Lobbyists’ shock victory over political heavyweights in Westminster quiz

News reaches me of a stunning victory for lobbyists over politicians and the media.

Last night saw a charity political quiz, hosted by Iain Dale at the City Inn Hotel in Westminster. The quiz was organised by Ebay PR manager Vanessa Canzini to raise cash for Acton Homeless Concern.

An early favourite to win was the Sky News team, led by Adam Boulton with help from Peter Kellner and Anji Hunter. Total Politics also fielded a team of six, as did top lobbying firms APCO Worldwide, Blue Rubicon, Hanover and Weber Shandwick. Tory frontbencher Damian Green is also said to have been roped in.

But when the results were announced there was an unexpected winner in the form of little-known lobbying outfit Indigo Public Affairs. According to Canzini they were ‘way out in front of the other teams’.

And they only had two people!

So what happened? Planning shop Indigo is run by Richard Patient, but I understand their secret weapon goes by the name of David Boothroyd

A source tells me: ‘Boothroyd won it single handed… He is their walking Google. He has an encyclopaedic knowledge of politics.’

No sh*t!

Lobbyist in audacious bid to woo Daily Mail man

The lobbying industry’s fight to clear its name continued this weekend as Foresight Consulting MD Mark Adams took to the airwaves.

Appearing on Radio 4’s Week in Westminster, the ever-professional ex-Downing Street private secretary stood firm under scrutiny from shrewd Daily Mail commentator Peter Oborne.

In a shock move, Mark even invited Peter to spend a day hanging out with him. He said:

‘There’s nothing mysterious about what we do. I’d be more than happy for you to join me for a day in my office, Peter.’

Alas, the Mail man didn’t exactly jump at the offer…

Revealed: my role in lobbygate

Time to come clean. A couple of months ago I met up with Claire from the Sunday Times, just as she was beginning to start work on the Dispatches programme.

It was not long after my story about expenses-hit Tory MP Andrew Mackay joining Burson Marsteller’s lobbying practice.

Among other things, we chatted about who might be next to cash in on their contact book  political experience. 

I told her I was reliably informed that Geoff Hoon was keen to make some cash in the private sector…

Is Budget lobbying crackdown all it’s cracked up to be?

Well, he did it! As I said he would a week ago, Alistair Darling has used the Budget to crack down on lobbying by state-funded quangos.

The Budget 2010 says the Government will ‘limit the use of lobbying and public relations consultants by arms length bodies’.

Clearly, I owe my source a drink…

But devil of this plan is in the detail. A supplementary Budget document spells out that quangos ‘must not use public funds to employ external public affairs or other consultants to lobby Parliament or Government with the principal aim of altering government policy or to obtain increased funding’.

Is this the really tough crackdown that some have been calling for?

Martin LeJeune is one lobbyist who thinks not. According to the twittering Open Road boss the restictions are ‘pretty feeble in practice’.

Another lobbyist privately goes further: ‘There are so many ways around this rule… Pure grandstanding.’

Labour makes screeching lobbying register u-turn. Will Tories follow?

Following yesterday’s lobbying scandal, Labour has firmly committed to a statutory register of lobbyists.  The offical line from Labour HQ is as follows:

‘We believe that the time has come to support a statutory register of lobbyists and we will bring forward proposals to that effect in our manifesto, building on the work we have already done to create a voluntary code.’

It is a remarkable statement, given the Government’s distinct lack of enthusiasm for such a register up until now.

When the House of Commons public administration select committee called for a statutory register in January 2009, the Government shrugged its shoulders and took over ten months to respond. When it finally did respond, in late October 2009, there appeared to be very little appetite for a statutory register. Instead, public affairs firms were encouraged to go away and develop a voluntary system. ‘The Government believes that effective voluntary self-regulation must be the preferred approach,’ the response stated, quite clearly.

It remains to be seen exactly what shape Labour’s statutory register takes. As a minimum it would have to include names of all lobbyists and their clients.

Would it also detail all meetings between lobbyists and MPs? What about meetings with officals? And who would pay for the thing? – the taxpayer? Or would lobbyists be forced to pay? What about charity lobbyists, surely they shouldn’t have to cough up? But should they really be given an advantage over small businesses, for example?

However it pans out, Labour’s u-turn puts the Tories in a tricky position. So far, they have talked tough on lobbying but held back from supporting a statutory register of lobbyists and their clients. It is a stance that many senior Tories are privately happy with – not least those that own lobbying firms!

But can it last? With lobbying now firmly back in the headlines, it might be difficult for the Tories to preserve the idea that they are best placed to clean up politics if they are not prepared to match Labour every step of the way on lobbying.

In short, Labour has decided to talk tough. Don’t be surprised if Dave seeks to get himself on an even footing…

Shameless Stephen Byers gives Labour MPs a bad name with lobbying boasts

The Sunday Times story of MPs caught by their fake undercover lobbying operation is explosive stuff. Stephen Byers comes out of it worst. Here’s a couple of brief highlights:

Stephen on using his friend Tony to grease the wheels: ‘I see Tony Blair every month and you’ll probably find a lot of your clients really quite like him. If there’s an event … we could have a word with Tony, say come along for a drink.’

Stephen on helping Tesco to avoid consumer-friendly food labelling. ‘So you ring Peter Mandelson and say, “Peter, did you know what Hilary Benn’s about to do? … He’s going to introduce a regulation which is going to have this huge nightmare in every supermarket”… Peter got it delayed and then got it amended.’

And that’s just the half of it…

Don’t forget to tune in to Channel 4 on Monday at 8pm to see Byers make a complete arse of himself.

Stephen Byers caught in C4 lobbying sting

The Channel 4 Dispatches programme on lobbying will air on Monday evening. And it promises to be pretty explosive…

Last weekend, the Mail on Sunday reported that an un-named Tory MP had been caught promising cash for access to a fake lobbying firm. Now, The Sunday Telegraph has dug deeper and suggests that Stephen Byers could actually be the politician in most trouble when the show airs. Melissa Kite reports:

‘Mr Byers, a leading former Blairite minister, was filmed telling actors posing as potential employers that he would be a valuable addition to their company because of his position.

‘He was later so worried about what he had said that he sent an email claiming he had “exaggerated”.’

Oops. Patricia Hewitt, Geoff Hoon and Baroness Morgan were also targeted by the undercover operation, the paper claims.

Get the timer set for 8pm Monday evening, Channel 4…

UPDATE: The Sunday Times has the full story. Byers is banged to rights. Shameful.

Lobbying is dying, long live stakeholder engagement!

This week, I revealed that a ban on lobbying by state funded quangos is set to be announced in the Budget.

Some PR and lobbying consultancies might be hoping that I have got the wrong end of the stick.

They will not be too pleased hear that the proofs have now been sent to the printers…

So, barring any last-minute changes to the script, we will soon have a situation where the two main parties are both committed to stopping quangos from hiring external bodies to do their lobbying. It is estimated this will save millions of pounds that would otherwise gone straight in to the coffers of the public affairs industry. How much exactly should become clear next week.

Nevertheless, a few lobbying firms remain defiant. They refuse to roll over and die. They will not be defeated.

Since the story hit the streets, more than one public affairs agency boss has told me of secret plans to repackage their lobbying as  ‘stakeholder engagement’….

Cunning, eh?

Will Tory MP who fell for lobbying scam be unmasked next week?

Five Conservative MPs were invited to meetings with a fake lobbying company, The Mail on Sunday revealed this weekend.

They were offered £35,000 a year for ‘just a few days’ work a year if they agreed to exploit their links with friends in a future Tory Government. Embarrassingly for the Tories, one of the MPs ‘is believed to have fallen for the stunt and agreed to work for the bogus company’.

Who could it be, and when will we find out?

The Mail on Sunday, which broke the story, suggests that the scam may have been cooked up by people working for Rory Bremner.

But I hear that that there will be an hour-long Channel 4’s Dispatches programme next Monday. My mole tells me it will expose a number of politicians, including ministers, who have left public office and subsequently taken up public affairs lobbying jobs in the private sector.

And a gullible Tory MP who agreed to exploit his connections for £35,000?

PPCs accused of hiding lobbying links

The Observer reports that ‘a number of prospective Conservative MPs have failed fully to declare in their campaign literature that they work for lobby firms representing powerful business interests’.

In fact, only four PPCs are named. Most creative of the quartet is Weber Shandwick director Priti Patel, who fails to mention the global PR and lobbying giant on her website.

Instead, she tells locals she is  ‘a director at a company which provides advice to a range of public and private sector organisations on their business and communication strategies’.

Now that’s what Alan Partridge would call ‘disconcertingly vague’…

Tory plan to make civil servants publish meetings with lobbyists

Some of us saw this one coming from the Tories, but I didn’t expect to see it in their Technology Manifesto! On page 5, it states:

‘We will put online the salaries of the 35,000 most senior civil servants. These civil servants will also be required to publish online and in full details of expense claims and meetings with lobbyists.’

But what is a lobbyist, Dave?

Food labelling fudge is proof that lobbying works

Health campaigners and consumer groups have been united in their support for a ‘traffic light’ scheme for food labeling.

Independent polls for Which? and the National Heart Forum have found the public prefer traffic lights over the confusing ‘Guideline Daily Amounts’ scheme that the likes of Kelloggs, Nestle and Kraft have been pushing.

But yesterday the Foods Standards Agency failed to throw its weight behind traffic lights and instead opted for a messy compromise

Why did they wimp away from unequivically backing the scheme supported by everyone apart from the junk food lobby big food firms?

The Independent provides a few clues:

‘The food industry hired a lobbying company, Hill & Knowlton, which engaged in a whirl of activity. Hill & Knowlton boasted on its website that meetings with No10, the FSA, the health select committee, and other parliamentarians had “resulted in a significant shift in attitudes among core government stakeholders.”

‘One FSA insider was quoted as saying Kellogg’s had always been briefing ahead of it at party conferences: “They muddied the waters for us. Frontbench spokespeople told us they’d never experienced anything like it.’

But the FSA is not the only one susceptible to a bit of corporate lobbying from the big food firms.

The Tories still support universal use of the Guideline Daily Amounts system!

Lobbyists offer ‘champagne for poll predictions’

Lobbying firm Chelgate Public Affairs has come up with a cunnning wheeze to drive traffic to its website.

The consultancy is seeking entries to guess the margin of votes by which the largest party wins over the second-placed party in the general election.  They will also be posting regular updates of the current average entry, thus providing a running commentary on how lobbyists see the contest shaping up…

Click here to enter. Closest to the result wins a double case of champagne!

Public Affairs Central predicts a miniscule margin of 6,666 votes.

Cheers!

Cracking down on lobbying lords

The House of Lords privileges committee yesterday gave a clear flavour of its plans for keeping naughty peers in line, publishing a guide to a new code of conduct.

The new code is meant to come in to effect later this year. It wil  prohibit ‘parliamentary consultancies’ and introduce new rules on declaring interests when tabling questions and motions.

Crucially, for the first time, Lords will be required to sign an undertaking to abide by the code of conduct at the start of each Parliament.

Even Gordon Prentice MP says this is progress – of sorts: ‘Slowly but surely we are getting there.’

Is the only lobbyist to doubt Dave now in poll position?

With the Tory poll lead narrowing, some lobbying bosses are secretly stressing that they may have called the result a bit too early.

Over the last year, this blog has chronicled the efforts of various consultancies to get their own piece of CCHQ.

But, as this BBC piece states: ‘A new thought is starting to creep into the minds of the nation’s corporate overlords. What if the Tories lose?’

In the same piece, my old pal Ian Hall, erstwhile editor of Public Affairs News, asserts that many public affairs bosses ‘will be left with an enormous amount of egg on their faces if Gordon Brown pulls victory from the jaws of defeat.’

To a point, Lord Hall…

Back at the start of 2009, I asked ten top agency bosses to predict when the next election would be and its outcome.

Seven of them correctly predicted that Gordon would hang on until 2010 to call the poll.

Of the seven, only one of them predicted that Gordon would sneak a shock victory by ‘a handful’ of votes .

Could rockin’ Rory O’Neill, partner at Gardant Communications, prove to be the sole Nostrodamus of the public affairs world?

Guido and pals back Peter Bingle in war with CCHQ

Tory lobbyist Peter Bingle annoyed a few folk at CCHQ the other day with his despairing email lambasting the ‘sheer hopelessness’ of the Tory election campaign.

As noted below, Conservative Party head of press Henry Macrory led the attack on the Bell Pottinger Public Affairs boss – with a sequence of eleven tweets poking fun at Bingle.

But, as the dust settles, it looks like prophet Bingle actually has plenty of admiring followers on the Tory right.

On Saturday, Guido Fawkes blogged that Bingle ‘has a point’. The sentiment was frequently reflected in Guido’s comment section:

johnny come lately: ‘Guido, good of you to point out that Peter Bingle is right. So he is.’

OneminusZero: ‘Bingle is fucking on the money, anyone who wants to see the Tories elected needs the wake-up call.’

Delbert Wilkins: ‘Nail on head. Couldn’t believe Henry Macrory went for him like that last night instead of adressing what Bingle had said – much of which was blatant to anyone with half a brain cell.’

With CCHQ briefing against him, Bingle will surely be grateful for the support. But not all of Guido’s people were worshipping at the feet of the Bell Pottinger lobbying chief. 

Bollocks to Bingle:  ‘The man would appear to be a foolish and arrogant arse who likes the sound of his own voice.’

Oh well, you can’t win em all, eh Peter?

Peter Bingle versus the Tory machine

The Conservative Party has been on a mission to hang a certain Tory lobbyist out to dry tonight.

Bell Pottinger Public Affairs chairman Peter Bingle appears to have made himself public enemy number one at CCHQ, as a result of this email, which he sent out to pals this morning.

The memo attacking the Tory election campaign as ‘shambolic’ made the second item on the Channel 4 News this evening. As well as laying in to Bingle on Twitter (head of press Henry Macrory has been leading the attacks), CCHQ put out a damning statement:

‘This is a lobbyist with his own agenda who has no understanding at all of what is going in Tory HQ.’

Ouch!

Of course, the latter part of this statement may not be entirely true – and not just because, over the years, the likeable and ‘never knowingly under lunched‘ Bingle has spent numerous hours in expensive restaurants with various Tories.

At Bell Pottinger, Bingle’s right-hand man is the former Tory cabinet minister (and before that party comms director) Tim Collins who surely does have a pretty good idea of what is happening in CCHQ. Until very recently, Bingle worked alongside Jonathan Caine who is now back in CCHQ working for the shadow Northern Ireland secretary. Bingle is also pretty close to his direct boss, Thatcher’s image guru Tim Bell…

Meanwhile, Channel 4’s Cathy Newman, who broke the story, suggests that Bingle is on the money:

‘Peter Bingle’s email matters b/c it’s what MPs, peers and candidates are saying privately…have i touched a nerve with tory tweeters?!?’

Either way, despite the ferocious onslsught, the wounded Bingle is not defecting to Labour just yet.

Just after 8pm he tweeted: ‘Why is Henry McCrory being so horrible? There is no more committed Tory than me.’

Then, a bit later: ‘Being attacked by the party you love is a new experience. I continue to want David Cameron to be the next PM …’

FURTHER VIEWING: In the middle of last year’s Tory conference, Bingle appeared in this memorable Channel Four News package – and was introduced as ’the godfather of Tory lobbying’.

I don’t recall too many complaints from CCHQ back then…!

Me, Rawnsley and the Hollywood A-lister

I’m barely half-way through it but the Andrew Rawnsley book is proving to be a ripping yarn. Definitely worth a read before Tony Blair: The Journey comes out in September…

Last night I went to hear Rawno ‘in conversation’ with Jeremy Vine and was delighted to ended up with Thandie Newton sitting a mere one seat away.

Can any political author boast a more glamorous fan?

As soon as the Blair memoirs are published, Tony ‘will embark on a national and international author tour immediately upon release of the book’, the press release states.

But can Tony pull in a better class of celeb than Andy? The bar has been raised pretty high…