Abolish system of privilege

March 24, 2020 / By mobanmarket

Abolish system of privilege

Should lobbyists have privileged access to the European Parliament? A consultant says ‘No’.

You report consideration being given to changing the rules on lobbying (“How much access is too much access?”, 5-11 May).

As an agency, the Whitehouse Consultancy has always been absolutely committed to openness and transparency. We support the principle of registration and encourage the European Parliament and European Commission to continue to put pressure on all those lobbying, from whatever professional discipline, to come in from the cold and subscribe to basic principles of good practice, including registration.

One point upon which we differ most strongly from the Parliament, and indeed from many other agencies in the sector, is that we believe it to be fundamentally wrong, bordering on a constitutional outrage, that some agencies are given privileged access to the Parliament through the issuing of passes to their staff.

A basic democratic principle must be that all citizens, whether individuals or corporate, must be equal under the law and have equal access to the institutions of government.

Regardless of whether a joint register is successfully delivered in the near future, the scandalous practice of issuing passes to lobbyists should cease. Why should 4,400 individuals currently be singled out from the rest of the citizenship of Europe for such privileges? The issuing of such passes is a carrot to encourage agencies to come into the public domain, but if the price of that encouragement is the undermining of basic principles of equality of access, it is too high a price. The same result could better be achieved by the abolition of that system of privilege and the introduction instead of mandatory registration.

The Parliament and Commission must without further delaytake that next step towards statutory registration and away from the corrupt system of issuing passes.

 

From:

Chris Whitehouse

The Whitehouse Consultancy

London

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