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History of lobbying & of the APPC
Early years
Britain’s first professional political consultancy was almost certainly that of Commander Christopher Powell, established in the 1930s and operating for decades after the Second World War.
But it was not until the 1970’s and 1980s that the business really took off, with the establishment of a number of competing consultancies. There were no agreed rules, either statutory or self-regulatory, governing how they should operate.
1980s and 1990s
In 1982 Ian Greer established Ian Greer Associates. Five years later, when a General Election was called, Ian solicited money from clients, including Harrods owner Mohamed Al Fayed, which he used to support the constituency campaigns of 26 Conservative MPs. In 1990, giving evidence to the Commons Select Committee on Members’ Interests, he admitted making commission payments to MPs in return for business introductions.
In 1994 the Guardian published a story with the headlines ‘Tory MPs were paid to plant questions says Harrods chief’ and ‘Mr Greer said to me you need to rent an MP like you rent a London taxi’. One Minister immediately resigned, admitting that he had taken cash from Fayed to ask Parliamentary questions. Within days another Minister, Neil Hamilton, had resigned and the Prime Minister had announced the establishment of the Nolan Committee on Standards in Public Life. In 1996, after Ian Greer abandoned a libel case against the Guardian, the newspaper published more damaging material. Consultancy clients and staff left and IGA went into voluntary liquidation.
The affair forced the industry to confront issues that it had previously avoided and to take action to reassure Parliament, Whitehall and the public about its ethical standards.
The APPC
The result was that in 1994 five consultancies established the APPC as a self-regulatory body, with its own code of conduct, a publicly-available register of clients and a complete ban on any financial relationship with politicians.
The Association faced its first real test in 1998 when the Observer carried out an investigative sting, with journalists posing as representatives of a client seeking influence. It accused three consultancies (two of them Association members) of unethical behaviour, specifically of inappropriate bragging about the closeness of links with politicians. The Association set up an inquiry conducted by a former head of the Home Civil Service and a leading barrister. They made a series of recommendations, endorsed by the APPC, all designed to create a ‘culture of compliance’ with the APPC rules within member consultancies.
Most in the industry would certainly assert that the alleged improper behaviour in these two affairs was untypical. Nevertheless, they assisted in helping consultancies to appreciate that their ‘licence to operate’ would depend on behaving with complete propriety and being seen to do so.
Partly as a result – and while there will never be room for complacency – one could reasonably claim that the professional political consultancy business in the UK today has one of the best ethical track records of any in the world.
Michael Burrell
APPC Management Committee
November 2006