Public relations industry

Nicholas Jones

6 February, 2012

The role of newspapers like the Sun in offering “implacable support” for Tony Blair’s backing of the American-led invasion of Iraq was cited at the Leveson Inquiry as an example of how the Murdoch press was required to reflect the political views of its proprietor.

Paul Dacre, editor of the Daily Mail, told Lord Justice Leveson (6.2.2012) that he valued his “total freedom” as an editor – unlike the editors of The Times, Sunday Times, Sun and News of the World who had to follow the “strong views” which Rupert Murdoch communicated to them.

Dacre claimed that Blair, as Prime Minister, would have been unable to commit the use of British forces in the Iraq War “without the implacable support provided by the Murdoch newspapers...and that came from Murdoch himself.”

Evidence which backed up Dacre’s claim – although not referred to at the inquiry – was obtained by the Glasgow Media Group in October 2008 as a result of requests under the Freedom of Information Act.

Extracts from telephone conversations between Murdoch and Blair revealed the depth of Murdoch’s commitment to support the British Prime Minister.

 Nicholas Jones

1 February, 2012

Ofcom. the broadcasting regulator, gave an assurance to the Leveson Inquiry (1.2.2012) that it would speed up its investigation into whether it has sufficient power to provide protection against media companies exercising too much political influence.

Ed Richards, Ofcom’s chief executive, told Lord Justice Leveson that if given another chance to look again at News Corporation’s aborted bid for total control of BSkyB it would have placed more emphasis on the “risk to the democratic process.”

Ofcom’s evidence gets to the heart of one of the key challenges for the Inquiry: should there be fresh restrictions on the concentration of media power?  Campaigners for greater media plurality say that News Corporation’s level of media ownership in Britain – 39 per cent of BSkyB together with three national newspapers (The Times, Sunday Times and Sun) – is too large and should be reduced.

In his evidence to the inquiry Richards acknowledged that the absence of the power to make recommendations on the impact of media concentration on the democratic process became an issue during the investigations it conducted into News Corporation’s bid to take full control of BSkyB.

29 Jan 2012

The Sunday Times reports this morning that the Cabinet Office official in charge of government efforts to clean-up of lobbying has stepped down after posting a message on Twitter saying she hoped a group fighting for better regulation of the industry “would die”.

The remark appeared in a series of tweets by Eirian Walsh Atkins, who resigned as head of constitutional policy at the Cabinet Office on Friday. She now faces an internal investigation into possible breaches of the civil service code of conduct.

The paper reports: 'Walsh Atkins will be asked to explain the tweet she posted on December 22, saying: “I wish Unlock Democracy [the campaign group] would die. I am prepared to help it along.”

Asked by The Sunday Times to explain her comment about Unlock Democracy, she replied: “That I don’t like them,” and hung up.

However, more important than her apparent dislike of transparency campaigners is the fact that Walsh Atkins has held regular meetings with lobbyists seeking to influence the government's proposed statutory register of lobbyists, which she was responsible for preparing. She has met with the UK Public Affairs Council (UKPAC), a lobby industry body promoting self-regulation, on at least four occasions since September 2010. At the same time, transparency campaigners have been denied access.

The government's proposals for a statutory register, published last week, were widely seen as a whitewash, with lobbyists' fingerprints all over them.

The fact that the lobbying industry's lobbying of Walsh Atkins would remain a secret under the government's current proposals, will not do the government's case for minimal reform any favours. 

19 January 2012

The government is expected to announce its plans for a statutory register of lobbyists tomorrow (Friday 20 January). Ahead of publication of its consultation, Tamasin Cave of the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency said:

"The devil will be in the detail. We need a robust, compulsory register to reveal: who is lobbying whom, what they are lobbying about, and how much is being spent trying to influence our politicians. And it needs to be overseen by a body independent of the industry.

Anything less and we can assume that the government is putting the interests of its friends in the influence industry above public demands for full transparency.

David Cameron has voiced deep concerns about lobbying in the UK getting 'out of control'. The government must now tackle this £2billion industry and bring their activities into the open. Britain needs to catch up with other countries and allow real public scrutiny of lobbying with a robust register of lobbyists. Only then will we be able to fully understand the impact they have on the way this country is run."

The Alliance for Lobbying Transparency is calling for a robust statutory register, which would require lobbyists – whether companies or trade unions, lobbying agencies or law firms, and larger charities (above a minimum financial threshold) – to regularly declare on a public register:

• Names of individual lobbyists;
• The special interest lobbying (either the employer or agency clients);
• Public body being lobbied;
• Information on any public office held by lobbyists within 5 years (to reveal the 'revolving door')
• Area of policy they seek to influence, whether legislation, regulation or 
public contract;
• Amount of money spent on lobbying (good faith estimate). This will reveal scale, disparities and trends in lobbying.

Nicholas Jones

19 January, 2012 

Without the ability to use the Freedom of Information Act to probe the Metropolitan Police and the Crown Prosecution Service, the Labour MP Tom Watson doubts whether a House of Commons select committee would have made the progress it did in exposing the cover-up over the phone hacking scandal at the News of the World.

He fears that the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government is trying to find ways to restrict the scope of the Act – a move recommended by the former Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O’Donnell, and a view echoed by the former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair.

By using repeated Freedom of Information requests the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee forced the Metropolitan Police and the Director of Public Prosecutions to reveal the contents of their hospitality registers which contained details of social engagements with News International executives.

By using the Act, the committee gained the disclosure of information which otherwise would “still be hidden” and which was far more revealing than could have been obtained by parliamentary questions to ministers.

Nicholas Jones 9 January, 2012 

If the cursory level of questioning of the Sun’s editorial executives is to be any guide, David Cameron has little to fear from the Leveson Inquiry’s brief to make recommendations on the “future conduct of relations” between politicians, media proprietors and newspaper editors.

Dominic Mahon, editor of the Sun, who was among five executives who gave evidence (9.1.2012), faced only a superficial inquiry about Rupert Murdoch’s involvement in the Sun’s endorsement of the Conservatives at the 2010 general election.

Mahon was similarly not pressed to give any details of his four meetings with the Prime Minister in the twelve months since the general election; nor was there any probing of the Sun’s political campaigning on behalf of the government.  In August 2010 Cameron was given two-page spreads in the Sun to launch a hotline to expose “benefit scroungers” or another in October 2010 for the re-launch of the Prime Minister’s campaign on behalf of the “Big Society.”

Nicholas Jones 27 December, 2011

Having focussed initially on the grievances of celebrities and distressed relatives, the Leveson Inquiry into media ethics will start taking evidence in the New Year from newspaper proprietors and executives and the repercussions are likely to become increasingly uncomfortable for David Cameron.

Unanswered questions over the extent to which the Prime Minister was aware of illegal phone hacking at the News of the World are also bound to return to the political agenda if the Metropolitan Police decides to lay charges against the paper’s ex-editor Andy Coulson or any of the other seventeen former employees of News International who have been arrested and are currently on bail.

Because the opening stages of the inquiry concentred on the experiences of those who had suffered at the hands of media intrusion – and the ongoing unresolved dispute among journalists over who-knew-what about the extent of phone hacking – Cameron has been largely insulated from any further damaging fall-out from his decision to hire Coulson in May 2007 as the Conservatives’ media strategist, and then take him into Downing Street as the government’s director of communications after the 2010 general election.

 

Nicholas Jones 21 December, 2011

After another a week which began with the Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne trailing his own Parliamentary announcements – this time on the future of the banking industry – a Conservative MP close to the Prime Minister has defended the practice of government by leaking.

Nick Boles, a founder member of the Notting Hill Set of Conservative activists who backed David Cameron’s bid for the Tory leadership, has told fellow MPs that the “public’s right to know” was more important than giving the House of Commons “a monopoly on first communication of the government’s decisions.”

He readily acknowledged – and defended – the fact that modern government had become “a leaky sieve”.  But it was, for example, because George Osborne’s proposals in the autumn statement had been trailed so effectively in advance, that the public’s “awareness and understanding” of the difficulties of the current economic situation was “far higher” than if nothing had been released in advance.

 Nicholas Jones, 11 December, 2011

“Gullibility” is the word which Chime Communication’s chairman Lord (Tim) Bell is reported to have implied when trying to explain away the ineptitude of senior members of his staff in allowing themselves to get caught in a newspaper sting.

Bell has condemned what he considered was an “unethical, underhand deception” by undercover reporters from the  Independent’s Bureau of Investigative Journalism in tricking Tim Collins, managing director of Bell Pottinger Public Affairs, into believing they were agents for the government of Uzbekistan.

Collins and two senior colleagues were caught on camera “boasting” how top lobbyists could “influence the Prime Minister. (Independent, 6.12.2011)

But Collins is no stranger to the black arts of journalism: he was the Conservative Party’s spin doctor who briefed political correspondents in advance of on John Major’s “Back to Basics” speech at the 1993 Tory conference – a briefing which backfired because of Collins’ guidance that Major was intent on rolling back the permissive society.

8 December 2011

Following this week's revelations about lobbying, the Independent reports today that "the trade body which represents the UK's public relations and lobbying industry is to investigate Bell Pottinger over claims made by executives during a business pitch to undercover reporters".

A rival lobbyist, Mark 'stand up for lobbying' Adams, has made the complaint to the Public Relations Consultants Association (PRCA), one of three trade bodies running the lobbying industry's system of self-regulation. 

Adams states: "I am a strong proponent of self-regulation for the lobbying industry...Ideally Bell Pottinger will clear their name and demonstrate they have done nothing wrong. But if they have behaved in an unethical manner, then the appropriate sanctions should be taken against them."

The toughest sanction available to the PRCA is that they terminate Bell Pottinger's membership. That's it. And you thought the Press Complaints Commission lacked teeth.

8 December 2011

As demonstrators shut down Washington's K Street, the historic home of the US lobbying industry, new research from the US shows how corporations are paying more for lobbyists than they are in taxes. The report by Public Campaign finds, for example, that General Electric — one of the top 10 most profitable companies in the world — got a net tax rebate of $4.7 billion between 2008 and 2010. Meanwhile, it spent $84 million lobbying Washington. 

At the moment, we have no comparable figures for companies in the UK. Unlike their US colleagues, lobbyists in Britain aren't forced to make public who they are lobbying in government, which areas of policy they are seeking to influence, and crucially, how much money they are spending in the process.

People aren't yet protesting outside the London offices of the UK's major lobbying firms, but public demands for the Coalition government to finally introduce its proposed compulsory register of lobbyists are getting much louder.

Tamasin Cave, 6 December 2011

Claims of influence and access by lobbying firm Bell Pottinger have been met by an astonishing denial from Downing Street, the prime minister's official spokesman telling reporters today:

“It simply isn't true to say that Bell Pottinger or any other lobbying company has influenced government policy... I am challenging this idea that this company or any other lobbying company have influenced policy.”

It’s in the interests of lobbyists to advertise their influence on politicians, and in politicians’ interest to deny it. But is there any truth in the government’s claim; should lobbying firms just shut up shop and go home?

Leaving aside the too-many-to-mention UK government policies covered in the fingerprints of lobbyists, and the obvious truth that companies wouldn't pay for lobbying if it didn't work, there are a number of studies that explain why companies invest in lobbying. (Most are from the US, which says a lot about the transparency they have in lobbying stateside, and how little knowledge we have of our industry here, clothed as it is in secrecy).

• American corporations currently spend about $3.5 billion/year on lobbying.  It has been estimated by the right-wing Cato Institute that the value of the resulting corporate welfare is about $90 billion/year.

• A recent study shows that the rate of return for money spent on lobbying for corporate tax benefits alone is between 6 and 21 times.

• Another study demonstrates that firms which lobby ‘significantly outperform non-lobbying firms with respect to increased market value of equity'.  This can be as high as adding another 2% per year to returns.    

• Related to this, the Economist reports that an index based on the amount of lobbying that American firms do has outperformed the broader market since its creation in 2008. “The results have been stunning,” reports the Economist, “comparable to the returns of the most blistering hedge fund".

• According to a study on the connections between lobbyists and politicians in the US, it’s been found that the most 'politically connected' lobbyists, those with the closest relationships to senators, suffered a 24% fall in revenues when 'their' senator left office. The value of direct access to influential Cabinet ministers has been estimated at £112,000.

Lobbying is a tactical investment by companies, and let's be clear, it is corporate money that makes up the vast majority of the UK’s £2billion industry. To claim that these companies reap no benefit from their investment is to mislead the public.  

Tamasin Cave, 6 December 2011

Wow! This is reminiscent of the old Tory days of sleaze. A Conservative government at the heart of yet another lobbying scandal. Last month’s led to the resignation of the defence secretary. This one leads to the Prime Minister himself.
 
One of the lobbyists caught by today’s investigation by the Independent / Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Tim Collins, is the chief lobbyist at Bell Pottinger Public Affairs. He is caught on camera boasting of his contacts:
 
“I was in the Conservative research department with David Cameron and George Osborne… I was in the Shadow Cabinet under two or three leaders, again with David Cameron and George Osborne… I've been working with people like Steve Hilton, David Cameron, George Osborne, for 20 years-plus. Edward Llewellyn, who's the Prime Minister's chief of staff, was my deputy in Central Office for a long time. Steve Hilton was my deputy in a different capacity. I know all these people. There is not a problem in getting the messages through to them.”

In a speech before last year’s election, David Cameron attacked “secret corporate lobbying”. He said: “We all know how it works. The lunches, the hospitality, the quiet word in your ear…  It arouses people’s worst fears and suspicions about how our political system works… a cosy club at the top making decisions in their own interest.”

We all know how it works now.

Nicholas Jones, 1 December 2011

Yet again another missed opportunity to challenge Alastair Campbell on whether his own conduct in Downing Street contributed to a decline in media standards. In evidence to the Leveson Inquiry (30.11.2011) he singled out inaccurate speculation and the use of invented anonymous quotes as two of the greatest failings of political correspondents.

Tony Blair’s former spin doctor ranged far and wide in presenting a damning critique of media ethics but neither counsel for the inquiry, Robert Jay QC, or the judge asked Campbell whether his own approach to political public relations might have contributed to the very shortcomings he was complaining about.

29 November 2011
Too few checks are being made on ex-Commission officials who move into jobs in the lobby industry, resulting in abuses of power, according to a new report published last week (Thursday 24 November) by the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation (ALTER-EU).   The report urges greater transparency and tough new rules to stop public employees moving through the “revolving door” into private sector lobby roles, often without any cooling-off period or restrictions being imposed.   ALTER-EU says this allows lobby firms to gain insider know-how and access to key contacts on behalf of their business clients or employers, providing easy routes to influence policy making. 

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Nicholas Jones, 28 November 2011

David Cameron’s promise when establishing the Leveson Inquiry in July 2011 that he would ensure a new era of openness about ministers’ meetings with media proprietors and executives is proving to be an empty gesture.

Five months have elapsed without any new information being released and the Prime Minister’s published log for his first fourteen months in Downing Street was a meaningless charade.  He hid behind euphemisms such as “general discussion” when describing the purpose of meetings with Rupert and James Murdoch.

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Tilly Gifford, 14 November 2011

 

Lying under oath. Infiltration of protest groups. Concerns about policing going off-piste are justified. But what about the many coppers dropping off the radar entirely into the lucrative, private security industry? Recent events also throw up cause for concern over what ex-police working for private firms are up to for their corporate paymasters.

 

Former head of Special Branch, now security director

 

"Gordon Irving, Scottish Power’s Security Director, has close links and a very good working relationship with the police, having been in the force himself", boasts Scottish Power’s own website.

 

Irving joined Scottish Power after 30 years in Strathclyde Police where he was head of Special Branch. Irving’s position is symptomatic of the disturbingly ‘close’ relations between the police, Special Branch, big business and the private security firms operating for profit.
 

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Blog by Tilly Gifford, 14 November 2011

 

Lying under oath. Infiltration of protest groups. Concerns about policing going off-piste are justified. But what about the many coppers dropping off the radar entirely into the lucrative, private security industry? Recent events also throw up cause for concern over what ex-police working for private firms are up to for their corporate paymasters.

 

Former head of Special Branch, now security director

 

"Gordon Irving, Scottish Power’s Security Director, has close links and a very good working relationship with the police, having been in the force himself", boasts Scottish Power’s own website.

 

Irving joined Scottish Power after 30 years in Strathclyde Police where he was head of Special Branch. Irving’s position is symptomatic of the disturbingly ‘close’ relations between the police, Special Branch, big business and the private security firms operating for profit.