Lobbying

One of many reasons why the lobbying industry attracts opprobrium is because Britain’s political system offers only limited public sector facility to those who wish to influence it but lack the funding and/or patronage to do so. ‘The lobbyists’ did not cause the injustice. It is up to government to come up with the solutions. The lobbying process can be deemed to be corrupt because of, say, ‘unfair access’ or ‘undue influence’. These are not always malign; and if the bias is declared the citizen can judge: who is doing the influencing; the target. What s/he cannot determine, even though s/he may have a view, is, for example, the amount of pharmaceutical company lobbying for, say, various R&D tax incentives, the levers pulled – known in lobbying as ‘threats’ – or associated issues; e.g. scientists lobbying in favour of stem cell research.

Whether or not Britain’s government continues to allow most of its powers to shift elsewhere, the national lobbying apex – which can mean local, area or regional depending on your position – is seeking to sway the manifestos of the major parties prior to a general election. Pragmatism always rules: so great was New Labour’s victory in 1997, lobbyists may have kept in touch with some of the other parties for political PR purposes (relationship development and/or maintenance) but would not have engaged many resources in seeking to influence their manifestos in 2001 or 2005.

Now, one of several reasons why the possibility of a ‘hung’ parliament may be talked up, is because its suggestion allows apolitical, and/or cross-party campaigners who are sometimes pan-national, to assert themselves on the basis they can advise, maybe even deliver voters – e.g. those anxious about climate change – thus giving the public affairs industry a short-term income boost as it argues that influencing each of the main political party manifestos is relevant again.

Manifesto lobbying

The purpose of manifesto lobbying is to insert post-alignment commitment. An example of manifesto alignment would be, say, agreement that protection of the global environment is important. Post alignment – which is where the real lobbying and influence peddling come in – means to what extent individual party manifestos will, as a result of lobbying, contain caveats, omissions or fudges. Were there to be a general election today, an example could be tracking possible regulation of private equity companies and/or hedge funds. The former, in particular, are being lobbied against world-wide. Those expressing anxieties about internal destabilisation include British and American trades unions, as well as MEPs anxious about their detrimental effect on ‘new Europe’.

Monitoring manifesto divergence – including their equivalents world-wide – is one of the most basic ways of charting an issue’s local, international or pan-national progress and/or its patrons.(1) This can develop into what is known in lobbying as issues management: manifesto omission can be an indication of party disapproval, disinterest, political expediency – or the most successful issues management of all!

Polarisation

One lobbying trick is polarisation: big government uses it as a control mechanism to deliver the result it wants (e.g. loss of freedoms versus protection from terrorism).(2) It is populist and confrontational. Topdown definition and/or pejorative dismissal of a ‘single issue’ which has ‘grassroots’ support (e.g. civil rights) can be a lobbying device supporting polarisation and can be a topdown creation in the first place.

Generational conflict can be an example of executive inspired non-political polarisation: the ‘old’ are a burden on the ‘young’, forcing the ‘middle-aged’ to make a tax ‘choice’ – the word ‘choice’ itself being spin – in favour of their child not their parent. As a result, the ‘old’ are forced to be represented by a lobby defined by their self-interest (known as ‘narrow’ politics), while the executive maintains the moral high ground and acts in the ‘public interest’ (‘bigger’ politics).(3) The polarisation enables, for example, public and private sector housing – so far as the former exists – to focus on present and future taxpayers, just as it allows, say, the financial services and products industry to offer some of them more favourable terms: i.e. ‘polarisation lobbying’ can allow for the manipulation of various markets including the management of perceptions.(4)

The people most likely to have the skills to protect, defend or enhance the position of those disadvantaged by the political manifestation of one of these markets – as well as, of course, the already advantaged – include ‘the lobbyists’, whether they are politicians lobbying for good causes, private citizens, or those operating in the academic, commercial, consultancy, government, not-for-profit, print and broadcast media; professional, public, representative, think-tank, sectoral or voluntary parts of the industry.

Planning Consents

Many citizens first come across ‘the lobbyists’ as a result of local planning decisions which can attract the most controversy. Most developers have projects in several different localities, each with their own councils and citizen groups. The developer does not carry in-house lobbyists as an overhead and may not do business in the area again. Therefore, a local lobbyist may be hired who specialises in mobilising or demobilising local support, dealing with the paperwork, knowing key citizen-activists, local politicians etc.

When the system runs as it should, citizens can prevent consent being granted even if this could be to the detriment of other citizens. Local democracy is not resourced and citizen-lobbyists have a steep learning curve particularly if up against, say, policy which may be centrally inspired. Citizens can beat policy decisions – an example is the campaign mounted to protect the village of Wye from becoming a new town – but they have no access to state funding, nor, so far as I am aware, does the state collate data which can be used as an information resource or audit.(5)

Overseas markets

Because local legislation differs – e.g. tobacco advertising is banned in some countries but not in others – compliance monitoring/lobbying can be a commercial essential. Lobbying for market access is another but can be controversial if activists have managed to squeeze an industry’s profits in well-regulated countries and it is seeking alternative income-streams in poorly regulated ones: e.g. selling cigarettes to Uzbekistan. Although reputation threat – and, conversely, its protection, known as reputation management – is an increasing tactic of activist lobbying, it is useless if those open to such an attack have no reputation to lose or the government of the country they are targeting has an even worse one. Or is it? In fact, it allows for further lobbying (issue association)….

Sometimes, all a lobbyist is required to do is identify key people. In 2000 – and probably since – PR company Edelman China jointly published, with one of China’s national newspapers, the Chinese government’s annual ‘Organisation Chart’.(6) Another lobbying tactic that can facilitate market access can be altering shopping habits. For example, winemakers in India lobbied last year for a relaxation in licensing laws that would permit its supermarkets to stock wine, thereby ‘introducing Indians to the Western concept of putting alcohol and food in the same basket’.(7)While a change in ‘overseas’ legislation is apparently driven by locals, non-locals – the global brands are formidable lobbyists – can be the main beneficiaries.

Litigation lobbying

Increasingly, the forum for some lobbying can be British and foreign courts. For example, pensioner groups won support from a high court judge for the parliamentary ombudsman’s ruling that ‘government literature failed to highlight occupational schemes could go bust and that they were culpable in encouraging workers to sign up’. (Not that this did them much good in Chancellor Brown’s March budget this year.) Nor did the Chagos Islanders gain anything by securing judgement against the government in the courts. More successful examples which also illustrate litigation lobbying’s increasing boundaries could be: British coroners taking on the American government vis-à-vis ‘friendly fire’ deaths in Iraq; Westminster’s recently established All Party Rendition Group. The latter has agreed with human rights groups to use American laws ‘to get Washington to reveal how many CIA flights carrying detainees landed in Britain. They are also planning to table an amendment to the civil aviation bill going through parliament, or the police bill . . .’

Government lobbying

Government means different things to two of its constituents: the people and commerce. To put it simplistically: the citizen may note a policy change in the Budget because the cost of his/her cigarettes has gone up (health v tobacco lobbying), whereas commerce will monitor it for trends in government spending (procurement lobbying). The citizen may march against an illegal invasion. Commerce, including government entities, may lobby for a contractually pro rata war.(9)In the latter case, this can mean having strong representation – e.g. an in-house government affairs office or lobbying consultants – in Washington.(10)Although the following is a huge and possibly misleading over simplification, commercial entities lobby Washington for the most part because of the contracts which may become available or the purchases they may wish to make; whereas they lobby the EU for legislative/regulatory reasons although they can do both in either.(11)Because both are ‘democratic’ spheres of influence, others, including individual citizens or their representatives, can lobby against. One of the main criticisms of international bodies such as the WTO, IMO and World Bank – all of which are lobbied – is that its officials are not democratically elected and therefore citizens cannot hold them to account.

To the people, including those organised into lobbies or representing them, government is about policy, service delivery and access. This can be delivered at local, national, regional or international level. To commerce, including present, former or quasi government entities, it is about all of the former as well as, crucially, the award of contracts and management of sales.(12) This can be securing a local contract to, for example, supply paper-clips to a certain layer of government or its agency, with all the repeat business – and possibility for corruption – this can mean. Centrally, controversies that can arise in the government award process include lobbying for deals secured as a result of policy orthodoxy which may deliver, say, a private finance initiative costing the taxpayer more than if paid for straight from the public purse, or profiteering as a result of asset privatisation previously in public ownership.(13) Another contractually contentious area that has similarly brought ‘the lobbyists’ into disrepute – a reputational disaster for all and an undeserved slur for many – are those facilitated by weighted government policy.

BAE Systems

The contract secured by BAE Systems with the Saudi Arabian government over twenty years ago is an example of successive government weighting.(14) Its delivery is alleged to have been facilitated by armament courtiers providing illegal inducement (‘favours’).(15)To secure overseas markets, commerce, sometimes assisted by government, sometimes creating spurious need in the first place, seeks to sway other governments’ purchasing decisions (lobbying). Because procurement regulations vary from place to place, interested parties may hire procurement lobbyists to monitor or influence spending trends. In countries where procurement rules may be different, immature or corrupt, some commercial entities may allegedly operate a slush fund and, in BAE’s case, be protected by the prime minister when such allegations are made; i.e. ‘lobbying’ can be a euphemism for corruption. I have always believed that the absence of lobbying can be one of the best indicators of corruption.(16)

The prime minister defended his actions by invoking an example of the ‘bigger’ view versus the ‘narrow’. A small part of this was undermined by an SIS corrective leak (a lobbying tactic) to The Guardian in January this year and denied in the same newspaper the following day.(17) Leaking to a newspaper is part of lobbying’s arsenal and can be in the public interest.(18) Prior to an imminent change in prime minister, it can also be about positioning, which activity increases as the hand-over approaches and everyone is jockeying to be ahead of everyone else.

BP: position lobbying

Position lobbying can also be a marketing tool. One of the finest examples, before it all went wrong, was Lord Browne/ BP’s lead on corporate responsibility, as well as the environment. The favourable PR engendered at the time was the enabler of equally important second stage marketing. The strategy required huge commercial chutzpah and was designed to undermine BP’s foremost competitor (Exxon), which it did. Lord Browne’s positioning was key because, as he rightly judged, ‘big oil’s’ political influence was in decline and, with the exception of Washington, everybody else recognised the climate change debate. It was an illustration of an increasing commercial trend: consumer and/or civil society lobbying ahead – or instead – of, government lobbying; and it is one reason why the Davos event became so important. For the most part, this is a response to/measurement of the impact made by successful activist campaigning on world-wide publics.

The best joke of all is that, today, some of these are arguably listened to more carefully by ‘big business’ than are the politicians who not so long ago were dismissing them as ‘single issue’ (see ‘polarisation’ above). Commercial entities most likely to engage with some ‘single issue’ activists directly, include those advised by political futures advisors, trend spotters, regulatory risk managers, political risk strategists and crisis PR specialists. Some of these may be employed by insurers.

Undermining of government and/or politicians

For all its flattery, lobbying civil society is not without danger to it.(19) These include: the ‘bouncing’ of society into the arms of unscrupulous government /politicians who have already been primed: e.g. denial of climate change in Washington; it can be the result of a makeover: e.g. a former Number 10 spin-doctor hired by Moscow to change its ‘stereotypical image’. (No mention of Chechenya or murdered journalists then.(20)It can be no more than a marketing gimmick – e.g. Ryan Air’s Populist rudeness to a Westminster parliamentary committee, April 2007, making its point to customers to put up or shut up.(21)

Incidents like the above can undermine government’s authority (a lobbying tactic). This is not always in the public interest. Currently, Britain’s government is trying to blame journalists for public cynicism which it hopes will rally citizens behind it – another example of lobbying civil society. Traditionally, it has lobbied citizens by appealing to their patriotism – which can be one of lobbying’s most cynical tactics. Government’s continued ability to do so is diminished now that it has allowed publicly-owned utilities to slip into private and/or foreign ownership and other basic elements of the contract between government and citizen have collapsed. The erosion in trust is completed by refusal to hold a referendum on the EU constitution, unchecked immigration and some aspects of globalisation, policies which undermine national identity and civil society.(22)

Usually, ‘the lobbyist’ is portrayed as a ‘hired gun’, someone who works for whoever pays the fee. These are called commercial lobbyists and represent a very small part of the lobbying market. Some are useless. Some come from other sectors: ex-diplomat Carne Ross, on a stipend from the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, advised the government of Kosovo last year, as well as trying to raise awareness of the Saharawi people displaced by Morocco’s long-standing occupation of the western Sahara.(23)

The largest sector of the industry is government and its associates – not a spin of which successive governments have necessarily wanted the public to be aware…… It is not the activity that is at fault but uneven supervision, regulation or amelioration of its worst excesses. Why these were able to develop in the first place is for another article. The way forward is to acknowledge what happened and get things sorted.(24)

Notes

1. Environment Secretary David Milliband sought the Pope’s assistance vis-à-vis climate change lobbying; Britain’s leading scientists (the Royal Society) challenged the US oil company ExxonMobil to stop funding groups that attempt to undermine its scientific consensus (The Guardian 20 September 2006).
2. As do those wishing to represent ‘big government’, e.g. French presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy pitching those on unemployment benefit against wage-earners, a throwback to Thatcherism (‘benefit scroungers’) and Reaganism in US. See also Le Monde Diplomatique as quoted in The Guardian 2 May 2007.
3. There was a fascinating article about a Ministry of Defence report envisaging the ‘future strategic context’ likely to face Britain’s armed forces in 30 years time. This included a reference to ‘the middle classes becoming revolutionary’. In Britain at least, many of these ‘revolutionaries’ will be over 50. See The Guardian 9 April 2007.
4. Blunt ‘perception’ instruments include attack adverts, smear campaigns, acronyms and words. Examples of the last two of these include: the reason why the phrase ‘the war against terror’, was changed. Other examples of manipulating perception through phrasing include the terms ‘democratic deficit’, implying there was once a surplus (!); and ‘family values’, which no one can argue against, despite the fact it implies those without family have no values. It has political and statutory weighting: e.g. it allows employers to give employees time off to nurse a sick child (the minority in the workforce) but not a sick friend. The endemic concept of the ‘nuclear family’ denying all other relationships including wider family, works the same way. There is one perception that I am not sure about: the illegal invasion of Iraq. This is perceived to be the failure it is….. Unless the country’s destruction was Republican America’s intent all along.
5. See The Guardian 9 April 2007; see also villagers protecting local countryside from developers (The Sunday Times ‘Living’ 29 April 2007).
6. Advert in China Daily, 5 December 2000. Selling for $45, the Chinese-English chart, based on institutional and personnel changes since May 2000, outlined the government structure of China. The open information is the sort of thing intelligence officers used to collate.
7. The Times 28 August 2006
8. The Guardian 26 January 2006
9. Following the first Gulf War, British civil engineering contractors were disappointed not to pick up more business from the Americans. They failed to do so, because, for the most part, they did not retain Washington lobbyists. Those relying solely on intergovernmental lobbying rarely pick up more than a few crumbs. Declaration of interests: at the time, I was a deputy director of an employers’ organisation representing the contractors domestically.
10. When BP Amoco was trying to win regulatory clearance in the US to buy Arco about ten years ago, BP employed a clutch of lobbying consultancies in Washington.
11. BP is said to have stood down most of its outside Washington representation when the regulatory environment on climate change did not move with the rest of the world, as well as because it pulled out of Iraq. Following a spate of industrial accidents, its former chief, Lord Browne, was criticised by Capitol Hill lobbyists for leaving the company ‘Washington-lite’: in fact his decision was correct – something outside lobbyists would not wish to admit given their resulting lost income! – saving his shareholders a fortune. BP’s present troubles would not have been minimised by having a stronger lobbying presence in Washington since, as Lord Browne was respectfully aware, these were matters for its health and safety professionals, lawyers and insurers. The Guardian 21 March 2007.
12. Accepting commerce pays tax, a technical detail modifying, say, the weight of paper-clips, should not be paid for out of Britain or the EU’s public purse. In some instances, the requirement is for more political privatisation of democracy, not less.
13. The Guardian 16 March 2004 reported that Dr Paul Drayson’s company, PowderJect, was awarded, without competition, a £32m contract to produce smallpox vaccine. Drayson donated £100,000 to Labour and was one of a small group of businessmen to meet Mr Blair in Downing Street for breakfast in 2001.
14. Britain’s biggest arms deal in history was signed with Saudi Arabia six years into ex-policeman Ray Smith’s campaign to ascertain how his daughter died in the country. One of the most bizarre, coincidental associations is that the law whether or not to hold an inquest following the deaths of British citizens abroad (e.g. Princess Diana/Dodi Fayed) ‘is based on the judgement given in the case of Helen Smith’. (Lobster 39).
15. Defence procurement is frequently underhanded. In the US last year, Congressman Randy Cunningham was jailed for eight years for picking up over one million pounds from defence contractors and others in exchange for steering government contracts their way and other favours (The Times, 4 March 2006). Similarly, senior British MOD civil servant Michael Hale was jailed for two years in April this year for accepting bribes from an American company (Daily Telegraph, 17 April 2007). The construction industry can be equally corrupt, the most recent example being the ‘more than 40 dawn raids carried out in four countries by police investigating alleged Mafia involvement in EU security and building contracts worth millions’ (The Times 28 March 2007).
16. The BAE saga illustrates various aspects of what some erroneously believe to be standard behaviour in the lobbying industry. These include: an alleged smear campaign against OECD executives; spying on peace campaigners, described as ‘monitoring’ (The Guardian 19 April 2007); Foreign Office secondment in other parts of the world, (The Guardian 5 October 2002); Lord Bell/lack of ‘Chinese walls’ (Observer 17 December 2006); lock-in: Saudi Arabia will wait for Gordon Brown to become Prime Minister before signing the deal; name generation – always an important arm of political PR/propaganda: Saudi Arabia’s missiles are called ‘Al Salaam’ – as obscene as America’s ‘Patriots’.
17. The Guardian 16 and 17 January 2007
18. A ‘tip-off’ can also be of use for lobbying purposes. It is the opposite of a ‘leak’; i.e. it’s private. See ‘Media Monkey’, The Guardian 30 April 2007, about opposition parties being alerted to an upcoming scoop.
19. Particularly worrying is the increasing trend to target children; e.g. and however exciting, an espionage exhibition at a national London museum. The tactic is straight out of the marketing manuals.
20. See ‘Ex-BBC and Blair aides hired’, The Independent 1 July 2006.
21. The media played into its hands by publicising the incident, providing thousands of pounds of free advertising. The company did, however, make a valid point: it is expensive and time consuming to attend parliamentary committees.
22. See The Observer 17 September 2006 when the PM attended a private dinner in a tycoon’s home where he met a group of business people lobbying for unlimited immigration from Romania and Bulgaria, which meeting was not minuted.
23. The Guardian 20 June 2005
24. A model for responsive public sector democracy already exists, e.g. some All Party Groups. The fact that many are discredited should not blind us to their potential including – in the same way as the media is being forced into making accommodation with, say, citizen-journalists – overturning political monopoly.