lobbying industry as the "next big scandal" in a high profile
speech in February 2010.
The
O'Donnell report is expected to make uncomfortable reading for Fox. Jon
Moulton, the venture capitalist who made a donation to a company, Pargav, which
helped fund Werritty's trips, is understood to have approached O'Donnell to
claim that he was "misled" by Fox. Moulton was reported in the Sunday
Times as saying that Fox had personally vouched that any money he gave to
Pargav would be used to fund research.
The figures
published by the Guardian show that no department has published its record of
meetings for any month more recent than March 2011 despite the coalition's
pledge to regularly publish details of ministerial meetings. Several, including
the Department for Media, Culture and Sport, the Home Office and Department for
International Development have not even published the full log of meeting up to
that point.
Other
declarations could be described as less than transparent: home office minister
Lynne Featherstone records a meeting with "various companies", while
culture minister Ed Vaizey meets with "major publishers" to discuss
"numerous issues".
A spokesman
for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, which had the most
meetings with outside interests, said in response to the Guardian figures that
business did not enjoy any additional access to government.
"No
organisations or individuals with a genuine interest in talking to us are
excluded or discouraged from contacting and engaging with this
department," he said. "The government's top priority is to achieve
sustainable and balanced growth. This requires frequent contact with
businesses, and business organisations, of all sizes. These relationships are
essential to our understanding of business concerns and needs, and are even
more crucially important in these challenging times."
Separate
analysis of declared outside interests of MPs' staff and researchers found that
dozens of MPs employ staff with links to defence consultancies, major
businesses, and lobbying groups. The Christian lobby group Care (Christian
Action Research and Education), which helped to support Nadine Dorries's
proposed abortion amendment last month, has connections with researchers
working for six MPs, in several instances offering bursaries to fund
researchers' time in Westminster.
PricewaterhouseCoopers
and KPMG are both listed as having links with parliamentary staff, as are
numerous smaller consultancies such as Clearwater and Titon. Outside-funded
overseas travel was also declared, including a visit to the Paris Air show for
the Tory MP Jack Lopresti and his researcher, paid for by the global missile
company MBDA.
In total,
more than 311 of the 1,650 parliamentary passholders declared some form of
outside interest, though these included employment with political parties. John
Mann, the Labour MP for Bassetlaw who has campaigned against the ease with
which lobbyists have gained parliamentary passes, said:
"A
parliamentary pass is worth its weight in gold to a lobbyist. Once they have
one in their hands, they can wander around the Palace of Westminster, use it to
access politicians, peers and civil servants they want to access and they can
do it quietly, quickly and with little trace.
"And
what is so important is that they can hold informal meetings with power-brokers
that never have to be declared - the public need never know, and their
influence remains hidden from the Parliamentary authorities, from the public
and, in some cases, from the police. It is a scandal."
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