Tories will force civil servants to disclose 'full details' of lobbying meetings

David Singleton, prweek.com, 12 March 2010, 09:07am

The Conservative Party has outlined plans to inject greater transparency into lobbying by making top civil servants publish details of meetings on the web.

Concerns: David Cameron

The party's technology manifesto, published yesterday, 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.'

The Tories will also require public bodies to publish 'online departmental organograms showing the job titles of every member of staff'.

The plans come a month after Tory leader David Cameron expressed concerns over secretive corporate lobbying - an issue on which Labour has, so far, remained relatively silent.

In a speech on 8 February, Cameron said: ‘We don't know who is meeting whom. We don't know whether any favours are being exchanged. We don't know which outside interests are wielding unhealthy influence.

‘This isn't a minor issue with minor consequences. Commercial interests - not to mention government contracts - worth hundreds of billions of pounds are potentially at stake.'

The Tories have also pledged to revise guidelines stating that former ministers should not lobby government for at least 12 months after leaving office. ‘We will start by doubling that to two years,' said Cameron.

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CHRIS WHITEHOUSE - 12 March 2010

Chris Whitehouse, Managing Director, The Whitehouse Consultancy, today welcomed a commitment to greater openness in the Conservative Technology Manifesto, saying:

"We warmly applaud the commitment [page 5] by the Conservatives to require civil servants to publish online and in full details of meetings with lobbyists. Such an open transparent approach will be a breath of fresh air and is something for which we have been calling for some time.

"We are also particularly keen on the pledge to introduce a technology enabled Public Reading Stage for legislation which will allow for wider and deeper scrutiny of proposed new laws.

"We hope that all political parties will pick up on these themes in the new Parliament whoever forms the government because greater openness and clearer lines are long overdue. Indeed, we hope that an early consensus can now be created that we should move to statutory regulation of the lobbying profession. Nothing else will now do."