Before Keir Starmer took over with the Labour organization after a historical triumph in the fresh UK elections, for 12 months he and his organization colleagues had allowed themselves to be maimed by lobbyists in an unprecedented run led by the most powerful British corporations.
Weapons producers, active in human rights violations in Gaza, utilized to wrap pasta on the ears of possible future defence secretaries. possible fresh climate ministers met with representatives of petrochemical companies. The labour ministers, who are now liable for stopping the abuse of London City, were at the expense of bosses from financial companies. Communications companies with public administration, representing asset managers, tobacco companies, commissioned business companies and taxation evasion megacorporations arranged 1 after another meetings with future department heads.
It was a very intense, though inactive a secret run that swept under the British's nose, in broad daylight. Lobbyists struggled to prosecute concrete policies that would introduce the first supposedly progressive UK government in 14 years and which would reflect the interests of their influential customers. And the Labourers responded to these treatments with undisclosed enthusiasm.
The lenient transparency rules in Westminster mean that there are no records or traces of this gigantic offensive by lobbyists on public matters. As a general rule, the public does not have the right to know what companies lobby among opposition representatives and that is a conviction that shares the Labour organization under Starmer. In each individual case, the organization refused to disclose the subject of meetings, the promises made, and even the 1 who participated in the circumstantial talks, claiming that, "We should not be treated as the government."
However, the openDemocracy investigation brought to light the incredible scale that Starmer and the leadership of his organization were working on.
For respective months the openDemocracy magazine collected information on lobby meetings, utilizing various free access sources, including e.g. registration of conference area reservations in parliament, social media posts and material from events published by lobbyist companies. Meetings were held over the last 18 months and took the form of private tete-à-tate, questions and answers sessions only for selected, dinner, networking events, briefings, circular tables with customers, abroad visits and workshops.
We have established that people in the top positions in the organization participated in hundreds of meetings with corporate lobbyists, financial institutions and business groups. On average, meetings with influential business representatives took place in the last year each working day.
And we're not talking about private dinners and famous. smoked salmon for breakfast. Starmer's office will shortly start implementing the program presented in Labour organization electoral declarations. Last month, the fresh Treasury Chancellor Rachel Reeves stated that the legislative and political proposals of the Labourers were swarming with business fingerprints due to the fact that these plans were created with unprecedented engagement of corporate lobbyists, financial institutions and business groups.
Experts inform that the de facto commitment of the political and legislative initiative to private companies will have far-reaching consequences for British society. The Labourers promised to build fresh cities, increase green investments, improvement medical care and public services and launch crucial infrastructure projects. erstwhile manager of the UK Financial Services Supervisory Authority Mick McAteer warns that this celebrated partnership with the private financial sector, which is at the heart of all these plans, “will lead to massive transfers of wealth from local communities to London City and global financial institutions in the next decade.”
Corporate lobby
Lobbing is simply a immense business in Britain. Tens of agencies gain a luck all year, advising customers on how to influence fresh political and legislative solutions so that they benefit them, and how to make their voice heard by politicians who make regulations, regulations and contracts in the public sector. The last decent estimates of the size of the manufacture date back to 2007, erstwhile Gordon Brown was inactive in office. According to the then research, Hansard Society estimated it to be £1.9 billion. The manufacture is convinced that it has surely grown for almost 20 years.
The work of lobbyists is to a large degree about getting customers access to the right people, which is frequently dependent on the cognition of lobbyists themselves and their connections with the right people or those who have specified access. About a year and a half ago, after a spectacular implosion of government Liz Truss, the chances of the lazers taking power began to take on more real shapes, resulting in a massive reorientation in the public sphere sector.
In a bid to prepare for the regulation of the Laborists, lobbyist companies began to establish peculiar “laborist cells”. They hired erstwhile Labour MPs and members of their cabinets to usage their network of contacts. respective companies even managed to intercept possible candidates or introduce employees into offices of high-ranking organization members. The lobby companies Global Council, Lowick Group, FGS Global and Weber Shandwick have delegated their own employees to work in high-level laundromat offices over £100,000 in total.
Other lobbyist companies provided influential parliamentarians with donations in cash or nature, although manufacture rules theoretically forbid specified practices. Only a fresh deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, received donations from 2 lobbyist agencies last year: Sovereign strategy and Pentland Communications.
The openDemocracy magazine asked each of these companies whether they expected to gain something in exchange for posting their employees at their own expense to work with parliamentarians or donating to the latter. Unfortunately, we were not given an answer.
The efforts of lobbyists brought fruit: in the 12 months preceding the election, there was no week for a Labour Leadership associate not to participate in a circular table with a private client, organized by a lobbyist company. According to the industry, these meetings represent only a fraction of what companies do to make a relation between clients and politicians. frequently the gathering serves only to get to know 1 another. The client may later mention to issues discussed at the gathering or address more delicate issues through the agency, and sometimes even in direct contact with politicians.
According to the openDemocracy findings, Arden Strategies organized the most of specified private calls from customers to labers. The agency, led by erstwhile Labour Minister Jim Murphy, held at least 9 meetings of clients with high-ranking Labour organization politicians, including Rachel Reeves, as well as trade and manufacture minister Jonathan Reynolds and head of business cooperation in the Labour Party.
Unlike another specified companies, Arden does not disclose the general client list in the Public Relations and Communications Association (PRCA). However, openDemocracy magazine found that among the most crucial clients of the agency is, for example, the leading Northrop Grumman arms maker and the 2 largest British power companies, UK Power Networks and SGN.
British voters, unlike the principles of democracy, specified as Canadian, German and Scottish, have no right to know who is lobbying in the ranks of the Westminster opposition. Lists of meetings with business representatives, charities, think tanks and professional lobbyists, together with a brief description of the issues discussed, must be regularly disclosed only by the ministers in office. The details of meetings of government politicians are only disclosed at a circumstantial request for access to public information, which the government may consider negatively.
This is simply a very weak system, which is simply a problem especially in a year specified as this one, erstwhile the triumph of the opposition in the elections was decently determined and the interest groups lined up to play something for themselves in the plans of the upcoming government.
Companies do not request to uncover whose opposition politicians have lobbied, but many of them advertise that they can get access to the leadership of the shadow cabinet. By monitoring leading lobbyist companies, we have found dozens of public references to meetings involving high-ranking Labour organization politicians. No question from the openDemocracy editorial squad addressed to lobbying companies and representatives of the Labour organization about what customers were active in these meetings was answered.
Tim Bierley, an activist from Global Justice Now, points out that the Labour organization may treat lobbyists as “independent experts” alternatively than as people whose “main work is to increase profits for shareholders”.
"The interests of giant companies are far different from the interests of the public in climate, trade and the economy. Their tremendous influence would destruct any imagination of advancement during the regulation of the Laburists – he adds and convinces: "To respond in a somewhat appropriate way to crises developing on many fronts, the Labour organization must defy the vital interests of large companies, alternatively than handing them a pen to compose fresh political and legislative solutions themselves.
City
There are fewer interest groups that would hold as heavy as representatives of London City and the wider financial services sector, in which the city lies. In fresh years, no another manufacture has bonded with this organization more effectively.
In the weeks preceding Tulip Siddiq's election day, Labour's shadow minister for the financial services sector, who retained her position in the fresh government, decided 3 times to print program papers on LinkedIn. Significantly, it was not her own party's programme, but the demands of the 3 largest bodies representing the financial services industry: UK Finance, TheCityUK and the Association of British Insurers.
In 1 of Siddiq's posts, she wrote: "In fresh years, I have been working closely with TheCityUK and its members, preparing the Labour Party's political solutions for the financial and professional services sector."
In the remaining 2 posts she seemingly decided to limit herself to the copy-paste method. Their sound is practically identical. In both Siddiq writes about how she is "excited" that she could "work closely" with the Association of British Insurers and UK Finance "on the substantive side of the Labour Party's plans for this sector".
All 3 posts propose that lobbyists for London City and financial institutions participated straight in shaping political and regulatory solutions that would apply to their own industry.
When the Labour organization first published program papers in which it described its plans for the financial services sector, it was organised by this party, closed to the press, an evening at Guildhall in City of London, sponsored by the City of London Corporation, as a thank-you to the manufacture for its full contribution and assistance. The plans were criticised for requiring the organization to apply the same lenient regulatory approach that the Conservatives practiced. Activists named the paper “Love letter to City”.
The leadership of the Labourers, including Siddiq, met with the City lobbyists over 20 times over the past year, not counting the active participation in the British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association activities, which last period revealed openDemocracy. BlackRock, Macquarie, HSBC, Bloomberg, Lloyds, Brookfield Asset Management and Blackstone are only any companies that keep close contacts with the most crucial members of the fresh government specified as Starmer, Reeves, Reynolds, or Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Pat McFadden.
Mick McAteer, a erstwhile board associate at the Financial Conduct Authority and an activist for economical social justice at the Financial inclusion Centre, admitted in an interview with the openDemocracy that close relations between the fresh ministers and the Labour organization could in rule be seen as a certain quid-pro-quo, something for something.
The lobbyists of financial institutions put force on the Labourers to make a more favourable regulatory environment, waving a promise of gold to the mountains of private capital. According to McAteer, there are increasing concerns that this kind of relation will lead to the heating of the old chop, that is, the restoration of the British version of the public-private partnership (known in the UK as Private Finance Initiatives, PFI), a mesh in fresh Labour's head erstwhile most or all of the funds for building infrastructure specified as hospitals and schools came from private companies, generating profits for them from lucrative contracts to keep this infrastructure long after it was built.
As McAteer warns, this kind of partnership will form virtually all programming aspect in the Labour government, ranging from home-building plans to energy production and distribution. And society will look like Zabłocki on soap.
– Private investments are by definition more costly than public ones, as financial institutions anticipate to make solid profits for their shareholders," explains MacAteer. – Profits should be paid 1 way or another, which means that in the end costs will be passed on to households in the form of higher bills.
The financial services sector has strengthened relations with labourers in various ways. HSBC Bank seconded an worker to Reynolds' office for nearly a year, a fewer months earlier NatWest Bank had decided to make a akin arrangement with the fresh manufacture minister. Seconded to the parliamentary offices, employees from private companies participated in the work on the political agenda and cared for the interests of the industry. However, since the wage for work for the Labourers was paid by their parent companies, the Electoral Commission considered this arrangement a political donation.
In addition, there are 2 advisory teams, composed of representatives of managing staff of large financial institutions, set up by the Labour Party, then in opposition, which will proceed to advise them on where and how to direct billion-dollar private sector investments after the storms arrive. 1 of the mentioned teams is the National Wealth Fund Taskforce led by Mark Carney, a erstwhile head of the British central bank, presently working at Brookfield Asset Management. The second is the British Infrastructure Council, which includes experienced employees of investment firms specified as M&G and BlackRock.
McAteer warns that specified advisory teams have a deep conflict of interest:
– The British Infrastructure Council is full of representatives of companies that are counting on financial gains and which will now not only decide where the funds will flow, but besides on what form and under what conditions contracts will be concluded, or on the relief of capital from hazard before they decide to finance anything. They want to be on infrastructure councils for a reason, due to the fact that they are not charities. I'm not criticizing them, I'm just explaining that this is how financial institutions and the marketplace themselves work. They be to get the top benefits for their shareholders and owners. We are told that this solution is beneficial for the economy, for investors, but individual has to pay for it. Regular households pay for it. And due to the fact that they have nothing to say here, there will besides be generations to pay. Meanwhile, these companies decide on the directions of economical improvement and as long as there is infrastructure, they will profit from it. average people will again end up on the incorrect side of any badly prepared transactions prepared for the financial institutions of London City. For respective years, they lobbied in this area and yet achieved their intended goal.
OpenDemocracy magazine contacted each of the above mentioned companies, but only HSBC reacted. The bank spokesperson stated that "HSBC regularly cooperates with the most crucial British parties on issues applicable to our customers and the wider industrial services industry".
Consultants
If the fresh version of the PFI 2.0 public-state partnership is heavy benefited by financial institutions from London City, then the golden rain will besides affect the companies working closely with them offering business consulting and accounting offices.
The representatives of the large 4 consultation, which Deloitte, KPMG, Ernst and Young (EY) and PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) have been gathering with high-ranking Labour organization members at least thirteen times since March last year.
Lord Sikka, associate of the home of Lords, Labourer, retired accounting prof. at the University of Essex, believes that his organization should not be so closely associated with business consulting companies:
– I think the PFI in the fresh installment means disaster. We would have witnessed what has happened in the United Kingdom since the late 1970s, erstwhile there was a kind of right-wing coup that led to state restructuring. The state became a guarantor of corporate profits, alternatively of acting as an entrepreneurial state that invests," said Sikka. – An example of this is the PFI, privatization and outsourcing, namely the exact aspects in which these companies act as advisors and make profits.
Although Starmer did not participate in many of these meetings, openDemocracy magazine determined that the party's head was present on a trade day at the London EY office in March 2023, where a number of discussions and various meetings were held. As can be seen from the post of the managing partner from EY on LinkedIn, the leader of the Labourers, accompanied by Reeves and Reynolds, had the chance to hear what business leaders think about the "potential value of public and private sector cooperation". The Laborist tercet re-entered the EY threshold in November with the recently appointed fresh chief secretary of the treasure, Darren Jones on the occasion of a series of akin discussions with respective twelve manufacture representatives.
Jones besides attended respective secret meetings with an enigmatic consulting firm Hakluyt, founded in 1995 by MI6 agents, who allegedly works with “at least 1 of the 5 largest corporations in the planet from all major industry” and with “75 percent companies from the top 20 private equity investment funds”. In addition, the consulting agency arranged a dinner with the Labour Parliamentary Peter Kyle, who served as minister of science, innovation and technology in the shadow office at the time of his visit to the US earlier this year.
The Hakluyt Advisory Board includes erstwhile executive members of Rolls Royce and Coca-Cola, as well as erstwhile high-level politicians and officials. In the past, the agency had ties to large oil and gas corporations, and in 2001 "The Sunday Times" accused it of Use an agent to spy on Greenpeace activists for petrochemical companies. In fresh years, Hakluyt has tried to “demit“ and claims that companies “have nothing to do with this disheartening world.” According to the spokesman, Hakluyt is not a lobbyist organization and does not advise political parties.
In her last year's speech at the Labour organization Congress, Rachel Reeves committed herself in case of a win to cut public spending on consultants. Her promise even went to the party's programming declaration. However, according to what they compose in their book The large Con economists and authors Mariana Mazzucato and Rosie Collington, it is known that in times of mediocre economics the manufacture is willing to offer its pro bono services in the hope of lucrative contracts in the future.
In 2011, the then head of the public sector at KPMG described this strategy for the Guardian, referring to the cooperation with David Cameron's government coalition: "We cannot afford to [work pro bono] indefinitely, but this is not a problem for any time. We hope to get a good position for ourselves, which will be beneficial at a time erstwhile the government will be willing to pay."
In a akin way, the Labour Treasury Department worked on the already mentioned plan for financial services. The consulting company Oliver Wyman of City seconded to the post office as an assistant to her own employee, which, according to the Electoral Commission, cost over £58,000 last year. highly placed parliamentary office staff from leading consulting firms Grant Thornton and EY according to the registry of benefits of parliamentary office employees for about a year have had a membership card as members of the Starmer team. Since 2021, companies specified as PwC and Baringa have jointly performed pro bono services for the Labour organization with a full value of over £650,000.
– The fact that companies delegate free workers raises serious doubts, says Lord Sikka. – It costs them a lot, so they anticipate to gain something from specified investment.
None of the above companies responded to the request for comments from openDemocracy.
Gun dealers
Last March, the Labour Secretary of defence in the Shadow Office, John Healey and Minister of Military Supply, Chris Evans marched into the hall at Churchill War Rooms along with executive representatives from the world's 20 largest arms companies, including BAE Systems, Leonardo, Lockheed Martin, RTX, Rheinmetall and Rolls Royce.
A private gathering in the historical Westminster halls was organised by the agency Rud Pedersen Public Affairs. The Head of Defence and safety at the agency belonged to the staff of the Labourers and worked in the Department of defence of the Labour Party's Shadows from December 2018 to September 2020.
Since March of this year, high-ranking members of the organization have held meetings with arms representatives at least 13 times, including twice visited establishments owned by the BAE Systems and the German Rheinmetall reinforcing company. erstwhile Minister of discipline in the Shadow Office of Chi Onwurah and Minister of Shadows of the Armed Forces Luke Pollard attended a private gathering organized during the Labour organization legislature by the ADS Group's arms lobbying agency, attended by representatives of AE Systems, Rolls-Royce and Thales.
A spokesperson for the BAE Systems said: "As the largest British arms company, employing more than 45,000 people in the United Kingdom and having many thousands of workers in the supply chain, we regularly discuss with political representatives to disseminate cognition and awareness of how crucial our manufacture is in ensuring the safety and prosperity of the UK."
Reeves late took part in a private circular table with clients, organized by the Headland lobbying agency in March of that year. The gathering was attended by president Helsing, a German defensive technology starter utilizing AI, a associate of the Headland post office and a fresh associate of Parliament from the Labour Party, Gregor Pynton.
On the 1 hand, the Labour organization rejects progressive policies, specified as abolishing the limit of 2 children for household benefit payments or expanding backing for local governments, on the another hand, wants to increase defence spending to 2.5 percent of GDP from Last year 2.3 percent. Although from April Public Opinion survey YouGov It appears that the majority of respondents support the ban on arms exports to Israel, the organization does not want to appeal for the cessation of arms trafficking with that country.
Emily Apple of run Against the Arms Trade believes that lobbyists' contacts with high-ranking lazers are “very disturbing”.
– With specified encounters [some] companies making money from Israeli genocide in Gaza are gaining a immense influence on future policies of defence and abroad affairs of Labourers. This raises serious concerns as to whether the future Labour Government will comply with global law and impose an embargo on arms trafficking with Israel or another government that violates human rights," Apple adds and states: "These are companies that make money from death and destruction. The Labour organization should take a clear position here and limit the impact of these death traffickers on its political and regulatory solutions. However, this kind of gathering is simply a clear signal from the lazers to arms dealers: nothing will change, you can inactive rise the price of your shares by heating up conflicts and deepening human suffering worldwide.
Business wins, and who loses?
In his first exposé to the nation, Prime Minister Starmer stated that he had received a mandate from voters to “do politics differently”. However, representatives of a large business, finance and arms department, who struggled to get influence in his party, hope that he alternatively plans to hold the position quo and submit their own interests to the interests of people working.
A week earlier, erstwhile the current Chancellor Rachel Reeves was preparing for a Monday gathering with the directors of financial companies, an yearly plenary gathering organized by the IWGB trade union courier section was held in the sunny courtyard in east London. During the meeting, employees from 1 of the most marginalized industries in the UK spoke about problems and battles won in the last year, wondering what is ahead.
IWGB is 1 of many small, independent trade unions, not related to the Labour Party. It is active in many industries, where the gap between employers' and workers' authorities is most severe. Its members are bodyguards from outside companies, cleaning staff, foster parents, reception staff, couriers from Hartlepool to Hackney.
Many of the companies that have been seeking the Labour Party's favors for the past year and a half are companies that usage specified workers brutally, as Henry Chango Lopez, IWGB's secretary-general in an interview with openDemocracy says.
– These are immense corporations – Chango Lopez points out – which have crucial sums of money at their disposal for lobbying among government representatives, which is simply a way of influencing political and legislative solutions that are not available to average people at work. The fact that many high-ranking Labour organization representatives let these employers to exert any, even the least, influence on politics shows what priorities the current government has.
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Ethan Shone, Investigative writer in openDemocracy. He deals primarily with the issue of dark money – money without a name, lobbying and political corruption.
Article published in stock openDemocracy under Creative Commons. From English she translated Dorota Blabolil-Obrębska.
