You dear reader, like Geeklawyer, probably rejoiced at the election of New Labour after years of naked Conservative corruption. All those nice sincere likeable labour boys with their shiny new integrity.
Ah well, 9 years on and Parliaments sleaze watchdog has confirmed that nothing has changed, really. Apparently, right, it seems that lobbyists have, amongst many other sins, been drafting the reports that are produced in the name of nominally independent cross party groups of MPs. Some such MP groups are not revealing where their finance and support is coming from and the lobbyists were, in turn, not saying who their clients were. Say the Tory-graph:
The report found no evidence that all-party groups were being suborned by outside interests [no, heaven forbid: I’m sure they manfully resisted all those policy research trips to Las Vegas], although it added that they were not neutral surveyors of a particular area of public policy, but conduits . . . for pressure to change public policy.
Geeklawyer’s eye was drawn to the fact that the Committee on Standards and Privileges apparently upheld a complaint against the Intellectual Property group. Well yea, that certainly explains most of the skewed policy behind current IP law in the UK: the EUCD etc. And of course the EU is more of the same.
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