By Elena Siniscalco
Plans to prevent hostile states intervening in UK politics with a foreign lobbying register are under review, after global businesses complained investment into Britain could dry up if there are too many bureaucratic hurdles. The new rules would have required most foreign organisations to register all exchanges with British ministers, officials and MPs.
The government’s aim with these reforms is to counter the influence that states like Russia and China have tried to exert through covert lobbying for a long time. A year ago, Chinese “spy” Christine Lee was exposed by MI5. She claimed to have lobbied almost 500 MPs during her time around Parliament. Despite being accused of political interference on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party, she was allowed to stay in the UK.
This is different from other high-profile lobbying scandals last year, which fall under the domestic equivalent of a lobbying registry. Former Conservative MP Owen Paterson famously fell foul of these rules.
Transparency issues with domestic lobbying came under the spotlight again last year, when Paterson was found to have breached lobbying rules after he promoted Randox, a firm subsequently offered nearly £500m of contracts during the pandemic, to the then health-secretary Matt Hancock.
International firms lamented the new rules as disproportionate, putting more brakes on foreign lobbying rather than on domestic lobbying. They also criticised how they don’t differentiate between friendly countries like Norway or France and authoritarian, hostile states.
The government seems to have listened: after all, given the current economic climate, the last thing it would want to do is spook international investors. Officials are considering whether creating a list of “white” countries whose organisations don’t have to register could solve some of the issues.
The post Explainer-in-brief: Government u-turns on foreign lobbying rules appeared first on CityAM.
