The new guiding principles for Lobbyist, Public Affairs and Political PR Consultants

The new set of guiding principles, were launched on the 22nd October 2007, for all those who interact with the UK's political institutions by the 3 Public Affairs bodies namely the Association of Professional Political Consultants (APPA), CIPR Government Affair Group (GAG) PRCA. Can this set the pace for the effective regulation PR needs?

The new robust guiding principles seek to regulate the conduct of all people and organisations who interact with political institutions in the UK including Lobbyist, Political and Public Affairs consultants. The APPC, CIPR (GAG), and the PRCA are planning to develop a code of conduct out of the guiding principles to effectively regulate these sectors. The guiding principles lay emphasis on "Transparency & Openness, Accuracy & Honesty, Integrity and Propriety".

The bodies also stress on dealing drastically with consultants and firms who go against the principles. My hope is that they would stick to plans and castigate offending people and firms to serve as a deterrent to others. You can have a look at Tamasin Cave's blog at http://www.spinwatch.org/ and read his opinion about the attempt to self -regulate Lobbying. I believe the effective regulation of these sector will be a milestone in regulating the PR industry as a whole as there will be increase transparency in the industry. What do you think?

Reasons Behind the Calls for Tougher Regulation

The constant public outcry for effective regulation of PR practices, especially in the fields of financial PR, lobbying Public Affairs and Political PR is bewildering. This is because these areas are highly sensitive.For example, because Lobbying and Public Affairs are very close to the democratic process there is always a high demand for transparency from lobbyist and consultants when interacting with the political institutions. However, situations where Public Affairs consultants are caught boasting to their clients about using their access to high profile government institutions to get them desired results have made people question the effectiveness of the regulatory process.

A point in case was the Draper gate case in June 1998, where Derek Draper, a public affairs consultant in London, was filmed by an undercover reporter from the Observer boasting about the access he can grant his clients to high profile Labour Party activist. His actions was condemned by a professional commission formed to investigate the allegation and there were recommendations for tougher regulations.This caused a sleaze in the Labour Party. Similar to this case was the allegations made against Kevin Reid, of the defunct Beattie Media in Scotland, who was said to have laid claims to contacts in the Scottish Parliament, with specific reference to his father John Reid, a Secretary in the Scottish Parliament.

Such corrupt practices always lead to the demand for tougher regulations by the public, organisations and institutions, such as Parliament and the Financial Services Authority (FSA). The 7th July 2007 edition of the PR week sheds more light on the situation when it reported that, Public Affairs (PA) agencies were under pressure from parliament to "sign up to a controversial code of practice". It goes on further to warn that, the Financial PR sector might suffer a similar fate, because a recent review by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) "on controls relating to public takeovers" has indicated that there are high levels of information leakage from PR practitioners. Thus, the FSA has recommended a new set of codes: Which aims at decreasing information leakage on share prices before they are made public.

How calls for tougher regulation of Lobbying, Public Affairs, Political and Financial PR will impact on the UK PR industry.

There have been recent demand by organisations and critics for tougher regulation of these sectors of PR. Is there a possibility that such act will help regulate the industry effectively and salvage its poor image? In my opinion, public relations professionals should be perceived as reputation builders and image enhancers through ethical persuasion. Isn't it therefore ironical that the PR industry in UK and also in abroad suffers from low reputation and distrust in the eyes of the general public? It is common to hear people use the phrase 'this is just PR' to refer to acts of manipulation and unethical persuasion. PR practitioners are seen as 'spin doctors' and 'manipulators of peoples mind' rather than 'perpetuators of truth'.

As a PR student, I struggle to understand why the profession has such a low credibility. This sentiment is also shared by lecturers of the discipline. According to Kevin Moloney, the results of a survey he conducted among members of the Public Relations Educators Forum (PREF) in 1998 indicated that, three-quarters of the respondents were in agreement that, "public relations has a bad reputation with the general public". Some rhetorical questions plague my mind as to why the custodians of reputation suffer from low reputation themselves after several years in existence.

Although, I do not have answers to this question, I think it is mainly due to the poor regulatory practices by the various professional bodies such as the Chartered Institute of Public Relations( CIPR), Association of Professional Political Consultants (APPC) and the Public Relations Consultants Association (PRCA) in UK where membership is voluntary? In addition, PR practice is so broad and involves a lot of practitioners, making it is very difficult to effectively regulate it. Nevertheless, lets assume the tougher regulatory practices for the aforementioned sectors are implemented and the results are positive; do you see a future in which the various specialised areas of PR have their own professional bodies with separate codes of practice to reflect their individual needs? Can that be a new beginning of the effective regulation of the UK PR industry?