There’s nothing inherently wrong with lobbyists hiring former ministers. What is wrong is MPs being paid to push causes. But we get the politicians we pay for
In politics, as in the media, the public gets what it deserves.
In journalism, the public has rewarded the dumbed-down, celebrity-obsessed, oversimplified, overblown and parochial. In politics… well let’s consider that for a minute in the light of this week’s shock revelations that former ministers are looking for ways to earn money after they leave office.
The instinctive response to the Sunday Times/Dispatches exposé of Stephen Byers, Patricia Hewitt, Geoff Hoon and others – after a moment’s reflection on their idiocy – is to lament their venal readiness to turn themselves, in Byers’ phrase, into ‘cabs for hire’ for any cause with the cash to pay a lobbyist.
However, lobbying is not illegal. There are, no doubt, elements of it that we might find distasteful. But there is nothing inherently wrong with the practice of businesses and interest groups hiring experts to make their case to government.
There is nothing immoral in those firms using the expertise of former ministers or civil servants as long as they operate within the law. Many of the arguments deployed by lobbyists are in fact adopted by ministers. Much of the work they do is at a micro level, tweaking details of legislation or influencing policy. They are professionals who do this for a living and it is hardly surprising that they seek out people who can navigate Whitehall.
A vast amount of legislation is ill-considered, poorly drafted and amended in committee. As with maggots eating away at dead flesh, we might instinctively recoil from lobbyists – but they perform a function.
Nor is there anything necessarily wrong in ex-ministers allowing themselves to work for these hired guns. Indeed, in some respects, one can argue that it is potentially less pernicious than taking a directorship in a company with close ties to their former ministry.
What rankles, I suspect, is the assumption that Byers and others would use their contacts to win favours for causes they don’t actually favour themselves – because they are being paid to do so. All of which makes them, well, like PRs, advertisers, corporate advisers, lawyers and… you see my point.
The real issue is not the ex-ministers who go into lobbying but the current ministers who succumb to their persuasion for reasons other than the merits of the argument. An ex-minister might get you through the door but nothing wrong has happened unless the policy is changed for the wrong reason.
So far, so good. The problem is that MPs should not be lobbyists for money. The causes they take up should only be the ones in which they or their constituents believe. But this is where we come to the issue of the politics we deserve. MPs are not especially well paid. A parliamentary salary is well above average but for a high-achiever it’s pretty low. It was intended to be so because politics was not meant to be something people did to make money. It was a cause, not a career.
But the demands we now make of politicians mean it is a career. Outside interests are whittled down; the time demanded of MPs has grown; most have to retain two homes. Privacy is shredded and motives are questioned beyond what is reasonable.
The average ministerial career is short and brutish and most, of course, never even get that far. As a result we now have a professional class of politicians – many of whom have never engaged in any other career and have little else to fall back on once the ride ends. Careers also begin and end younger. That is why politicians are so reluctant to resign for errors or on principle.
Frightened of paying themselves a bigger wage – because the public and media already portray them as pigs in the trough – they fell back on a largely legal but reprehensible expenses dodge. Of course, there will always be some bad apples but, by and large, you get what you pay for – and, again, we got the politicians we deserve.
We could ban all outside interests and put a very long purdah on ministers’ next employment. But unless we want politics to be the purview of the rich or want to fund that extra stringency ourselves, we need to pay them more.
A similar situation springs from the rows over financial contributions to the parties, such as from Lord Ashcroft and Unite. But if we don’t want full taxpayer funding for politics, parties have to rely on donors.
So we have all these new measures on transparency and donations – all fine in themselves. But there are better solutions. The public just doesn’t want to pay for them.
Robert Shrimsley is the managing editor of FT.com
