Lynton Crosby has never lobbied me on anything, says PM

Critics have questioned Mr Crosby’s role in a governmet U-turn over introducing plain packaging for cigarettes.

At a press confernece today, Mr Cameron said the issue of Mr Crosby’s activities was being used by Labour in an attempt to distract from Ed Miliband‘s own problems.

The prime minister said: “The decision not to go ahead for the time being with plain paper cigarette packaging was a decision taken by me with the Health Secretary for the very simple reason that there is not yet sufficient evidence for it and there’s considerable legal uncertainty about it.

“If we get more evidence and we can reduce the legal uncertainty then it may very well be a good idea and I’ll very happily look at it again.

“It’s a decision made by me without any reference to any lobbyist or anyone else.

“This is complete nonsense from start to finish put up because the Labour Party, as demonstrated in the House of Commons today, is in some quite deep political trouble with their relationship with the trade unions.”

The government’s proposed bill on the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trades Union Administration will introduce a register of lobbyists and their clients.

It also imposes a £390,000 limit on the amount organisations other than political parties or candidates can spend on campaigning during parliamentary elections.

There will be further limits on organisations campaigning for or against a specific party, or targeting their spending at a particular constituency.

Read more: European parliament lobbying rules: more transparent but not perfect

The legislation also includes new powers to ensure that trade union membership records are accurate.

Dinners for donors, Andy Coulson, and now Big Tobacco in Downing Street. This PM always stands up for the wrong people.

— Ed Miliband (@Ed_Miliband) July 17, 2013

Conflict of interest

At prime minister’s questions Mr Cameron was accused by the Labour leader of having “caved in to big tobacco.”

The prime minister insisted he had never been lobbied by Mr Crosby, whose public affairs firm has been working with tobacco giant Philip Morris in this country since November.

He said: “He has never lobbied me on anything.”

But Mr Miliband accused him of using “weasel words” and added: “He can’t deny that he had a conversation with Lynton Crosby about this issue.

“Even by the standards of this Prime Minister this is a disgraceful episode”.

“It’s Andy Coulson all over again… He always stands up to the wrong people.”

Mr Miliband added: “There is a devastating conflict of interest between having your key adviser raking it in from big tobacco and then advising you not to go ahead with plain packaging.”

But Mr Cameron said if Mr Miliband wanted a “lobbying scandal” he should look at his own party: “The trade unions buy his policies, buy his candidates, they even bought and paid for his leadership.”

He added: “This Government is doing something that they never did for 13 years and that is publishing a lobbying Bill. New rules governing the lobbying industry are expected to be announced later today.

“Let us remember why we need a lobbying bill: we had former Labour ministers who described themselves as cabs for hire, we had cabinet ministers giving passports for favours, we had a prime minister questioned by the police under cash for honours.

“They are in no position to lecture anyone on standards in public life.”

Photos courtesy of The Australian

Who is Lynton Crosby?

Mr Crosby, 55, first dipped his toes into politics in his native Australia, where he masterminded four successive election victories for the conservative Prime Minister John Howard. 
He has three decades of marketing and communications experience.
He first became involved in the UK Conservative party in 2005, when he led Michael Howard's election campaign. 
Despite losing to Labour, he remains highly respected by Conservatives, many of whom believe the party's deeply rooted problems were to blame, rather than the campaign strategy.
It was Mr Crosby - or the "wizard of Oz" - who renamed Conservative central office "Conservative campaign HQ", believing it would instill a sense of purpose and discipline to the operation.
Those who experienced his methods in 2005, and again during the London mayoral campaigns in 2008 and 2012, say he is relentlessly focused on targeting votes in marginal consistencies, runs a very tight ship, and uses his company to carry out extensive polling to gauge the hearts and minds of the British public.
He is said to have a skill for turning policy into eye-catching headlines that grabs the imagination of the public.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt last night insisted there was a “clear dividing line” preventing Mr Crosby lobbying on public health issues.

He told BBC 2’s Newsnight: “He hasn’t lobbied me and he hasn’t lobbied the Prime Minister on issues to do with public health and there’s a clear dividing line.

“But there’s also transparency, we’re not hiding this fact.”

Asked if public health was a whole area Mr Crosby was not allowed to touch, he replied: “Yes”.

However government denials have cut little ice with Tory MP Dr Sarah Wollaston. Referring to apparent changes of heart by the government on cigarette packaging and minimum alcohol pricing, she said in a tweet on 12 July “what a tragic waste of opportunity. ‘Barnacles scraped off the boat’ AKA more lives ruined for political expediency.”

1/2 What a tragic waste of an opportunity. ‘Barnacles scraped off the boat’ AKA more lives ruined for political expediency.

— Sarah Wollaston MP (@drwollastonmp) July 12, 2013

Mr Crosby is believed to used the phrase scraping the barnacles off the boat to describe his role in narrowing the conservative party’s political focus in the run-up to the next election.

Lobbying

Before the 2010 election Mr Cameron suggested lobbying was “the next big scandal waiting to happen” and a pledge to introduce reforms was included in the coalition agreement.

In 2011 Liam Fox resigned as defence secretary after admitting he “mistakenly allowed” his personal and professional links to lobbyist Adam Werrity to become blurred.

Earlier this year, senior Tory Patrick Mercer announced he was quitting the party and standing down at the next election after undercover sting. He was alleged to have established an all-party parliamentary group on Fiji and asked Commons questions when contacted by reporters posing as lobbyists seeking to get the country’s suspension from the Commonwealth lifted.

House of Commons authorities yesterday withdrew around 50 parliamentary passes linked to staff employed by all-party parliamentary groups in response to concerns about political lobbying.

The Government’s lobbying bill is expected to create a register of third-party lobbyists and force them to publish a full list of their clients in an attempt to make the system more transparent.

Lobbying and Europe

The European Parliament in Brussels is teeming with lobbyists. The best guess is that there are around 20,000 of them - competing to protect and advance the interests of industries, charities and unions. It's big business. They spend around 3 billion euros a year winning friends and influencing people.
The lobbyist's aim is to change legislation and their best friend is the MEP. Unlike MPs, MEPs can directly table amendments to draft laws. So they're very powerful. Sometimes lobbyists even write amendments and simply hand them to MEPs -- who table them word for word.
There's no rules against that. But there have been lobbying scandals in Brussels. An Austrian ex-MEP Ernst Stasser went to jail in January for bribe taking, after he was caught in a sting by journalists posing as lobbyists. He was secretly filmed being offered 100,000 euros a year in exchange for influencing EU legislation.
So Brussels is thinking about tightening up the rules on lobbying. It has a voluntary online database of lobbyists, called the Transparency Register. If you type tobacco giant Philip Morris International into the register, you can see it declares it has 9 registered lobbyists working in Brussels - and that it spends between £1m and 1 and a quarter million a year lobbying parliament there.
People worried about the scale of lobbying in Brussels complain the Transparency Register doesn't tell the whole story: it's not mandatory so hundreds of lobbyists simply choose not to divulge any information about themselves. Even when they do, there's no information on there about who they've lobbied -- ie which MEPs. And many clients who want privacy use a law firm to do their lobbying for them. And law firms seldom put any information on the Transparency Register, citing client confidentiality.
The transparency in Brussels might be imperfect. But it's more than exists in Westminster. Here, as we know, there is no register of lobbyists - although a bill to introduce one may be imminent.
But the lesson from Brussels is that a register of lobbyists alone still leaves unanswered questions. If Lynton Crosby registered on a new UK register, we still wouldn't know who he'd lobbied.