Coalition lobbying contacts revealed

CBI

Conservative culture and creative industries minister Ed Vaizey MP has been revealed as the ‘most-met minister’ during 2010.
Vaizey, who is a former lobbyist, had 148 reported meetings with outside interests from May until December 2010, according to data on the ‘Who’s Lobbying Blog’.
The blog has found that universities minister David Willetts had 120 meetings and Welsh secretary Cheryl Gillan had 91 during the same period.
The blog also reports that the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS) is the department reporting the most ministerial meetings, and reveals the five organisations that ministers across government reported the most meetings with (see boxout lower down this page). The single corporate entity having the most meetings with ministers in 2010 was Barclays.
Ed Vaizey most often met Warner Bros and music group the BPI, meeting each organisation seven times during the period monitored.
Who’s Lobbying says it analysed data from ministerial meeting reports covering more than 1,600 meetings from October to December last year, combining these with analysis of previous reports covering May to September.
The blog points out that Vaizey’s ministerial responsibilities cover the DCMS and BIS, which both report his ministerial meetings, ‘so there’s a chance that [his] meetings have been double-counted’. It says that departments ‘don’t provide exact dates for meetings, which makes it difficult to check for duplicates’.
The people behind Who’s Lobbying are Moving Flow, a company dedicated to ‘innovative web projects and opening up public data’.
Public Affairs News contacted Vaizey, who was a board director at Consolidated Communications before becoming an MP, for comment – see bottom of page.

MINISTERIAL MEETINGS
Number of meetings from May 2010-December 2010
1) Confederation of British Industry (CBI)- 75 meetings
2) Trades Union Congress- 45 meetings
3) Barclays - 28 meetings
4) British Chambers of Commerce- 25 meetings
5) Local Government Association- 24 meetings
Source: Who’s Lobbying Blog (blog.whos lobbying.com)

ED VAIZEY MP - COMMENT
PAN: Ed, apparently you’re the most-met minister in 2010. Do you think these stats are correct and do you feel it’s a good thing to be the most-met minister?
Ed Vaizey:“I’m delighted to be top of this table. The only luxury of opposition was that you met a lot of people who could express their hopes and concerns. I was determined to be accessible as a minister, which is why I hold regular surgeries to allow people to come and meet me who wouldn’t normally get past officials, and why I have twice as many meetings as other ministers.”
“I also cover a wide brief, so I have to meet museums, performing arts, film, video-games, music, advertising, fashion, TV, telecoms, internet companies, and so on, so a large number of meetings in this context shouldn’t be a surprise.”

13th May 2011 by Ian Hall