Is the Alcohol Abuse APPG just a front for 'Big Pharma'?

****

When the debate over cigarette packaging started the tobacco control lobby was very quick to finger some MPs - like Oliver Colville, for example - who had attended the Chelsea Flower Show on 'big tobacco's' ticket. A fair cop, I'm sure you'll agree.

Well I've another fair cop for you. Yesterday the airwaves were filled with details from a report published by the Alcohol Abuse All-party Parliamentary Group (APPG). This rehashed, courtesy of Alcohol Concern (who provide the secretariat for ths APPG), a lot of previously published proposals from the temperance lobby. This, of course, explains how that lobby was so swift to issue appropriately supportive press releases.

However, underneath all this smiling care and consideration is a link with a Danish pharmaceutical business called Lundbeck. The UK arm of this multinational business funds the work of the Alcohol Abuse APPG. Indeed if you google the connection between Tracey Crouch MP (or for that matter Ian Gilmore, the leading liver surgeon and temperance campaigner) you will find that, time and time again, they appear on a platform funded by Lundbeck or subsidiaries of Lundbeck.

So what is Lundbeck's interest in all this? Quite simply it wants to push its products and is using the MPs and doctors to do just that:

Selincro (nalmefene) was approved at the end of February and is the first new treatment for alcohol dependence in Europe for more than a decade. Lundbeck noted that the drug, a dual-acting opioid system modulator that acts on the brain’s motivational system, will be launched in other countries later this year and in 2014.

Now I'm sure Selincro is a perfectly fine product but it's pretty clear that the public health lobby should not allow itself to be captured in this way by commercial interests.

....

Quote of the day - Owen Paterson on the green lobby...

****

OK so the term 'green blob' does rather summon up images of Quatermass but Paterson is absolutely spot on in his condemnation of the so-called 'green' lobby:

I soon realised that the greens and their industrial and bureaucratic allies are used to getting things their own way. I received more death threats in a few months at Defra than I ever did as secretary of state for Northern Ireland. My home address was circulated worldwide with an incitement to trash it; I was burnt in effigy by Greenpeace as I was recovering from an operation to save my eyesight. But I did not set out to be popular with lobbyists and I never forgot that they were not the people I was elected to serve.

Indeed, I am proud that my departure was greeted with such gloating by spokespeople for the Green Party and Friends of the Earth.

It was not my job to do the bidding of two organisations that are little more than anti-capitalist agitprop groups most of whose leaders could not tell a snakeshead fritillary from a silver-washed fritillary. I saw my task as improving both the environment and the rural economy; many in the green movement believed in neither. 

These things cannot be said too often. The 'green' movement is driven less by the interests of our local environments that by self-interest, the search for power and influence, and above all by an unwavering belief that improving the conditions for ordinary men and women comes at a cost to the environment.  It doesn't. Just as no-one is poor become another is rich, the environment is not doomed by the desire of people like me to see poor people everywhere enjoying the fruits of capitalism's bounty.

....

"Big Oil! How the EU works...a reminder

****

There has been a hoo-hah about the proposal to force restauranteurs to sell only factory-produced and approved olive oil. It hasn't quite been described this way rather as a ban on those cute little dipping bowls and in unlabelled bottles. The proposal has been dropped  - a welcome and unusual reaction (I guess that the EU was found out). And this is what the industrial olive oil folk have to say:

Copa-Cogeca, a farming association that represents industrial olive oil producers who would have benefited from the ban by getting a higher price for factory packaged bottles, attacked the climb down.

"It is totally ludicrous that the commission just withdraws this measure due to political pressure - it has been discussed for over a year and passed through all the correct legal procedures," said Pekka Pesonen , the general secretary of Copa-Cogeca.

"Perhaps it wasn't explained well enough. But it was necessary to ban refillable bottles and the traditional aceiteras found on restaurant tables. It is totally unacceptable that the Commission has done a complete U-turn and has succumbed to political pressure like this." 

You will notice a couple of things here - these producers "would have benefited from the ban by getting a higher price" and that the proposal has "been discussed for over a year". Moreover the ban, we're told is "necessary" - presumably for the owners of these industrial oil companies.

This is how the EU works. Organised lobbies corral officials and MEPs to browbeat them with proposals to protect their particular interests. We see this with the car industry and OEM parts, with industrial cheese manufacture in Italy and Greece using PDOs and PGIs, and with the pharmaceuticals business over herbal supplements (and more recently e-cigarettes).

All of this is wrapped up in warm words about 'health', 'safety' and 'protecting business' when, in reality, it is simply a ramp for the interests of the lobby. As a European consumer my interests are not served - and I am the poorer for this - by the failure of those who represent me (politicians, ministers and so forth) to do so. Now this is a feature of government everywhere - you only have to peek at the sugar industry in the USA to know that - but the EU has managed to achieve its perfection.

This olive oil ban is overturned (it will be lack, trust me) but ask yourself how many restrictions, bans, privileges and preferences have damaged our interests that haven't made the papers and haven't caused an outcry? The EU may have grown too large for us to take it round the back of the barn and finish it off with an axe but we have to option to leave.

We should take that option.

....

Government lobbying itself again...this time it's HS2 Ltd

****

HS2 Ltd is the company set up to develop and promote the project. At this point, all you need to know is that:

HS2 Ltd is a company wholly owned by the Department for Transport.

Yesterday a job opportunity popped into my in box - unsurprisingly from the Guardian's jobs section. Following the link took me to this:

Head of Public Affairs

Reference: PAF006
Salary: up to £97,398 + Benefits
   
The Head of Public Affairs will be defining the strategy and leading HS2’s relationships with key stakeholders, the public and the media.
  
Closing date: 21st May 2012

Nice job! Over £100,000 for what is essentially a lobbying job - after all the "go ahead" for HS2 isn't a "go ahead" but the government's stated intention to put a bill before parliament to enable the project to happen. So the main point and purpose of this "public affairs" position will be to make sure that this happens - that MPs and Lords are suitably smoothed, that ministers don't wobble and that other parts of government such as the treasury don't nobble.

Despite stating they would stop the practice, this is the government funding an organisation so it can - in part - lobby the government.

....

Oh no, we're not lobbyists...say lobbyists for the 'third sector'

****

Acevo and NCVO (see how I slip so sweetly into the acronyms of lobbying - the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary organisations and the National Council of Voluntary Organisations) are twitching at the prospect of a lobbying register and its 'unintended consequences':

The chief executives body Acevo and the National Council for Voluntary Organisations have written a joint letter to Nick Hurd, the Minister for Civil Society, to ask for a round-table discussion about the possible "unintended consequences" of a proposed new register of lobbyists for charities.

So what are the worries?

In the letter, Sir Stephen Bubb, chief executive of Acevo, and Sir Stuart Etherington, chief executive of the NCVO, said they wanted to ensure that any register "does not unintentionally prevent, impede or dissuade charities from doing the vital work they do in informing government policy".

That would be lobbying, no?

...

You might as well try to train the rainstorm - thoughts on lobbying

OK so, following the latest example of how “lobbyists” capture ministers, the chatterati’s latest idea is to do something about that lobbying:

Labour's shadow cabinet office minister Gareth Thomas said: "David Cameron has still not introduced the compulsory register of lobbyists he promised.

"In the wake of the Adam Werritty and Atlantic Bridge activities it is now essential we have greater transparency.

"The government should bring forward as a matter of urgency plans for a compulsory register of lobbyists with records being kept of meetings between lobbyists and ministers."

And everyone nods sagely, the government promise to ‘consider’ such a register and the chitter-chatter of political aficionados gently shifts into a purring sound as everyone agrees with everyone else about the need to control lobbying.

What nobody asks however – not a soul – is what exactly we mean by the term “lobbyist”? Do we just mean that relatively small group of people who earn a living brokering access to decision-makers on behalf of fee-paying clients? Or do we need to encompass a far broader group including all those in-house public affairs teams, for example?

Or should we just give up. After all, seeking to control to exploiting of access to decision-makers in a modern democracy where over half of all the money earned is spent by the government is a tougher task that herding recalcitrant felines – more akin to training the rainstorm.

Regardless of the number of registers, licences and other bureaucratic controls, the lobbying of decision-makers will continue, access will be brokered for favours and, in each season, some scandal or other will rear its head – occasionally ending in a resignation or other such juicy delight.

The truth of the matter is that is suits large organisations - whether business, charity, trade union or industrial association - to invest their marketing pounds in influencing the decisions of government. There is no doubt that such a strategy deliver a far better return for shareholders, trustees and members than does the more orthodox search for advantage through persuasion.

We may get a register of lobbyists and lobby organisations – it may help a little. But let’s not kid ourselves that the hydra of political favour broking will die – the lobby will reform, grow new heads, adopt a different name and find different ways to inveigle its way into the heart of the political system.

....

Looks like I was right again!

****

The estimable Tim Worstall reports on a study into lobbying:

So lobbying is definitely worth the cost to the people doing the lobbying: as The Economist notes, it might well be the most profitable thing a company spends money on.

And, dear reader you will remember my little theory of marketing (we spend the money where we get the best return):

Now, so long as Government takes it upon itself to regulate the behaviour of businesses, it will always be in the interest of those businesses – alone or collectively – to target government rather than to target the buying public. Think about it for a minute – for £1 million pound in donations to the minister’s favorite charity (at present using the name Labour Party) and a hint of lucrative future consultancy employment you can get the Government to change the law protecting your industry from new entrants, innovation and foreign competition.

So you see lobby works - from the perspective of the marketer if not from the perspective of the poor benighted consumer! And, so long as government has the power and the cash, we will continue to lobby for our self-interest to be promoted by that government. Perhaps the solution really does lie in reducing the power of government to control our lives, lower taxes and less regulation. The alternative, dare I say it, is corruption and the repeat of the very problems that got us all into this current mess.

....

Using strikes to change policy is wrong

***

I had planned to pen a little rant about the iniquities of the assorted teacher trade unions who - as it their Easter wont - are threatening all kinds of dire consequences should the government not do what they say. All the familiar public sector union buzz words are featured - "cuts", "privatisation", "overwork", "under pay" - plus a selection of moans specific to the education industry such as SATs and training.

But instead I want to meander around a rather important issue - the point at which trade unions overstep their proper role of representing members and stray into the running of overtly political campaigns directed at changing policy. Now this latter role is - if members ordain - a proper role for the union. Clearly those who work in a given industry and especially one predominantly government directed have a legitimate (and often informed) voice that trade unions can direct. So the NUT are quite entitled to argue for the abolition of SATs, for a wholly state-managed education system and for the compulsory teaching of Marxism if that is the wish of its members. But they are not entitled - in my judgment - to support such arguments with the threat of industrial action.

Nor is it right for trade unions - whether mandated by their members or not - to seek to prevent others, through private adventure from challenging the current status quo. The stifling of competition has been a theme in trade union activism across time - ironic in the case of the very competitive world of teacher trade unions!

What is clear is that the public sector unions are lining up a series of oppositional positions ahead of a possible Conservative government. And, given the radical nature of Conservative proposals in education, the teaching unions are at the forefront in developing this opposition. However, to propose industrial action because someone else - in line with Government policies - has set up a competing school outside the cuddly local authority sphere should be a matter of concern. And - as an overt political act - such action should not be taken.

There is a big difference between lobbying for policy change - a quite legitimate act - and using industrial power to achieve policy change - which is illegitimate.

....

PR, lobbying and the logic of bribery

***

To appreciate what follows you need to understand the purpose of marketing. Now a great deal of guff and twaddle has been written – some of it very expensively – about marketing. There are more definitions of this dark art than I’ve had dinners.

The primary function of marketing is to create monopoly. Forget about the process definitions or the self-serving Chartered Institute of Marketing descriptions – our aim as marketers is to create the information imbalance allowing our employing company to realise a profit.

To create this temporary monopoly there are a range of options, strategies and tactics available to the marketer. Here are two of them:

1. Invest in brand development, advertising and direct marketing with the aim of securing your product a dominant place in the mind of the potential buyer. This takes a long time, costs a great deal of money and requires a whole load of spending every year.

2. Invest in persuading the Government to change regulation, pass laws and allocate budgets so as to protect your business interests. This is the role now adopted by many PR & lobbying agencies and is pretty cheap and very effective.

Now, so long as Government takes it upon itself to regulate the behaviour of businesses, it will always be in the interest of those businesses – alone or collectively – to target government rather than to target the buying public. Think about it for a minute – for £1 million pound in donations to the minister’s favorite charity (at present using the name Labour Party) and a hint of lucrative future consultancy employment you can get the Government to change the law protecting your industry from new entrants, innovation and foreign competition.

Compare that to the amounts you would need to spend on securing a dominant share of mind? Not just £1 million pounds this year but the same next year and the following years. In fact year after year until you decide you’ve had enough!

Some PR and lobbying has pushed aside other parts of the marketing business by offering a wholly debased product – unmeasurable chitter-chatter, access to “key decision-makers”, the buying of editorial coverage and the manipulation of the media agenda. Now we can add loads of pretty pointless flim-flam about social media as a new cherry on the top!

Don’t get me wrong – PR is a very useful tactical tool (and I even won a prize for it once) – but as a core communications strategy it can run fairly close to unethical. The logic of lobbying is, after all, barely distinguishable from the logic of bribery!

....