Last week the coalition government announced that they’re planning to bring in a statutory register of lobbying interests - a ban of secret lobbying.  This is a big breakthrough for the thousands of 38 Degrees members tbhat have been campaigning for this for the last few months. If it’s introduced big business will be forced to be more transparent about lobbying. We’ll be able to see who is meeting whom, who they’re working for and how much they’re being paid.

Our friends at SpinWatch have been in touch to say “this would not have been possible without the thousands of 38 Degrees members across the country who campaigned for the register”. There are still some big risks that the register won’t be introduced (see the Guardian article here) but here’s a rundown of everything 38 Degrees members have done to get us to this point.

* Nearly 10,000 of us signed petitions to key decision makers. During the expenses scandal thousands of us signed a petition to Angela Smith, Cabinet Office minister urging the Labour Government to clean up politics by introducing a compulsory register of lobbyists. Thousands of us also signed a petition to Cameron.

* We’ve sent over 15,000 emails to party leaders, election candidates and minsters urging them to bring in the ban. In March thosuands of 38 Degrees members sent emails to election candidates, as part of a campaign with the Alliance for Lobbying Transparancy and SpinWatch, urging them to come clean on their links to lobbying companies.

*38 Degrees members launched local campaigns targeting individual election candidates who wouldn’t back a ban of secret lobbying. Pritti Patel, Conservative Candidate (and now MP) for Witham faced a local campaign after she was the only local candidate to refuse to back the ban – in the face of growing pressure she changed position and backed the ban. George Eustice, Conservative candidate (and now MP) for Camborne and Redruth faced big pressure from a local campaign that highlighted the fact that he was the only candidate who was refusing to back a ban.

* Our friends at Spinwatch teamed up with Don’t Panic to expose lobbying links of local election candidates, see the video below

We’ve nearly won – but there are two problems left:
*The timescale to introduce the ban hasn’t been announced. Right now big business is still allowed to lobby in secret. We need the rules passed into law quickly.
*Big business pressure could change the government’s mind again. Hours after the plans were announced a powerful group of lobbying firms vowed to fight it. [2]

Take action now. People power is needed to make sure we ban secret lobbying this year. Please e-mail David Cameron and Nick Clegg now and urge them to introduce the new rules as soon as possible. Just click the link below to get started:

http://www.38degrees.org.uk/ban-secret-lobbying-now

A screen shot of the website giving George Eustice's email address as george.eustice@conservatives.com (taken on April 26th 2010)

Yesterday, George Eustice, the parliamentary candidate for Camborne and Redruth bad-mouthed a local 38 Degrees campaign. For the last few months Eustice has been under growing pressure from the successful grassroots campaign to ban of secret lobbying. Now all the local election candidates, except Eustice, back the ban.

In his blog “The first rule of online lobbying: get the email right” Eustice claims he has received no emails from local members about the campaign due to 38 Degrees’ incompetence in spelling his “email address wrongly on their system“.

If we made a mistake we’d be the first to admit it. We expect George to do the same.

George is clearly under pressure and his rambling blog post makes various factual errors. The email address we used for George (george.eustice@conservatives.com) wasn’t misspelled, it came from the Conservative website as we told him on Saturday.

In his blog he attempts to dismiss the campaign claiming “there are already strict rules that mean MPs must declare all their financial interests from clients to directorships and major shareholdings.”

This exposes a deep lack of understanding of the campaign to ban secret lobbying. The local campaign calls for a statutory register of lobbyists interests, as recommended by the Parliamentary Public Administration Select Committee. The Committee stated that this must include:
*names of lobbyists
* who they are working for
* any previous employment in the public sector
* which decisions they are trying to influence

George disagrees with the parliamentary committee saying “When it comes to so called “lobbying”, the answer is to make sure that any financial interests of MPs are declared so there is no conflict of interest.” It seems he has misunderstood our campaign. The register is intended to let the public know what is going on behind closed doors in Westminster. If the expenses scandal has taught us one thing, it is that we can’t just trust our MPs to do the right thing: we need transparency so we know they’re doing the right thing.

If you think it’s time to clean up politics and ban secret lobbying sign the petition to George here: http://www.38degrees.org.uk/george-ban-secret-lobbying

Update: Spinwatch respond to Eustice

SpinWatch have responded to Eustice’s blog. Below is an extract. You can read the full article at: http://www.spinwatch.org/

He writes on his blog how he heard there was to be an online lobbying campaign against him, initiated by “a girl called Tamasin Cave, a political  activist who writes regularly for Lib Dem blogs”. Nothing could be further from the truth. Tamasin, a Spinwatch director – who is nearly 40 should  that be of interest to anyone – is in regular touch with bloggers from Left Foot Forward to Guido Fawkes.

Attempting to tie the Spinwatch campaign to Lib Dem activism is, well, the kind of obfuscatory tactic one would expect from a professional lobbyist.

And it’s clearly sticking. When Spinwatch recently spoke to the Falmouth Packet, a local paper covering Camborne, the reporter asked whether we were linked to the Lib Dems.

No, the simple truth is this campaign has focused on the Tories because they have the largest number of PPCs who are professional lobbyists. We believe this is the reason why the Conservatives remain alone among the main parties in refusing to sign up to a statutory register of lobbyists.

Tonight in Camborne, 38 Degrees members will challenge the Conservative candidate, George Eustice to back a ban of secret lobbying of politicians.

I’m on the train on the way down to see meet everyone that has been campaigning hard over the last few months to ban secret lobbying. The campaign has been a huge success, thanks to local pressure now the Labour, Lib Dem, Mebyon Kernow, Green and UKIP candidates have all pledged to back a ban on secret lobbying – only George has refused. Instead he tried to use spin to attack the campaign of being a “lib dem slur”. A ridiculous accusation since it’s a grass roots campaign that has successfully persuaded 5 candidates from different parties to back a ban on secret lobbying.

In response to Eustice’s spin 38 Degrees members have started a “back the ban” petition at http://www.38degrees.org.uk/george-sign-the-pledge urging George, who used to be Cameron’s spin-doctor and recently left his job at a top London lobbying firm, to join his local rivals and support the ban on secret lobbying.

It’s such an important campaign because today big businesses can pay lobbyists millions of pounds to get their views represented and to secure influence of politicians. Today we have no right to know who is meeting who. If we’re to regain trust

in politics we need to stamp out back room secret meetings and bring transparency to Westminster.

Tonight, I’ll be at the hustings where Eustice will come face to face with all his local rivals and hundreds of members of the public keen to find out why he won’t support a ban on secret lobbying.

I’ll be blogging, tweeting (twitter.come/38_degrees) and updating the Facebook page www.facebook.com/peoplepowerchange throughout the day.