CorpComms Magazine

Chancellor Alistair Darling's 2010 budget will no longer allow quangos and public bodies, which currently receive £80 billion in government funding annually, to hire lobbying consultants to promote their interests in Parliament.

The report states that state bodies 'must not use public funds to employ external public affairs or other consultants to lobby Parliament or Government with the principal aim of altering government policy or to obtain increased funding'.

About 750 state-funded bodies will be affected by the proposals - including 43 grant-giving organisations, 145 service delivery bodies and 54 regulators.

The Treasury review also anticipates a tightening up on all other branches of communications spending in the public sector, specifying that 'ALBs must not use PR consultants without the specific approval of their parent department'.

The move comes amidst revelations within the public sector that PR costs are outstripping general administration budgets. A study published last year by the TaxPayers' Alliance found that quangos' communications spending had risen by 24 per cent in both of the previous years. The reform is intended to deliver many millions of pounds of savings to public funds but it may prove disastrous for PR agencies who operate subsidiary lobbying firms, and those who currently handle a large number of public-sector clients.

Francis Ingham, director general of the Public Relations Consultants Association branded the move a populist distraction from more pressing reforms: 'Politicians on all sides are electioneering. They are chasing votes with proposals that will do nothing to help the country. 'The issue is with greedy and corrupt MPs and all parties should stop pretending otherwise. Real reform of the political system is needed to end the culture of revolving doors.'

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