Lobbying firm Public Policy Unit has hired two senior advisers to
beef up its government relations capability.
Patrick Rock, former special adviser to Michael Howard and Chris Patten,
joins the public affairs consultancy after ten years in Whitehall. Rock
was also a senior political adviser to the CBI.
Chris Savage joins from the TUC, where he was senior policy adviser
covering industrial policy, regulation, competition, corporate
governance, finance and taxation, manufacturing, energy, transport,
telecommunications and defence. He was the only person to sit on all
seven of Labour’s industrial policy task forces.
Rock will be responsible for establishing a media management unit
specialising in advising on media and PR strategies to support the PPU’s
more traditional focus on policy lobbying. He will help in-house
specialists assimilate the media management and opinion forming
techniques used by both main parties.
Savage will have a much more wide-ranging role, straddling both the
political and civil service roles more normally divided between advisers
at PPU.
The consultancy will draw on his experience of regulation, industry and
employment affairs and fiscal policy, as well as his background as a
pension adviser to the TUC to service its substantial client base in the
pensions arena.
