Electoral reform pressure group Charter 88 has appointed a new head
of campaigns to replace Greg Power, who left in the summer.
Christopher Lawrence-Pietroni will take control of the campaigns unit in
the new year.
Reporting to director Pam Giddy, he will manage a team of five and
oversee the press office, the parliamentary unit and the education and
campaign desks.
Charter 88 uses no PR agency and, although Power left for the Hansard
Society in August, no one suitable applied when the job was first
advertised.
Lawrence-Pietroni has been parliamentary liaison officer for the charity
Church Action on Poverty (CAP) for the past two-and-a-half years. Before
that he was an account executive at agency Political Planning
Services.
Although the role has not changed since Power left, the group has been
restructuring its priorities to deal with recent constitutional
changes.
The reform of the House of Lords, the implementation of devolution in
Scotland, and Wales, and now the progress towards devolution in Northern
Ireland have robbed the campaign group of many of its most cherished
causes.
In August, Giddy made clear the organisation’s role would expand to try
and bring into the public arena such issues as proportional
representation for local council elections and guaranteeing an elected
upper chamber after the government’s stop-gap measure of abolishing the
voting rights of hereditary peers.
Lawrence-Pietroni says he also wants to raise the profile of issues such
as food standards, poverty and access to education, ’to show clearly
that constitutional change is important if it makes a difference to
people’s lives’.
His role at CAP has not yet been filled, but an interim appointment will
probably be made until fresh interviews can be held in the new year.
