One of Britain's largest lobbying companies has been secretly recorded boasting about its access to the heart of the Government and how it uses the "dark arts" to bury bad coverage and influence public opinion. An undercover investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, published in The Independent today, has taped senior executives at Bell Pottinger:

* Claiming they have used their access to Downing Street to get David Cameron to speak to the Chinese premier on behalf of one of their business clients within 24 hours of asking him to do so;

* Boasting about Bell Pottinger's access to the Foreign Secretary William Hague, to Mr Cameron's chief of staff Ed Llewellyn and to Mr Cameron's old friend and closest No 10 adviser Steve Hilton;

* Suggesting that the company could manipulate Google results to "drown" out negative coverage of human rights violations and child labour;

* Revealing that Bell Pottinger has a team which "sorts" negative Wikipedia coverage of clients;

* Saying it was possible to use MPs known to be critical of investigative programmes to attack their reporting for minor errors.

Reporters from the Bureau posed as agents for the government of Uzbekistan – a brutal dictatorship responsible for killings, human rights violations and child labour – and representatives of its cotton industry in a bid to discover what promises British lobbying and public relations firms were prepared to make when pitching to clients, what techniques they use, and how much of their work is open to public scrutiny.

In Uzbekistan, child labour is used in cotton fields to fulfil state quotas and the country also has a terrible human rights record: the think tank Freedom House put it on its 2011 list of the "Worst of the Worst" repressive regimes.

'I've been working with Hilton, Cameron, Osborne, for 20 years'

The Bureau contacted ten London firms. Two refused to take the business, several others did not reply, while five including Bell Pottinger appeared to be keen to work with the fictitious Uzbek representatives. Bell Pottinger quoted "£1m-plus" as a fee for carrying out the work.

Their claims – which were secretly recorded – will add to mounting concerns that an absence of regulation has made London the global centre for "reputation laundering", where lobbyists work behind the scenes on behalf of the world's most controversial regimes.

David Cameron pledged to tackle lobbying five years ago and then again last year, saying it was "the next big scandal waiting to happen" and "has tainted our politics for too long, an issue that exposes the far-too-cosy relationship between politics, government, business and money". He said he wanted to shine "the light of transparency" on lobbying so that politics "comes clean about who is buying power and influence".

During two undercover meetings in June and July 2011 at its Chancery Lane offices, senior Bell Pottinger executives showed few signs of being deterred by Uzbekistan's dire reputation. They made it clear that the Uzbek government would need to put genuine reforms in place if it were to improve its image and outlined how it could work with the Government, Parliament and the media to do so.

They talked openly about the work the firm had done with other regimes with questionable human rights records including Sri Lanka and Belarus and how they could navigate the corridors of power for clients.

Tim Collins, managing director of Bell Pottinger Public Affairs, told the reporters he used to be Mr Llewellyn's boss in Conservative Central Office, and had worked with Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne in the Conservative Research Department.

"I've been working with people like Steve Hilton, David Cameron, George Osborne for 20 years-plus. There is not a problem getting the messages through," he said.

His colleague David Wilson boasted the firm was the "most powerful public affairs business in the country". Asked whether he could help organise a meeting between Mr Cameron and the Uzbek President – despite protocol dictating that such meetings are organised by ambassadors – he said: "We can facilitate that".

Mr Collins later clarified that such a meeting might be an "end point" to aim for, once the country was seen to be genuinely improving its human rights record.

'David Cameron raised it with the Chinese Prime Minister'

During the undercover meeting, Bell Pottinger – whose chairman is Margaret Thatcher's former media adviser Lord (Tim) Bell – claimed to have used its influence on behalf of the engineering firm Dyson to ask Mr Cameron to complain about copyright infringement to the Chinese premier Wen Jiabao during a state visit in June 2011.

"We were rung up at 2.30 on a Friday afternoon, by one of our clients, Dyson," Mr Collins explained. "He said 'We've got a huge issue. A lot of our products are being ripped off in China.' On the Saturday David Cameron raised it with the Chinese Prime Minister."

He added that, "He [Cameron] was doing it because we asked him to do it," and because the issue was in the wider national interest. In terms of very fast turnaround and getting things done right at the top of government, if you've got the right message, we can do it," he said.

Mr Collins also recommended a meeting with Daniel Finkelstein, chief leader writer at The Times – who he said was very close to Mr Cameron. "He will sit down and have lunch with just about anybody," he said. "That doesn't mean he's going to agree with them, but occasionally something out of that lunch will get dropped into a future column."

Joint events could be held with influential think tanks close to government, such as Policy Exchange, the firm suggested. Another strategy would include passing information to key academics "so that they are then blogging the right messages out there – so it's coming from an independent," said Mr Wilson.

Mr Finkelstein said last night: "I am flattered if anyone thinks I am interesting enough to have lunch with. But anyone promoting either undemocratic or anti-social policies would find me a pretty closed door and hasn't to my knowledge come knocking".

'We've got all sorts of dark arts'

Discussing techniques for managing reputations online, Mr Wilson mentioned a team that could "sort" Wikipedia.

"We've got all sorts of dark arts," added Mr Collins. "I told him [David Wilson] he couldn't put them in the written presentation because it's embarrassing if it gets out."

A presentation shown during the meeting said it could "create and maintain third-party blogs" – blogs that appeared to be independent. These would contain positive content and popular key words that would rank highly in Google searches.

The pair also explained how the firm enables government videos and articles to move to the top of internet searches, while less favourable stories can move down the rankings.

"The ambition obviously is to drown that negative content and make sure that you have positive content out there online," Mr Wilson said.

The firm cited past examples of its work, included manipulating Google rankings for an East African money transfer company called Dahabshiil. Bell Pottinger executives said they had ensured that references to a former Dahabshill employee subsequently detained in Guantanamo Bay because of alleged links to al-Qai'da disappeared from the first 10 pages of a Google search for the company.

Another defensive method cited in the meeting was the use of politicians to attack a broadcaster.

"There are a lot of people in Parliament who can't stand Channel 4 and can't stand Dispatches," Mr Collins said.

"So if there are any inaccuracies, even if they're fairly minor, you can work with some people who have a track record of not liking Channel 4, wanting to score points against Channel 4 [who will say:] 'Here is another instance of Channel 4 over-reaching themselves and putting out stuff they haven't properly checked'."

'Britain has this sort of moral ethic it thinks it can impose on the world'

Uzbekistan has recently expelled Human Rights Watch. The US think-tank Freedom House has said: "Uzbekistan's government continued to suppress all political opposition and restrict independent business activity in 2010. The few remaining civic activists and critical journalists in the country faced prosecution, fines, and lengthy prison terms."

In addition, Uzbekistan's cotton is the subject of an international boycott by several clothing manufacturers because the country still allegedly uses forced labour, including child labour, in its harvest.

Bureau journalists posed as members of the "Azimov Group" – a group of British and Eastern European investors concerned with exporting cotton textiles. They claimed they had been tasked by the Uzbek government with improving the country's image in the UK, and that the government would be committed to reform.

"A number of [our client] governments have had serious reputational issues," said Mr Collins.

But he also stressed a need for genuine commitment to reform. "Everything we are recommending is predicated on the agreement by the government to change," he said. "[That] justifies why a PR company is representing a country which previously people shouldn't have been talking to. Now it actually wants to change it is fully acceptable."

Another executive stressed, whilst talking about one of the firm's clients: "I wouldn't actually represent a client whom I didn't believe."

He added: "Just trying to sell the situation as it is or to say that things are changing when in reality they aren't is not going to work. Once we're clear that we've got the collateral, the proof that things are changing, then obviously we have the connections to get the message through to the right people."

'This is a £100,000-a-month campaign'

Bell Pottinger told the reporters that they had previously helped convince the EU that Belarus was committed to reform. But shortly after the EU lifted a travel ban on the Belarus President, the country went back to its old ways and the ban was eventually reinstated.

Bell Pottinger and the Belarus government stopped working together in 2009. Last week Belarus courts sentenced two men to death despite pleas for mercy and international outcry.

Changes did not need to be fast, Mr Collins said. "As long as you can see that each year is a little better than before, that's fine."

Bell Pottinger's services do not come cheap. "A million pounds plus," is what Mr Wilson quoted to do the job. "This is certainly a £100,000-a-month campaign, to make it very effective."

This would buy a media-relations campaign, online reputation management and the public-affairs team "working with you on a governmental level".

The country should stress its position as an emerging market, he suggested. "To the Western world it's a developing market so you can always have the message that: 'We are changing with the times – we are emerging, learning as a nation and growing'," he said.

He added: "Britain has this sort of moral ethic it thinks it can impose upon the world still because of our colonial background and the Commonwealth. We forget that 100 years ago we had kids working in cotton mills here."

Asked whether the firm would be prepared to work for the Azimov Group without knowing the identity of the campaign's ultimate funders, Mr Wilson said: "If the media asks us who your [our] client is, there has to be an audit trail." But a few seconds later also said: "In our work for Belarus, nobody knows who paid us."

Lord Bell was provided with details last Friday morning of the above. He responded yesterday via his lawyers, Carter Ruck, attacking the Bureau. Lord Bell said: "The conduct of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism does not remotely constitute responsible journalism. It is an attempt by unethical, deception to manufacture a story where none exists."

A spokeswoman for the Prime Minister said: "It is simply not true that Bell Pottinger or indeed any other lobbying company has any influence on government policy."

Downing Street sources said that the Dyson company's concerns had been raised with the Chinese premier, that it was a legitimate matter to raise and that they were unaware of Bell Pottinger's involvement.

Mr Dyson did not comment last night.

Caught on camera: top lobbyists boasting how they influence the PM - UK Politics - UK - The Independent

__________________
Standard disclaimer: the disgusting statements contained in this post are the views of the poster, and unless specified do not represent the views of the moderators or the site's owners.

Quote:

"He will sit down and have lunch with just about anybody," he said.

That must sting.

__________________
Standard disclaimer: the disgusting statements contained in this post are the views of the poster, and unless specified do not represent the views of the moderators or the site's owners.

Do you want to know the single biggest secret of lobbying? It is that most of it is like taking candy from a child.

We get very exercised by lobbying. Shady conspiracies; the “dark arts”; secret access: all the phrases most redolent of corruption easily attach themselves to lobbyists – and sometimes, quite rightly. The “cash for questions” scandal, in which Neil Hamilton and Tim Smith, two Conservative MPs, were found to have been paid cash by a lobbyist, Ian Greer, to ask questions in Parliament on behalf of Mohamed Fayed was as straightforward an example of corruption as you could imagine.

But however awful some of the exposés may be, the big secret of lobbying is that most of it is all mouth and no trousers – a big boast based on very little. Many of the clients who hand over small fortunes to lobby companies are being royally fleeced, simply because the world of Whitehall and politics is so alien and seems far too daunting to be approached without the guiding hand of a lobbyist.

Take the latest exposé, by the Orwellian-sounding Bureau of Investigative Journalism (in reality, an offshoot of the City University school of journalism). Undercover journalists posed as representatives of the government of Uzbekistan, one of the most brutal dictatorships in the world. Quite apart from the ethics of acting on behalf of such a government, what’s intriguing is the sheer brass neck of Bell Pottinger, the lobby company in question, for what it said it could do for the Uzbekistanis. Bell Pottinger could, it claimed, manipulate search results on Google to “drown out” negative coverage of Uzbekistan’s human rights violations and child labour. It has a team that “sorts” negative Wikipedia coverage of its clients. And it could secure access to the Foreign Secretary, William Hague, to David Cameron’s chief of staff Ed Llewellyn and to Mr Cameron’s closest adviser, Steve Hilton.

Report that straight and it reeks of corruption and sleaze. But here’s what I mean by the big secret. Bell Pottinger is – like many lobby companies – pulling a fast one. Take “drowning out” Google. There’s no special trick here, available only to Bell Pottinger’s lucky clients. It is simply doing what is known as Search Engine Optimisation. Any newspaper with a website does it. You want to make sure that your story is high up on Google’s search results, so you make sure it has key words that score well with Google’s web creepers.

I’m about the world’s least technical person and even I know how to do it. Bell Pottinger’s claim of some special ability to do this – to give other stories a higher profile on Google than those that damage its client – is a perfect example of the boastful nonsense on which so much lobbying is based.

As for “sorting” negative entries on Wikipedia – hello? The whole point of Wikipedia is that anyone – anyone! – can edit entries. You can do it. I can do it. Nothing better illustrates the money-for-old-rope aspect of the trade than the notion that a lobby company might be hired by a foreign government to edit its Wikipedia entry. You might just as well hire a computer-literate eight-year-old.

Things get more nuanced when it comes to access. When a lobby company boasts about its welcome in high places, it’s easy to see blatant corruption. And that can be true. David Cameron said he would tackle lobbying when he was elected leader of the Conservative Party. Last year he said it was “the next big scandal waiting to happen” that “has tainted our politics for too long, an issue that exposes the far-too-cosy relationship between politics, government, business and money”.

He wanted, he said, to “shine the light of transparency” on lobbying so that politics “comes clean about who is buying power and influence”. What could illustrate that more than Bell Pottinger’s claims about the access it could secure in return for a foreign government’s cash? The idea that any client who is paying a lobbyist can gain access denied to others would strike almost anyone as wrong. But it’s important to establish exactly what lobbyists claim to be able to do and what they charge for.

You’re a widget manufacturer. You have a particular problem with a government decision that stops you competing with foreign manufacturers. You don’t have a clue how Whitehall works and wouldn’t know where to start in trying to get decisions changed. So you get in touch with a lobbying firm. Let’s call it Boaste, Grabbit and Runne. Its managing partner was at college with the minister, the firm tells you, and they speak all the time. For a small fee – say £10,000 to sign on and a monthly £3,000 retainer – it will happily get in touch with the minister and set up a meeting.

You come to London and meet the minister; he’s all ears. He had no idea that the law was affecting your industry so badly. He promises to get something done. You’re thrilled. It was money well spent.

Well, you’ve been had. The lobbyist might well be a friend, but the minister would have been happy to see you anyway, friend or no friend. Most ministers want nothing more than to be seen doing something practical for British industry. If you’d written directly to him – or even just called up his office – and explained what your issue was, the chances are you could have had your meeting and got the same result.

You might still think it was worth paying the lobbyist. He has done the legwork and smoothed your path. But is that corruption? Or merely a highly paid form of secretarial work?

That’s the problem. The black and white cases – cash for questions – are easy. But more often it’s shades of grey. Because politics is all about talking. It’s about meetings. It’s about who knows who. And to someone on the outside of those meetings, who doesn’t know anyone, it can indeed be a closed door.

That is why lobby companies hire former ministers and MPs such as Tim Collins, now the managing director of Bell Pottinger Public Affairs. They know people. Mr Collins might be acting like a snake-oil salesman when he makes claims about Google and Wikipedia, but he was telling the truth when he claimed “I’ve been working with people like Steve Hilton, David Cameron, George Osborne for 20 years”. As a Conservative Party staffer and MP, he has. So yes, he knows them well.

But think about one of his boasts, when he claimed that his influence on the Prime Minister led to an issue being raised with the Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao during a state visit in June 2011. “We were rung up at 2.30 on a Friday afternoon, by one of our clients, Dyson,” Mr Collins explained. “He said, 'We’ve got a huge issue and that is that a lot of our products are being ripped off in China’ … On the Saturday David Cameron raised it with the Chinese prime minister…He [Cameron] was doing it because we asked him to do it.”

Really? It’s likely that Mr Cameron was indeed made aware of the issue by Mr Collins. But surely that’s exactly the sort of thing a British prime minister should raise in a bilateral meeting with the Chinese. So again, it’s not black and white. Mr Dyson pays Bell Pottinger because he is a businessman, not a politician, and doesn’t know his way around Whitehall. The company raised, on his behalf, a big issue for him – and also for the nation.

We might not like the smell of such contacts, but it’s difficult to see what the real harm is. That would arise if Bell Pottinger – or any other lobbyist – was able to procure favours for clients that go against the national interest, or to secure an advantage solely through having paid for a favour. But we’ve not seen the evidence for that. Yet.

Power and politics: who’s fleecing who? - Telegraph

__________________
Standard disclaimer: the disgusting statements contained in this post are the views of the poster, and unless specified do not represent the views of the moderators or the site's owners.

Well sure, I'm sure that most of that is indeed true, but then you also have the scenarios where US lobbyists got pizza redefined as a vegetable or BA asking for the UK to drop corruption allegations in order to procure deals from Saudi Arabia. They can't all be painted as bumbling idiots fleecing their customers.

What Contra said.

"That would arise if Bell Pottinger – or any other lobbyist – was able to procure favours for clients that go against the national interest, or to secure an advantage solely through having paid for a favour. But we’ve not seen the evidence for that. Yet."

-------

So, indeed, the drop of corruption charges in weapon dealing is already grey territory. I mean, if it is in our national interest to break our own laws, something is out of kilter...

And, of course, all the money poured by megacorpos to make sure that gvt money come their way, that consumers are left with as little protection as possible or that workers can't organise, is blatantly against the national interest. At the very least, it allows to side-step the discussion needed.

So, sorry but no.

__________________
Unless otherwise specified, I am posting as a regular poster. When I will act as a mod, I'll make sure you're in no doubt.

A public relations firm whose senior management has close links to the Liberal Democrats said they had created an internet "attack site" for the government of Rwanda over accusations it had been involved in genocide.

Mark Pursey, head of BTP Advisers, was secretly recorded saying that the site was targeted at people who "over-criticised" over "who did what in the genocide". A 2009 report from the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative said Rwanda's "excellent public relations machinery" had succeeded in hiding "the exclusionary and repressive nature of the regime".

Mr Pursey, who was the voluntary head of the Liberal Democrats' National Media Intelligence Unit during the 2010 election, suggested his firm could create a similar site for the Uzbeks – who were in fact undercover reporters working for the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. Such a site, he added, could be "aggressive" in terms of putting across figures showing that things were "moving in the right direction". Also at the meeting was Edward Lord, a member of the City of London Corporation, who attended at Mr Pursey's request.

As part of its investigation into lobbying for The Independent, reporters from the BIJ posed as agents for the government of Uzbekistan and representatives of the country's cotton industry, to discover what promises British lobbying and PR firms were prepared to make when pitching to clients. Mr Pursey said his firm was working for the government of Azerbaijan, which he described as having "its own set of very complex issues" and appeared to revel in the controversial nature of his accounts. "We already work for other governments as well ... Azerbaijan, Rwanda, we also do work for the Ivory Coast – the new one, not the old one . We also do work for – just started, in fact – the Movement for Democratic Change in Zimbabwe.

"The issues of what's happening for instance in Ivory Coast is very controversial with accusations of genocide on both sides. The government of Rwanda is itself enormously controversial, it's very uncertain what their role was in the deaths that occurred around the time of the genocide."

He later added: "If I wanted an easy life I'd do PR for housing associations."

Mr Pursey suggested setting up an internet site "like an Uzbek fact-check about the industry", adding that he could also create attack sites aimed at critics. He said: "I think articles saying how marvellous everything is [is] jumping the gun because it's not true and they [people] won't accept it. So I think that things such as working through the internet, setting up things like an Uzbek fact-check about the industry, could be a resource for people online that could render better articles.

"Then a separate site, this is a similar sort of work we've done with the Rwandans, for instance. We had a very controversial issue over who did what in the genocide. So the second site being much more a kind of attack site on people who over-criticise."

Mr Pursey suggested recruiting Uzbek students to comment on articles critical of the regime. "What we would need to do is find a group of people who have an interest in this subject that would include us, that would include Uzbek students living in London ... who, when an article comes up that's wrong, could be alerted about it. We could suggest to them what they might want to say in response to an article through a post, a suggestion." He added that this could affect newspaper coverage. "Once we've started to nudge up some of the stories to become not so damning, more positive, then we can start looking at addressing issues such as going to the newspapers and saying that people are saying rather different things about this issue than they were six months ago."

Contacted by the Bureau yesterday, Mr Pursey said: "We helped create a site that outlined facts about the government of Rwanda, and most governments have them. This [sic] UN published a report that many academics and commentators agreed was extremely poorly researched yet made very alarming allegations ... its accusations towards others should be scrutinised."

On the company's work in Azerbaijan, he said: "An issue such as the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh that cost 80,000 lives and the internal displacement of over 1 million refugees is one of these very complexities, yet rarely reported. Rebuilding the lives and families of the survivors has been a massive financial and social challenge, and one that should be given the understanding and support it deserves."

Mr Lord said in a statement: "No payment or preferment of any kind was received by me, or any organisation I have involvement with, as a result of participating in the meeting, nor was any expected.

"I am not now, nor have I ever been, a partner or a non-executive director in BTP Advisers. This can be confirmed by reference to records held at Companies House. I attended the meeting as a personal favour to Mr Pursey.'"

No thanks: Firms that rejected the job

During the undercover investigation into lobbying, 10 firms were contacted. Two of these, Morris International Associates and Ogilvy, immediately refused to accept the business from the Uzbek regime, which is responsible for grave human rights abuses.

An hour-long meeting with Ann Morris, director of Morris International, where the undercover reporters tried to convince the company it should represent Uzbekistan, ended in a formal rejection.

No official response to The Independent's exposé yesterday was made by Morris International. But an account of the meeting by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism reveals that it took less than 10 minutes for the firm to make it clear that they were unwilling to take on the regime as their client.

It was explained during the hour-long meeting that one ofthe requirements was online "reputational management" – to which Bell Pottinger agreed in its own meetings with the reporters. Morris International made itclear this was something theywere not prepared to engage in.

The approach to a second firm, Ogilvy PR, never turned into an actual meeting. An initial connection was made by email and subsequently followed up with a telephone call. This lasted less than two minutes and the rejection of the request was quick and clear.

The BIJ said that at no point did either of the two companies make it known that they felt a "sting" was in operation. Their rejection was based on what they were being asked to do.

Rwanda: How dare you accuse our client of genocide - UK Politics - UK - The Independent

__________________
Standard disclaimer: the disgusting statements contained in this post are the views of the poster, and unless specified do not represent the views of the moderators or the site's owners.

Despite all this, my favourite part of the story is still the insult delivered to Finkelstein.

So often the best ones are entirely accidental.

__________________
Standard disclaimer: the disgusting statements contained in this post are the views of the poster, and unless specified do not represent the views of the moderators or the site's owners.