Nina Goswami
Law firms with public affairs arms are gearing up for a battle with the lobbying industry body over the issue of confidentiality, and the dispute has turned acrimonious.
DLA Piper has referred the Association of Professional Political Consultants (APPC) to the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) after the APPC tried to force government agencies to work exclusively with its members.
Public affairs lawyers are up in arms about the move, claiming the APPC is seeking to corner the lobbying market.
DLA Piper has accused the regulatory body of being anticompetitive. The law firm issued a strongly worded complaint last Friday (7 September), claiming that the APPC's stance would effectively debar non-members from carrying out public affairs work, which is unlawful under the Competition Act 1998.
The major barrier for law firms joining the association is the APPC's requirement to disclose the names of its clients, which some law firms claim could result in losing clients that prefer to remain anonymous.
DLA Piper has considerable support from the rest of the legal profession. Lovells administrative and public law partner Paul Dacam has endorsed the decision to put forward a competition complaint.
"Quite legitimately, clients, when instructing lawyers and other professionals, may not wish to disclose their identity as that may well affect how they're dealt with by the regulators or government," said Dacam. "It's rare that clients wish to be anonymous, but it does happen, and if there's a prerequisite to name them then we'll simply lose them as longstanding clients."
Other firms with public affairs practices include Allen & Overy, Clifford Chance, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Russell Jones & Walker and Simmons & Simmons.
APPC secretary Mary Shearer said the association's aim of regulating the entire political lobbying industry will ensure transparency across the board.
Shearer said: "Some law firms declined to join the APPC as they claimed that Solicitors Regulation Authority rules prevent them from doing so due to our requirement that they disclose the names of their clients. The authority, however, said that there was no automatic bar to lawyers joining the APPC."
Shearer said that clients the association wants firms to disclose would only be those involved in political lobbying. As such, client lists from other practices, such as corporate, would not be affected.
Readers' comments (2)
Francis Ingham, CIPR, assistant director-general | 14-Sep-2007 3:19 pm
Lobbyists in bid to 'ban' law firms from Govt work
The Association of Professional Political Consultants (APPC) undoubtedly has a role to play in regulating the activities of its own members. It seems, however, to imply that it has a monopoly on ethical behaviour, which is misleading.
The CIPR is a 60 year-old professional body with a Royal Charter and a strict Code of Conduct. It has over 9,000 members working in-house and in consultancy, all of whom sign up to the Code and the highest levels of professionalism and integrity.
Not only is the APPC’s allusion that only its members behave ethically disingenuous, it appears as a blatant attempt by the organisation to gain an exclusive commercial advantage for its members – something that might well be in breach of the Competition Act.
Furthermore, it appears that it is wrong in its assertion that there is nothing to stop law firms with public affairs arms from unilaterally disclosing their client lists.
Any ambitions by the APPC to become the sole arbiter of ethical behaviour in the public affairs industry and to use this as a way to further its members’ business interests are unhelpful and unlikely to succeed – and smacks of an attempt to return to the days of the closed shop.
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Gill Morris, chair of the APPC | 14-Sep-2007 4:17 pm
APPC response
The Association of Professional Political Consultants (APPC) welcomes a debate about the way organisations and individuals interact with institutions of government, but feel this misrepresents our position.
We do not seek to prevent any organisation from working with government. We do, however, believe that all those who interact with government should follow principles of openness, honesty, integrity and propriety in their dealings.
Together with the Public Relations Consultants Association (PRCA) and the CIPR Government Affairs Group (CIPR GAG), the APPC has developed a set of guiding principles that we believe should inform all those who interact wih government. We are currently consulting a wide range of organisations, including the Law Society, on the merits of adhering to these principles.
We also believe that, in addition to the guiding principles, organisations interacting with government should follow more detailed codes of conduct appropriate for their sector, embodying the guiding principles and incorporating independent disciplinary procedures where the code has been breached.
The APPC Code of Conduct provides one such model. We remain open-minded about how other organisations demonstrate their full compliance with the guiding principles.
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