What they need, therefore, are authentic, seemingly independent people to carry their message for them. Buy in credibilityĬorporations are one of the least credible sources of information for the public. The paper's commentary noted the alarm this new call from "ordinary British business" would cause inside government. A quick glance, though, revealed it included five managers from the Switzerland-based banking giant Credit Suisse. The Telegraph's by the bosses of 573 SMEs, described as the "bedrock" of British industry. Ahead of the chancellor's annual Budget announcement in early 2012, letters appeared in the press demanding he scrap it. Westbourne was also hired in 2011 to lobby against the top rate of tax, although who was behind its "50p tax campaign" remains a mystery. Thirty economists, for example, signed a letter to the FT in 2011 in support of HS2 100 businesses endorsed another published in the Daily Telegraph. The forte of lobbying firm Westbourne is in mobilising voices behind its clients. What is needed is a critical mass of voices singing to its tune. It doesn't help if a corporation is the only one making the case to government. The reforms were about the survival of the NHS in straitened times. Lobby group The NHS Partners Network moved quickly to get everyone back on-message and singing from "common hymn sheets", as its chief lobbyist David Worskett explained. After comments by Mark Britnell, the head of health at accountancy giants KPMG giants and a former adviser of David Cameron, hit the headlines in May 2011 – Britnell told an investors' conference that "the NHS will be shown no mercy and the best time to take advantage of this will be in the next couple of years" – the industry got a grip. As Andrew Lansley embarked on his radical reforms of the NHS, private hospitals and outsourcing firms were talking to investors about the "clear opportunities" to profit from the changes. Private healthcare also regrouped after the wrong messages went public. "Their lawns or our jobs," shouted the ad campaign.
The strategy was "posh people standing in the way of working-class people getting jobs," said Bethell. The new messaging focused on a narrative that pitted wealthy people in the Chilterns worried about their hunting rights against the economic benefits to the north. Westbourne reframed the debate to make it about jobs and economic growth. In early 2011, lobbyist James Bethell of Westbourne Communications was parachuted in to rescue the £43bn project, which had initially been sold by ministers on the marginal benefits to a few commuters. Get the messaging wrong and you get fiascos such as High Speed 2 (HS2). At the moment, that means economic growth and jobs. Even if the corporate goal is pure, self-interested profit-making, it will be dressed up to appear synonymous with the wider, national interest. As a way of talking to government, though, the media is crucial. The more noise there is, the less control lobbyists have. The trick is in knowing when to use the press and when to avoid it. The Yes camp lost the vote two to one.ĭavid Cameron and John Reid campaign against a proposed change to the UK voting system, April 2011. They led with the claim that switching to AV would deny troops badly needed equipment and sick babies incubators. No2AV was "very quick off the mark" to make it about cost to the public purse, explains Dylan Sharpe, of the No camp's TaxPayers' Alliance.
The referendum on an alternative voting system was not, as anticipated, so much a conversation about the merits of first past the post. It doesn't matter if the new frame relies on fabrication.
Once this narrowly framed conversation becomes dominant, dissenting voices will appear marginal and irrelevant.Įverybody's doing it, including lobbyists for fracking and nuclear power, public sector reform and bank regulation. If a public discussion on a company's environmental impact is unwelcome, lobbyists will push instead to have a debate with politicians and the media on the hypothetical economic benefits of their ambitions. Lobbyists succeed by owning the terms of debate, steering conversations away from those they can't win and on to those they can. Here are the 10 key steps that lobbying businesses will follow to bend government to their will.
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