Last night the government’s latest departmental lobbying transparency data dropped – two months late. So late in fact that the content is primarily of historical interest: the data relates to the last months of the Conservative government from April to June 2024.
So if you were hoping to get an idea of who the new government has been meeting in its first weeks and months of office, you will be sorely disappointed. That information won’t be released until the end of December – a full six months after it took power – and that’s only if that data is released on time, in line with Cabinet Office timelines.
And of course, without major rule changes, we’ll never know who the new government was meeting in the six to 12 months before the election as they were shaping the policies that they came into power with.
Nevertheless, the release is an important moment to reflect on what progress has been made on lobbying transparency reform so far. It’s worth remembering that lobbying reform was a key recommendation from the Committee on Standards in Public Life’s (CSPL) 2021 report calling for a major upgrade of how standards in public life are regulated, after concluding that the current system is “not fit for purpose”.
Backing off
One would hope that with wide consensus, even from the industry itself, that lobbying transparency in the UK is woefully inadequate, a new government with a mandate to restore trust in public life would have lobbying reform high on their agenda.
But sadly, that doesn’t appear to be the case. At the beginning of November, the government confirmed that it was actually backing away from a commitment made by the previous government in July 2023 to consider moving to monthly releases of transparency data.
While the government has agreed in the new Ministerial Code to release ministerial hospitality data on a monthly basis, all other transparency information (meetings by ministers as well as hospitality and overseas trips of special advisors and senior officials) will continue, it said, to be released only quarterly.
The outgoing government also committed to the creation of a new “single public source of transparency data” with a new database to collate and publish all the data on meetings, gifts, hospitality and travel – but this has yet to happen 18 months after it was promised. Yesterday’s release once again involved reams of different excel sheets of varying format on each separate issue for each separate department.
What’s it all about
The data released yesterday was the second since new guidance produced by the Cabinet Office in April 2024 laid out minimum standards about descriptions of meetings. This is critical to understanding what ministers and officials are being lobbied about, and it was a key recommendation from CSPL for there to be minimum standards for data transparency.
This guidance states that departments should “make every effort” to provide a “meaningful and clear description” of the purpose of the meeting, “succinctly capturing”:
a. the key topic(s) discussed and;
b. any specific area(s) of government policy or legislation etc., that are affected.
The guidance specifically says that descriptions like “general discussion”, “introductory meeting”, “informal catch-up”, “bilateral meeting” etc. should not normally be used.
The new guidance wasn’t ever going to result in hugely detailed input. A “good” example of a meeting description given by the guidance is hardly enlightening – “Discussion during visit to the National Space Centre, on the National Space Strategy and UK investment in the space sector”.
However, from a review of the data released by a selection of departments yesterday, it is clear that many descriptions don’t meet even this low threshold and fall far short of the guidance, particularly in identifying specific policy areas affected.
Meetings reported by the Treasury – the department with perhaps the most influence on pivotal policy decisions affecting the UK – include two “introductory meetings”, many meetings along the lines of “Discuss the future of payments”, three meetings “to discuss investment in the UK” and five “to discuss the economic outlook in the UK.”
There are also real inconsistencies between departments, and even within departments between how ministerial meetings and meetings with senior officials are described. In the Department for Business and Trade, for instance, ministerial meetings are described fairly vaguely but avoid using general descriptions warned against by the guidance. By comparison, half of senior officials’ meetings use these general descriptions, including 16 “introductory meetings,” over 14 “regular catch ups” and 14 meetings redacted altogether.
There is some good practice emerging. Ministerial meetings in the Home Office for example generally featured fairly detailed descriptions which more or less adhere to the guidance, though there is still the odd “general catch up” description which will leave members of the public scratching their heads as to what was discussed in the meeting.
Holey as a Swiss cheese
Meanwhile, key recommendations to increase lobbying transparency made by CSPL, as well as Sir Nigel Boardman after the Greensill saga, and reiterated by the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee in May 2024, remain untouched. This leaves the current rules around declaring lobbying full of major loopholes and gaps.
In particular, CSPL, Boardman and PACAC, as well as the Registrar of Consultant Lobbyists himself, have all called for meetings with special advisers to be declared both in departmental transparency releases and on the lobbying register, given the critical role they play in formulating government policy and influencing decision-making by ministers.
Meanwhile, serious weaknesses and exemptions in the lobbying register, highlighted by PACAC, the Registrar of Consultant Lobbyists and lobbying trade groups, mean that a wide range of other lobbying activities are exempt, from in-house lobbyists, to firms that don’t pay VAT (which by the way means that foreign lobbyists or lobbyists working for clients overseas are exempt).
Ending the lobbying transparency deficit
The government does need to get serious about lobbying transparency – picking up the recommendations made by CSPL, Boardman and PACAC, as well as many other experts, and taking them forward, to show it is serious about governing in a different way than the last one.
That means moving forward with creating a central database, ensuring monthly transparency, and closing the loopholes both in departmental transparency releases and the lobbying register. Let’s hope that Parliament and the CSPL keep pressing the government to get this right so that in future departmental releases will actually be useful for holding decision-makers to account for who is influencing their policy, rather than just being of passing historical interest.
This document was updated on 5 December 2024 to reflect the fact that the recent release of departmental data was the second since the Cabinet Office’s guidance on departmental transparency took effect. That guidance was published in April 2024 but took effect from January 2024.
