A good piece in today’s Observer by Nick Mathiason.

Despite David Cameron’s talk of cleaning up politics we are told that a number of Conservative Parliamentary hopefuls have concealed their links with the lobbying industry.

In the list we see Priti Patel, the Conservative ppc for the new seat of Witham in Essex; Penny Mordaunt, ppc for Portsmouth North, and George Eustice, Cameron’s former press secretary, who is standing in Camborne and Redruth, Cornwall.

Mathiason reminds us that Cameron warned only last month that lobbying is “the next big scandal waiting to happen”.

Ooops!

Come on Dave, let sunshine win the day.  Let’s open the curtains on Conservative links with lobbyists.

The Public Administration Select Committee investigated the secret world of lobbying and, in a report published over a year ago, called for a mandatory register of lobbyists, enforced and managed by an independent body.

We want the register to cover all those outside the public sector involved in accessing and influencing public-sector decision makers, with exceptions in only a very limited set of circumstances.

Specifically, our report called for:

• the names of the individuals carrying out lobbying activity and of any organisation employing or hiring them, whether a consultancy, law firm, corporation or campaigning organisation.
• in the case of multi-client consultancies, the names of their clients.
• information about any public office previously held by an individual lobbyist—essentially, excerpts from their career history.
• a list of the relevant interests of decision makers within the public service (Ministers, senior civil servants and senior public servants) and summaries of their career histories outside the public service.
• information about contacts between lobbyists and decision makers—essentially, diary records and minutes of meetings. The aim would be to cover all meetings and conversations between decision makers and outside interests.

See:

Lobbying: Access and Influence in Whitehall. (January 2009)

and

Lobbying: Developments since the Committee's First Report of Session 2008-09: Government Response to the Committee's Fifth Report of Session 2009-10 - Public Administration Committee