Lobbying - to anyone who doesn't know - is where representatives of a company or organisation representing a group of companies, have an audience with the government in some shape or form whereupon discussions are held on a topic of importance to the companies. The majority of this, of course, is done with profit in mind.
Surely this shouldn't be allowed? Well it is. Many many decisions that have been made over the last few decades have been influenced by lobbyists. Everything is up for cosy discussion with whomever has the resources to do so: policing/security, healthcare, alcohol and tobacco advertising and licensing, rail franchises, TV deals, waste, fire services - EVERYTHING.
The Lib Dems wanted a bill to control lobbying and make it more transparent. It should have fallen to Nick Clegg to oversee this but he declared a private interest because the law firm his wife works for are involved in lobbying, so it fell to his Conservative junior minister instead.
The bill as it stands, does not include direct lobbying, only third-party lobbying. So staff from Centrica, for example, could lobby to their hearts' content to help their case for fracking, whereas a group representing charities campaigning for British retailers to tighten their policies on supplier standards wouldn't be allowed to. The bill's definition of a lobbyist is so tight that it would be incredibly easy to get around. Also, it wouldn't cover staff crossing between government and private companies. At present, there are staff from a number of companies actually working in the government, on 'secondment', in advisory groups or lifted straight into new, prominent roles.
This is from The Independent online (Sunday 6th Oct 2013): "Sam Laidlaw, the chief executive at British Gas owner Centrica, whose chairman Sir Roger Carr led industry opposition to Labour’s conference announcement, is a member of David Cameron’s Business Advisory Group, which briefs the Prime Minister on “critical business and economic issues facing the country”. Tara Singh, a former public affairs manager at Centrica, took up her newly created role at Number 10 this week as Mr Cameron’s personal advisor on energy and climate change."
The 'big six' energy companies have met with the Department for Energy and Climate Change 128 times since the coalition was formed. In contrast, there have been only 26 meetings with representatives of energy consumers. Surely this proves that consumers are less important to the government than the big six energy companies?!
Members of the public are allowed to lobby their MP. But doing this individually by letter or even in person, has little to no impact. This lobbying bill will prevent groups representing individuals to lobby the government. The Labour party are proposing changes to the bill which, if accepted, will fix most of the issues with it. But it will still be going on, behind closed doors, in the corridors of power, restaurants, hotels and bars across the capital (and occasionally elsewhere). Big companies have been getting closer and closer to the government for the last 20 years and as long as this goes on, the less interest the government will have in the interests of the people it is nominated by and paid to represent.
I agree with all of your points here. The thing is, charities lack the political upper-class connections with government ministers and thus have to rely on these third parties to achieve goals which companies are perfectly able to achieve directly. The social spheres of wealthy Britain are very hard to break into and this bill will undoubtedly disenfranchise good-doing people from politics.
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