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.

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?

1 October 2011, Tamasin Cave

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.

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.

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:

5 September 2011

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.

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).