Tom Griffin (London, OK): An unusually bright light was shone on the murky world of Westminster lobbying on Wednesday, when the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency hosted a public meeting at House of Commons.
Among the speakers was Paul Staines, AKA Guido Fawkes who noted on his blog that some in the lobbying industry were opposed to taking part in the event. Robbie MacDuff of the Association of Professional Political Consultants (APPC) gamely turned up nevertheless, a decision was all the more commendable given that the event was chaired by the Guardian's David Hencke, who suggested that his own reporting of the cash for questions affair "probably cost him his first job" with Ian Greer Associates.
With a report on lobbying in the offing from the Public Administration Select Committee, MacDuff made the case against any statutory regulation that would replace the voluntary register maintained by the APPC.
"We are firmly of the view, that for the UK, the current self-regulatory system works well and is seen to work well," he argued.
Peter Facey of Unlock Democracy made the case for reform:
If we are going to have people who influence our elected representatives, then we need to know where they're coming from. I'm not calling for onerous regulation, because I would have to apply it equally to Robbie. The Alliance for Lobbying Transparency is calling for regulation to cover everybody.
Let's at the very least have a statutory requirement for those of us who seek to lobby this place,and other places of power, to have a certain level of transparency.
Professor David Miller of Spinwatch highlighted some of the questionable practises employed by the industry, particularly the role of lobbying firms in carrying out local plannning consultations."That's how the whole process is managed and manipulated so that developers can put in these massive developments with all the social harms that they cause."
That assertion was strongly criticised by MacDuff, who said:
Consultation processes are run by local authorities and other organisations and institutions. They're not organised by lobbying companies, it's nonsense. It's a lie.
I'm baffled by the fact that things can be said sometimes on these panels which are just not true.
There then followed an interesting intervention from John Mills of lobbying firm PPS, who said:
"we do lots of lobbying consultations on development projects. It's our specialty. Frankly if the developer didn't pay to run a consultation, nobody else would. It is often done that way but it's done in partnership with the local authority."
Guido/Paul Staines employed his short contribution mainly to interrogate MacDuff, asking: "What do you have to do to get thrown out of the APPC. It's a self-regulatory organisation. How many organisations have been thrown out of it?"
The answer according to MacDuff was none, but he did reveal in response to a question from former lobbyist James Davenport that APPC member Morgan Allen Moore, had been suspended, a story which Guido picked up the next day.
Yet another interesting intervention came from Conservative backbencher Douglas Carswell:
I'm slightly sceptical about how regulation might work. When I walked in here three years ago, I wouldn't have thought this debate was even relevant. I assumed that the age of Ian Greer and cash for questions were over. In three years I've learnt that, on the contrary, lobbying goes on and it's just slightly less crass.
For example, there are organisations funded by defence contractors that have front organisations with tentacles in Westminster and Whitehall, that are very much part of the lobbying effort, but because they're not narrowly defined as lobbying consultancies, they're free to have run of this place, and do all sorts of things, which would be pretty reprehensible if they came to light.
All in all, it was an event that illuminated a particularly murky corner of the Westminster. It will be up to the Public Administration Select Committee to decide whether to let the light flood in.
