The Observer | 01. 1 0. 17 | THE NEW REVIEW 5
AGENDA
W
hat is the advantage of letting sitting
MPs work for lobbying fi rms? What
are the pluses of that, for the country?
Because we do allow it, so I’m
assuming there must be some upside.
After all, there are clear advantages
to many things we don’t allow:
smoking on petrol station forecourts,
for example. Allowing that would
mean, if you’re addicted to smoking,
or enjoy smoking, or think smoking
makes you look cool, you could do
it while fi lling your car with petrol,
polishing its bonnet, going to buy
snacks, checking the tyres and so
on. You wouldn’t be inconvenienced
by either the discomfort of nicotine
withdrawal or a hiatus in the image of
nonchalant suavity that having a fag
in your mouth invariably projects.
And the same goes for those
essaying auras of Churchillian
defi ance and grit, or Hannibal from
The A-Team -style twinkly maverick
leadership, to which a lit cigar
clamped between the teeth can be
vital, particularly if you’ve got a
weak chin.
Similarly, if you’re a pipe-smoking
detective of the Sherlock Holmes
mould and are, perhaps, investigating
a crime on a petrol station forecourt,
or merely passing across one while
contemplating the intricacies of a
non-forecourt-related mystery, you
wouldn’t have to suff er a lapse in the
heightened analytical brain function
that you’ve found smoking a pipe
crucial to attaining. Interrupting such
processes to buy petrol may cause
murderers to walk free.
And then there’s the possibility that
allowing smoking at petrol stations
will marginally increase overall
consumption, and therefore sales, of
tobacco products – all the Holmeses
and Churchills and Bonds will be able
to get a few more smokes in before
they die of cancer – which would
slightly improve trade and GDP, and
so create jobs.
Nevertheless, I am not, on balance,
in favour of allowing smoking
on petrol station forecourts. The
manifold advantages are, in my
view, outweighed by the several
disadvantages: passive smoking fornon-smoking users of the forecourt,
nicotine staining of the underside of
the canopy, and various others I can’t
currently bring to mind.
But you’d think, in a system that
fl attered itself as non-mad, as I
believe the British one still does,
practices that are legal would be
bristling with more boons for the
community than those that aren’t.
That’s got to be the vague rule of
thumb, right? So then, what are the
good things about allowing sitting
MPs to take paid work from lobbying
fi rms? What are the upsides to that?
The downsides are as hard to miss
as a few hundred thousand litres
of subterranean petrol suddenly
exploding. Let’s take an example
from the news last week. It was
reported that James Duddridge ,
a Tory MP who was minister for
Africa from 2014 to 2016, is being
paid £3,300 for eight hours work a
month by a lobbying company called
Brand Communications.
It’s one of the few lobbying
companies not to have signed up to
the industry’s code of conduct, which
prohibits employing sitting MPs. You
may say that makes it a nasty fi rm, but
I don’t blame it. Why would it sign
up to extra rules if it doesn’t have to?
That’s like volunteering to observe
a lower speed limit than the one
prescribed by law.
The law is absolutely fi ne with
Duddridge’s little earner. Former
ministers’ jobs just have to be
approved by the Advisory Committee
on Business Appointments , itself
described by the Commons Public
Administration and Constitutional
Aff airs Committee as a “toothless
regulator” (these committees are
so bitchy!), since it has no statutory
powers of redress. Then again, as
its rulings are almost invariably
“That’s fi ne”, what powers does it
really need?
Duddridge himself says
it’s all legit because Brand
Communications is “not a
public aff airs company”,
but the company’s website
says “James will bring
his deep knowledge ofAfrica, experience of operating at
the highest levels of government
and extensive networks to Brand
Communications”, which sounds a
bit public aff airsy to me.
But I don’t know: maybe it’s fi ne.
We can’t know it’s defi nitely not
fi ne. Admittedly, according to the
Times, the head of one of Britain’s
leading lobbying fi rms called it “an
appalling example of bad practice”,
and the chairman of the Association
of Professional Political Consultants
said, “MPs should not be lobbyists. It
is wrong to be a lobbyist and make the
law at the same time,” but maybe it’s
still fi ne.
Maybe James just pops in once
a month and is incredibly helpful
in ways that don’t confl ict with his
public duties. Maybe he’s full of
creative ideas, a huge boost to offi ce
morale and a master of clearingphotocopier jams. And then he pops
back to parliament and doesn’t think
about Brand Communications until
the next month, no matter what
issues concerning their interests
cross his desk as an MP and member
of the Commons International
Development Committee. Yes,
maybe it’s fi ne.
Is that the main plus of letting
sitting MPs work for lobbying fi rms:
in any given instance, it might be fi ne?
Because most people have got some
sort of conscience, haven’t they? So,
fi ngers crossed!
Another advantage is that it allows
MPs to earn extra money, which is
nice for them and reduces pressure on
the taxpayer to give them more. If we
prohibited them from lobbying work
and “non-executive directorships”
without also increasing their salaries,
the job of MP would become even less
attractive than it already is, which
would inevitably exert a downward
pressure on the calibre of applicants.
A sobering thought. We’re in enough
trouble as it is – I’m not sure the
country could survive them getting
any shitter.
So those are the advantages. And the
disadvantage is that, as a nation, we
could be outbid for the loyalty of every
single one of our legislators. I think it’s
time to extinguish our
cigarettes in the nearest
sand bucket.
We can’t know exactly
how much MPs’ availability for
lobbying work costs the country,
fi nancially and morally. But anyone
can see that many laws favour
powerful interest groups rather than
ordinary people, so we can guess it’s a
lot. Potentially, it runs to billions and
our souls. But if we banned MPs from
working for anyone else at all and,
let’s go crazy, doubled their salaries,
we know pretty precisely what that
would cost: it would be £49m a year.
That’s a lot of money, in a sense. In
another sense, it’s 1.4p a week each.
So we have an answer: the
advantage of letting MPs work for
lobbying fi rms is an extra penny a
week each. Just a smidge over. We’re
even cheaper than they are.ILLUSTRATION BY
DAVID FOLDVARILobbying fi rms paying our
MPs? It’s probably fi ne...
Dav id M itchel l
Maybe Duddridge
just pops in once a
month and is a
master of clearing
photocopier jams
After 54 years of enticing audiences
into the stalls, the National Theatre’s
posters are getting their own
moment in the spotlight, with an
exhibition curated by Rick Poynor
in the NT’s Wolfson Gallery ( 6
Oct-31 March). National Theatre
Posters raids the archives to tell a
fascinating story about the theatre’s
evolution. “In the 60s, the designs
are very clean and modernist,” says
Poynor, professor of design and
visual culture at the University
of Reading. “ By 2003, there’s an
emerging sense of the theatre as a
brand and the poster imagery and
typography having to refl ect that.”
As for what makes the perfect
poster, “ there is no formula”, Poynor
says, “but what you absolutely have
to do is grab the viewer’s attention,
magnetise the eye”. Imogen CarterEQUUS (1973) Rick Poyner:
‘Right from the beginning, the
National Th eatre treated visual
communication very seriously.’BEDROOM FARCE (1977) ‘Th is is
fantastic: the font clashes in a
peculiar way with the cheesy
bed. It’s like a small visual shock.’SAINT JOAN (1984) ‘ Under then
head of graphics Richard Bird ,
designs became very illustrative
with lots of lettering styles.’BURIED CHILD (200 4)
‘Th e posters after Nick Hytner
arrived are very clean, with a
kind of newspaper urgency.’SNAPSHOTS Top billings
A TASTE OF HONEY (2014)
‘Th is cleverly constructed
image of the past works well
for audiences today.’