Lobbyists replay arguments, shock! |
Blogs -
Tamasin Cave
|
19 October 2011
"Clamp on lobbyists will hit charities and unions" shouts the Times' front page this morning.
That's right. A compulsory register of lobbyists, which is what the article is referring to, can only work if it includes all those that lobby government: commercial lobbyists, companies, charities, unions, law firms, management consultants, trade bodies, think tanks. The whole of the public affairs industry. Was anyone suggesting different?
What's more, charities and unions are campaigning for the rules!
The membership of the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency, which has been pushing for a register for 4 years, consists solely of charities and unions, including: Action Aid, Campaign Against Arms Trade, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, National Union of Journalists, Platform, SpinWatch, Unlock Democracy, War on Want, and the World Development Movement.
These groups lobby government, and they think people should know about their attempts to influence it. (Also, the vast majority of lobbying in the UK's £2bn industry is done by commercial interests, but start exempting charities and that's where the money will flow, into non-profit front groups).
If the article is designed to scare the third sector, it shouldn't. A good register will not capture the activities of smaller, less well resourced charities. As is the case in other countries which regulate lobbying, there should be a sensible minimum financial threshold, below which charities or for that matter small businesses, would not have to sign up.
|
Put friendships aside. It’s time for a robust register of lobbyists |
Blogs -
Tamasin Cave
|
17 Oct 2011
Although David Cameron once said that lobbying was the next great political scandal, the Conservatives have so far refused to regulate lobbying, despite the commitment in the May 2010 Coalition Agreement.
In the wake of the Fox / Werritty scandal, the Tories must now force their many friends in the lobbying industry to operate in the open.
We urgently need public scrutiny of who is influencing this government’s decisions and how. Whether it's on health policy, changes to planning, banking reform or defence.
A robust statutory register of lobbyists would let us see how many millions are being spent by private healthcare companies, or the size of the supermarket lobby, or which arms companies are lobbying our defence secretary. This one simple register has the power to radically alter public understanding, and change political debate.
For too long lobbying scandals have merely claimed the careers of individual politicians, but left the huge influence industry untouched. Finally the spotlight has turned on those paying to persuade our politicians, an industry that's worth £2bn in the UK.
Lobbbyists have sought to delay and weaken the coalition’s commitment to regulate lobbying. This must not be allowed to happen. We need to see who is influencing whom, and we need to see the money that they’re spending.
This government's commitment to transparency looks increasingly like spin.
|
Policy Exchange, illuminate us! |
Blogs -
Tamasin Cave
|
2 October 2011
With a straight face, the Policy Exchange think tank is hosting an event at next week’s Conservative conference called: Let there be Light: Technology, transparency and fixing Britain’s broken government.
The line up of speakers includes: Francis Maude MP, Minister for the Cabinet Office (and co-founder of Policy Exchange); Rishi Saha, Director at PR and lobbying giant Hill & Knowlton and former Head of Digital Communications in No 10; and Piotr Brzezinski, Head of Digital Government at the Policy Exchange.
So, should we be looking to politicians, think tanks and lobbyists for how to fix Britain’s broken government?
Let’s start with politicians: Policy Exchange’s first chair, Michael Gove, for example, appears to be using technology to hide rather than reveal government business from the public: he’s just been caught using a private email account (registered in his wife’s name) to discuss policy with his advisors. This, they (wrongly) claim, exempts such correspondence from Freedom of Information laws.
More regressive use of technology was revealed last week: the routine use of texts by ministers to contact corporate lobbyists about government business, again as a way to slip through the net of Freedom of Information requests.
Do think tanks fare any better on transparency?
|
Planning: Tesco cosy with Conservatives |
Blogs -
Tamasin Cave
|
1 October 2011, Tamasin Cave![Bob Neill, Lucy Neville-Rolfe, Charles Lewington Bob Neill, Lucy Neville-Rolfe, Charles Lewington](/web/20111028005538im_/http://www.spinwatch.org/images/stories/bob%20neill%20and%20tesco.jpg) The week before the government published its controversial reforms to England's planning system, Conservative planning minister, Bob Neill, was snapped looking relaxed, glass of wine in hand, at a Westminster party.
The occasion is the invitation-only summer get-together of lobbying firm Hanover, run by Charles Lewington, John Major’s former press secretary.
Neill is pictured with Lewington, and on his shoulder is Lucy Neville-Rolfe, chief lobbyist at Tesco.
Tesco will be a big winner under the new planning system with its presumption in favour of development.
The supermarket’s lobbying campaign continues at this weeks Conservative party conference, where tomorrow night (Sunday) it is sole sponsor of the Conservative Councillors' Association’s reception. The CCA represents nearly all local Tory politicians. A useful connection, one imagines, given their role in planning decisions.
|
Articles -
Food Industry
|
Richard Cookson, September 2011 First published in the British Medical Journal* Almost two thirds of UK primary schools will receive free teaching aids from Media Smart by the end of 2011. The non-profit media literacy programme provides reading and writing material that focuses on advertising.
Media Smart says that its teaching packs, which it says are created by educational experts and cover topics such as language, images, and production across commercial media, “teach children to think critically about advertising in the context of their daily lives”. But parents might view the lessons that their children are learning differently if they knew that the programme was funded by some of the world’s most powerful toy and fast food companies.
|
The two faces of NHS reform |
Blogs -
Tamasin Cave
|
Tamasin Cave, 7 Sept 2011
Yesterday’s Parliamentary debate on the government’s NHS reforms focused on the controversial issue of increasing the amount of money NHS hospitals can earn from private patients.
Shadow health minister Emily Thornberry told MPs that the plan to remove the cap on the amount hospitals can earn: “will mean that our National Health Service, where people are tended by our NHS-trained doctors, using our NHS equipment, will be filled up with private patients because they will be able to pay more."
Health Minister Simon Burns dismissed this as "pure and simple scaremongering".
Is it, really? The government can dismiss it as such in Parliament, but a more accurate answer could be found at this morning’s £600-a-head conference, the Independent Health Forum.
Standing in for Andrew Lansley, Health Minister Lord Howe told the assembled private healthcare execs that the NHS reforms will create ‘genuine opportunities' for the private sector to take over large chunks of the NHS. The programme for the rest of the day is illuminating:
|
NHS reforms plunged into fresh turmoil |
Blogs -
Tamasin Cave
|
5 September 2011 ![](/web/20111028005538im_/http://www.spinwatch.org/images/stories/andrew-lansley1.jpg) This week the government will attempt to force though its plans to radically change the NHS. Fears that they are bent on privatising the NHS appear well founded: Secret emails, uncovered by SpinWatch and published in today's Guardian reveal: "A German company has been in talks to take over NHS hospitals, the first tangible evidence that foreign multinationals will be able to run state-owned acute services. They also show: "the Department of Health secretly plans to hand over the running of up to 20 NHS hospitals to foreign firms, despite the prime minister's pledge that there will be "no privatisation of the NHS".
In the papers [management consultants] McKinsey warned the department not to bundle off all the hospitals to the private sector at once – and instead start "from a mindset [of] one at a time". The consultants told officials to be mindful of the "various political constraints" associated with privatisation."
Also covered in yesterday's Observer. The documents released under the Freedom of Information Act can be downloaded here: Correspondence between Ian Dalton (Dept of Health) and management consultants McKinsey; Correspondence between Matthew Kershaw (Dept of Health) and management consultants McKinsey.
|
The Islamophobe International: Vigilant Freedom and the English Defence League |
Articles -
Islamophobia
|
Tom Griffin, 2 September 2011 In the wake of the Utoeya massacre in Norway, it is no longer possible to ignore the dangers of the growth in far right, Islamophobic counterjihad ideology. So a new report published by the Center for American Progress is particularly timely. Fear, Inc.The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America demonstrates that a remarkably small core group of people are responsible for spreading Islamophobia in the US: A small group of foundations and wealthy donors are the lifeblood of the Islamophobia network in America, providing critical funding to a clutch of right-wing think tanks that peddle hate and fear of Muslims and Islam—in the form of books, reports, websites, blogs, and carefully crafted talking points that anti-Islam grassroots organizations and some right-wing religious groups use as propaganda for their constituency.
The report comes as recriminations over the Norway massacre may now be exposing some of the Islamophobia network's links in Europe. In particular, a bitter dispute between the leadership of the English Defence League (EDL) and counterjihad activist Paul Ray is shedding new light on the EDL's origins.
|
Drunk kids: Who is to blame? |
Blogs -
Tamasin Cave
|
28 August 2011 What's the answer to teenage binge drinking? According to 'independent' think tank Demos it's don't get drunk in front of the kids. More gems from a study, widely reported in today's papers, include: more parental discipline, encouraging children to develop "sensible and responsible" expectations of consumption, and prevent teenagers from having access to booze in the home. The headlines delivered the message loud and clear: Parenting style strongly affects drinking (BBC); Tough love stops binge drinking (Guardian); Parents to blame for drunk kids (Independent). Got that? It's the parents' fault. Another interesting study to get media attention last week points the finger of blame elsewhere: Alcohol companies accused of exploiting Facebook, Twitter and YouTube by 'targeting young people with drink campaigns', is the headline that ran in the Daily Mail, reporting a study that showed that drinks companies’ web pages were set up "to ‘appeal to minors’ with games, competitions and videos of drink-fuelled parties." Just to be clear, that's booze companies encouraging children to get bevied, and then turning round and blaming the parents when they do (the Demos study was funded by SABMiller, the world's largest brewing company). |
Steven Rose on the LM network |
Blogs -
LM Watch Blog
|
David Miller, 13 August 2011![](/web/20111028005538im_/http://www.spinwatch.org/images/stories/science%20media%20centre.gif)
In a roundtable discussion on science hosted by Red Pepper renowned neuroscientist Professor Steven Rose gave listeners an insight on his view on the organisation formerly known as the Revolutionary Communist Party. The issue was raised by a discussion about the Science Media Centre headed by Fiona Fox. Connie St Louis, director of the Science Journalism MA at City University had commented that the 'Science Media Centre has troubled me. Its troubled me ever since its inception because I think there is too much PR for scientists of their work anyway. We talk about universities, we talk about just this whole ploughing of information coming through PR and agencies. And now we have a PR agency that exists solely for scientists.' Steven Rose then added:
But let's talk politics. I mean lets just talk about the background of the Science Media Centre and Ms Fox herself. The background to this is an organisation which at one point was called the Revolutionary Communist Tendency, then became Living Marxism and after Living Marxism was destroyed in its libel suit over Srebrenica and the concentration camps there, turned up the next day calling itself the Institute of Ideas... Now these groups when they were part of the Revolutionary Communist Tendency and now they are part of the Institute of Ideas are passionately pro and uncritical of science. They're passionately pro any sort of quote scientific advance in genetics, in medicine. They're passionately pro nuclear and always have been. So this is a group which has been set up and has become very powerful and very influential and it disturbs me a great deal that it washes its way through so much of the media as it does, on radio, on television, in journals as well.
|
|
|