15 per cent of all new Tory MPs are lobbyists
Article published: Thursday, June 3rd 2010
Nearly fifteen per cent of all new Tory MPs elected on May 6 come straight from lobbying backgrounds.
Nineteen of the 143 newly-elected Conservative MPs worked as lobbyists, including close allies of David Cameron. George Eustice, formerly associate director at Portland PR and Cameron’s former spokesman, is the newly elected MP for Camborne and Redruth.
His colleague at Portland, Charlotte Leslie, took Bristol North West.
Also among the crop of lobbyists turned MPs are Priti Patel, former director at Weber Shandwick and MP for Witham; Damien Collins, who came from Lexington Communications to take Folkestone and Hythe; Penny Mordaunt, former associate at Hanover and MP for Portsmouth North; Robin Walker, former partner at Finsbury and MP for Worcester and Oliver Colville who ran his own PR company specializing in regeneration and is now MP for Plymouth Sutton and Devonport.
On the Labour benches, eleven new MPs had been working as lobbyists, including Emma Reynolds, senior consultant at Cogitamus and now MP for Wolverhampton North East and Thomas Docherty, account director at PPS Group and now MP for Dunfermline and West Fife.
There are no new Liberal Democrat MPs with lobbying backgrounds.
Concerns over the ‘revolving door’ have also hit the Tories with former Tory MP Julie Kirkbride landing a lobbying job with Tetra Strategy days after being forced to quit the Commons following the expenses scandal.
Last year her former MP husband Andrew Mackay, who was also embroiled in the expenses scandal, landed a six-figure salary as ‘international consultant’ to the lobbying giant Burston-Marsteller.
Transparency campaigners warned that Cameron now had to honour his pledge to introduce a statutory register of lobbyists, which will include financial disclosure and provisions on the ‘revolving door’.
Spinwatch spokesman David Miller said: “Only the swift introduction of an effective register can allay concerns that the Tories are up to their necks in lobbying. It is time for David Cameron to show that he means what he says when it comes to lobbying and transparency in politics.”
Anna Minton
This post is republished from Spinwatch, and the original can be found here
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