Fixing the Revolving Door - a new Transparency International UK report
A new report by Transparency International UK concludes that the system for regulating the ‘revolving door’ between government and business is broken and needs a radical overhaul.
The report is titled Cabs for Hire?: Fixing the Revolving Door between Government and Business.
The title references a quote by former cabinet Minister, Stephen Byers, who said “I’m a bit like a sort of cab for hire”. Byers made this statement to journalists posing as lobbyists in a sting arranged by the Channel 4′s Dispatches programme and the Sunday Times.
The report uses a number of recent scandals in the defence, health, transport and energy industries to highlight that the current regulation system is failing the public.
Cabs for Hire?: Fixing the Revolving Door between Government and Business - a new report by Transparency International UK.
Surprisingly the report makes no reference to the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments’ letting Tony Blair keep an appointment with an oil company operating in Iraq secret for almost two years because of “market sensitivities”. For a simliar period, ACOBA also keep secret Blair’s appointment as Governance Adviser to the Kuwaiti Government.
The report makes fifteen recommendations, including replacing the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (the current body that regulates the system) with a new statutory body; setting up a register of lobbyists and introduction of legislation on lobbying; and a three-year ban on lobbying by public officials who have had responsibility for procurement decisions.
A further recommendation is that the Office of National Statistics should collect and publish information on the destinations of leavers from the Senior Civil Service.
The report emphasises that disclosure and monitoring are important parts of any revolving door regulation. It states research suggests that disclosure is most effective in reducing perceived corruption when disclosures are made available to the public.
The report concludes that either actual scrutiny by the media and the public – or the threat of that scrutiny – is most effective in constraining unethical, corrupt, or illegal behaviour.
