Houses of Parliament: Under the influence? Photocredit: http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1839989
The role of government lobbying has come under scrutiny over claims that firms such as Bell Pottinger are able to influence Prime Minister David Cameron and other prominent members of government, on behalf of private sector clients. Executives from Bell Pottinger, including Tim Collins, were secretly taped by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. They boasted of their influence on Foreign Secretary William Hague, amongst others, reported The Daily Telegraph; as well as allegedly claiming that they got Cameron to talk about copyright infringement with Wen Jiabao, the Chinese premier, on behalf of James Dyson.
Reporters from The Bureau of Investigative Journalism pretended to be Uzbek businessmen; in a perhaps more sinister matter, Bell Pottinger offered to clean up Uzbekistan’s image for £100,000 a month for services including manipulating Google’s search results so that child labor and human rights violations were drowned out. They also offered to edit Uzbekistan’s Wikipedia page.
The government has already pledged to introduce a statutory register of lobbyists; The Alliance for Lobbying Transparency has called for such a register to be introduced immediately, in oder to bring the industry under public scrutiny. The Guardian’s Datablog has got all the facts, showing that lobbying firms did “public affairs work for more than 1,600 clients” in the last three month period alone – lobbying “on an industrial scale.” The list, a voluntary one, has 64 firms on it – and Bell Pottinger is not among them.
Commentators agree that lobbying is a murky, shadowy world, full of smoke and mirrors; they differ on whether lobbying firms actually have any influence at all.
Undue influence? Lord Bell, chairman of the firm that owns Bell Pottinger, said to The Daily Telegraph however that a register wouldn’t work, and that nothing in the lobbyists’ claims suggested “any improper behavior.” David Cameron’s spokesman in the same paper denied any influence: “It simply isn’t true to say that Bell Pottinger or any other lobbying company has influenced Government policy. Clearly it is in their interests to tell their clients that they can provide them with a service and that is what they appear to be doing.”
What Bell Pottinger get up to is decidedly murky – but there are other villains. Tim Bell, the head of the firm that owns Bell Pottinger, is a fine advert for his services, said Matthew Norman in The Independent. Just look at his Wikipedia page – all “the dirty linen has been magically vanished.” His cocaine habit isn’t mentioned, nor his (alleged) habit of masturbating in view of “those passing his Hampstead Heath home.” This story is depressing, both for “our democracy and the victims of distant dictatorships.” Lobbying isn’t wrong – Shami Chakrabarti of Liberty, for instance, who does her lobbying in public, as she should. Private sector lobbyists, though, with their “Michelin meals, first-class air travel and fat salaries,” should not be envied. It’s a “dirty, seedy, shady little” job. The real villain of the piece is Tony Blair. Who knows how much he garnered from advising the president of Kazakhstan; not to mention the £27 million he trousered from the government of Kuwait.
It’s not so bad – yet. But do they really have so much inluence? Lobbying is “like taking candy from a child,” said Stephen Pollard in The Daily Telegraph. When we think about lobbying, we use phrases “most redolent of corruption” – and this is often right. Neil Hamilton and Tim Smith took cash for questions; Ian Greer was paid by Mohamed Fayed. But really it’s “all mouth and no trousers.” People bung “small fortunes” over – but they’re “being royally fleeced.” Sure, it might “reek of corruption”, but in reality Bell Pottinger are “pulling a fast one.” All that Google manipulation can be done by anyone. And as for editing Wikipedia – you might as well hire a “computer-literate eight-year-old.” The point is that lobbyists claim to have special connections to ministers – whereas most ministers are quite happy to meet people anyway. Lobbying is a nuanced business. Corruption – such as cash for questions – is obvious. But otherwise lobbying is merely “a highly paid form of secretarial work.” Even the point about Cameron raising intellectual property concerns with Wen Jiabao has got more to do with the fact that it’s exactly the sort of thing he should be raising; not something catalysed by Bell Pottinger. It’s hard to see what the problem is – unless, of course, lobbyists can get things done that “go against the national interest,” or “secure an advantage solely through having paid for a favour.” But that hasn’t happened. “Yet.”
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