Labour's lobbying problem

Prospective MPs with lobbying day jobs are introducing their clients to senior Labour figures – and boasting about it

When Polly Billington chaired a meeting between Labour’s shadow climate change chief Kerry McCarthy and reps from the energy, manufacturing and transport industries in January, she wore two hats: lobbyist and parliamentary candidate.

As a lobbyist, Billington was in attendance as a senior adviser for Hanover Communications, in whose office the meeting occurred, to connect their high-powered clients with McCarthy in the run-up to an election that Labour is expected to win.

Meanwhile, in her Labour role, she is the candidate for East Thanet, a newly formed constituency largely based on the bellwether Leave-backing seat of South Thanet on the Kent coast.

McCarthy, Billington and the business leaders spent an hour or so discussing Labour’s policy programme and priorities – including its much-feted ‘Green Prosperity Plan’ – over coffee and pastries, according to a LinkedIn post by a Hanover employee. On the table in front of them, a sticker on the back of a laptop read: “There is no planet B.”

Three weeks later, on 8 February, Labour publicly confirmed the party was binning the centrepiece of its economic and climate change policy – the so-called “Green Pledge” to invest £28bn a year into the ‘Green Prosperity Plan’.

The money was meant to go towards tech that would tackle climate change, but the party says it will spend the equivalent of just £5bn a year on the plan during its first term in office. If Labour wins the next election, this U-turn will directly affect precisely the sorts of businesses whose representatives met McCarthy and Billington back in January.

Billington, McCarthy, and a spokesperson for Labour would not confirm which of the organisations on Hanover’s client list, which includes two oil and gas firms, attended the meeting. Nor would they confirm or deny whether those present at the 18 January roundtable were given advance notice of Labour’s £28bn U-turn….

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