In brief:
- Our “lobby-index” shows the proportion of UK government contracts awarded to companies with links to politicians or lobbyists.
- It includes contracts awarded to companies that: (1) are part-owned by a politician, (2) have donated to a party/MP, (3) had met a minister in the 18 months before the contract was awarded, or (4) employed a lobbyist in the 18 months before the contract was awarded.
- The index peaked in mid-2019, but remained high throughout 2020.
Government procurement was heavily criticised in 2020. Money was wasted on defective PPE, contracts were awarded without competition and contract winners had links to the Government. Even the landlord of the health secretary’s local pub managed to win a Covid contract.
Allegations of cronyism resurfaced in March 2021. It emerged that David Cameron – a previous leader of the governing Conservative Party – had lobbied his ex-colleagues to arrange access to a government-backed loan for Greensill Capital.
All of these instances of lobbying and cronyism were uncovered through detailed, investigative journalism. The FT and Sunday Times’ ongoing exposé of the Greensill affair is a stellar example. But such journalism is resource-intensive and can’t be used to systemically to identify all potential cases of lobbying. Tens-of-thousands of contracts are awarded every year.
So we’ve built the “lobby-index”. It shows the proportion of UK government contracts awarded to companies with links to politicians or lobbyists. Specifically, contracts awarded to companies that: (1) are part-owned by a politician, (2) have donated to a party/MP, (3) had met a minister in the 18 months before the contract was awarded, or (4) employed a lobbyist in the 18 months before the contract was awarded.
The index is systematic: it goes through each and every contract award notice to check for links between politicians and lobbyists. It peaked in mid-2019, but has remained high throughout 2020. It suggests lobbying has been, and remains, both pervasive and successful.
We can also look through individual contracts in the index to identify instances of potential lobbying that haven’t been picked-up in the press. For example in May 2018, Mace Group met Liz Truss – then chief secretary to the Treasury and in charge of infrastructure spending – “to discuss business”. Less than a year later, Mace was joint-winner of a £1.5bn HS2 contract.
And a second example. In the first half of 2018, Henry Boot Developments employed Curtin Communications – a lobbyist specialising in “planning politics”. In November 2018, Henry Boot won a £500m contract from South Tyneside Council to build an “advanced manufacturing park”.
Our index has two limitations. First, we can’t be sure that companies actually used these connections to win each of those contracts. Second, the index cannot be comprehensive, because not all links between politicians, lobbyists and companies are declared. Take links between lobbyists and companies, for example. If a company pays a lobbyist as a consultant this will be noted in a public register and could therefore feature in our index. However, If instead the company directly employs an individual as a lobbyist, that relationship need not be declared.
For more information on UK government procurement, see our dashboard (http://pulsedata.co.uk/?p=651&preview=true).