Common Weal submitted a response to the Scottish Government’s Lobbying and Transparency Bill public consultation. It is re-produced below.
COMMON Weal welcomes the government proposal to introduce a lobbying register but hopes the Scottish government will note the criticisms of the Westminster ‘fake’ lobbying register which has not succeeded in bringing greater transparency. Holyrood must use this opportunity to create legislation of best international practice and for that look at the varying successes and failures from around Europe. Transparency International published in April 2015 ‘Lobbying in Europe: Hidden Influence, Priviledged access’ and the recommendations contained within that report provide an excellent set of guidelines.
When lobbying is unregulated the scope for undue influence increases. This has been linked in Europe to damaging consequences for society including environmental degradation, financial collapse, human rights abuses and endangerment of public health and safety.
A lobbying register is only one part of a wider approach to improving transparency, but steps must also be taken to improve levels of integrity and equality of access. The public have a right to know who is meeting our government ministers, that both the ministers and the lobbyists behave in an ethical way and that the political process is open to inputs from a wide range of interests.
When lobbying is unregulated the scope for undue influence increases. This has been linked in Europe to damaging consequences for society including environmental degradation, financial collapse, human rights abuses and endangerment of public health and safety.
The Common Weal ‘Fair Access to political influence’ 2013 report on this subject confirmed that the type of people giving evidence to parliament were likely to be white males, in high income jobs. This is not representative of Scotland.
There should be a suitably broad definition of what constitutes lobbying. The E.U. believes “All organisations and self employed individuals engaged in activities carried out with the objective of directly or indirectly influencing the formulation or implementation of policy and decision making process of Scottish government institutions” are lobbying and should register.
It is important to capture the amount of money being spent to lobby for particular outcomes and this financial element should be captured by the register if it is to be meaningful and increase transparency. Briefing documents, papers and the suggested text of amendments put forward by lobbyists should be published online. In Europe there have been documented cases of lobbyists text for amendments being used wholesale in legislation.
It is important to capture the amount of money being spent to lobby for particular outcomes and this financial element should be captured by the register if it is to be meaningful and increase transparency.
‘Astroturfing’ should be recognised and curbed. A ‘revolving door’ policy must also be looked at. Significant revolving door practices between the UK Treasury and the big 6 accountancy firms have resulted in the UK tax code being the most complicated in the world, running to thousands of pages and yet still being full of exploitable loopholes.
There should be open calls for applications to sit on advisory groups and a carefully designed selection criteria to ensure a balance of interest groups are present.
The new lobbying transparency legislation must be enforced and meaningful sanctions should apply to breaches.
The three core principles should be transparency, ethics and fair access. Scotland should have a register of lobbying activity. In Europe seven countries and two E.U. institutions have made a lobbying register with periodic reporting of activities the cornerstone of their approach.
The register should:
Have no fees for charities or non-profits. A small admin fee could be paid by large public affairs consultancies.
Impel organisations to submit information on behalf of the individuals who lobby for them. Self employed lobbyists will also need to register.
It should apply to consultants and in-house lobbyists.
It should also cover the lobbying of senior civil servants and senior advisers to Ministers.
Communications: All types – face to face, written, phone calls, briefing documents and events. Lobbyists who provide briefings for Ministers or civil servants or the suggested text of amendments should be forced to publish them online.
It should record – Name, organisation, issue lobbying on, amount of money spent on lobbying for that issue, list of contacts made on the issue and be sbmitted twice a year.
It should be overseen by an independent commissioner.