Members approved the minutes of the meeting held on 8 September 2008. Matters arising and not elsewhere on the agenda were:

 

The Chair reported that, since the last meeting, the Management Committee had accepted an application for membership from Bellenden Public Affairs. Another application, from JDS Consulting, had been deferred. 

 

The Chair reported that, because most Green Issues staff were based out of London, he had visited their office in Reading to deliver Code training.

 

 

The Chair reported that Warwick Smith was in the process of revising the Procedures and that the final draft would be scrutinised by a lawyer to ensure that it was watertight, following which there would be a final consultation with members. The Management Committee was also in the process of building a pool of independent adjudicators.

 

            The meeting would be held on 15 December, when the main agenda items would be the annual review of the Code of Conduct and review of the Complaints & Disciplinary Procedures.

 

            As at the closing date of 8 December, 45 entries had been received. The Register would be loaded onto the APPC website on Friday 12 December.

The Chair referred to the Action Plan resulting from the Strategy Meeting and drew attention to the plan for a mentoring programme by members of the Management Committee. He also mentioned his participation in the ALT event in November, which had attracted some controversy but had been in line with the Action Plan.   Members who had been present at the ALT event congratulated the Chair on his performance and felt that APPC participation had been worthwhile. 

 

Gill Morris reported that the first and smaller of the two round table events would now be held after publication of the PASC report, probably late January or early February. She recalled the background to the Guiding Principles and noted that they had moved forward a long way, but had been delayed by uncertainty over the outcome of the PASC Inquiry and also by changes in PRCA and CIPR GAG.

 

The Chair reported that PRCA would be launching its PA Group on 10 December. Darren Caplan (as vice-chair of the Group) and Gill Morris would be attending and reporting back to the Management Committee.

 

The Chair drew attention to the report in The Sunday Times on the Conservative Party’s proposals to limit government bodies’ use of PA consultancies. He had written to Nick Hurd MP requesting a meeting to explain APPC’s position. Several members pointed out that the Conservative Party dossier contained errors about both the type of work undertaken and the payments.

The Chair reported that he had attended the APPC(S) meeting on 3 October, after which he and the Chair of APPC(S), Ross Laird, had led a Code training seminar. The Chair was also planning to attend the next APPC(S) meeting in January to talk about the PASC report.

 

The Chair reported that he had had a meeting with Daran Hill of Positif Politics, until recently also chair of PA Cymru, and that he had agreed to attend a meeting of PA Cymru in Cardiff to talk about the PASC report.