All Party Parliamentary Groups (APPG) have been something of a slow burn as a news story – despite this being a lobbying scandal featuring the City of London council from the get go. A year after a Guardian ‘exclusive’ – Lobbying fears as MPs’ interest groups receive £13m from private firms: chair of standards committee calls for power to shut down APPGs where there are clear conflicts of interest by Ben Quinn, Rowena Mason, Tatev Hovhannisyan and Peter Geoghegan (Guardian 17 February 2022) – interest looks like it’s beginning to ignite. Outlets as diverse as Sky News and Byline Times have covered the issue this month, but we’ll take a summary from Politics.co.uk:
All Party Parliamentary Groups (APPGs) are too easily set up and lack independent scrutiny, according to a rare joint intervention by the Speakers of both Houses of Parliament.
House of Commons speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle and Lords speaker Lord McFall have written in a letter that Parliament’s reputation is being put at risk by the groups, which can be funded by lobbyists.
APPGs are informal, cross-party groups formed by MPs and Members of the House of Lords who share a common interest in a particular policy area, region or country. They are not-official parliamentary vehicles, and critics say they open up MPs to influence from third parties and lobby groups.
The Speakers want to stop the number of APPGs, which already tops 700, from proliferating further. They also want to make it tougher to set an APPG up, calling for APPGs to publish accounts and more donation information than is available at present.
Speaker calls for ‘increased level of scrutiny’ on All-Party Parliamentary Groups by Politics.co.uk staff, Politics.co.uk, 26 January 2023. See the full piece here.
Of the recent coverage or APPGs, the piece most directly relevant to this blog is one from a couple of weeks ago from Politico:
High-profile firms with significant business interests in China are pouring money into a U.K. parliamentary lobbying group set up to promote closer ties between the two nations.
Data shows wealthy donors including HSBC, John Swire & Sons, Arup and the City of London Corporation have made the China APPG one of the best-funded cross-party groups in parliament.
The group was at the center of a highly controversial attempt in 2021 to invite the Chinese ambassador to parliament, which was ultimately blocked by the House of Commons and House of Lords authorities.
The all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on China has declared £110,000 in donations from seven companies, including HSBC, John Swire & Sons, the City of London Corporation and China Britain Business Council, since 2019, according to a new database compiled by Sky News and Tortoise Media.
These same organizations, plus U.K. tourism body VisitBritain, donated a further £150,000 to the China APPG between 2016 and 2019, additional analysis of public records carried out by POLITICO revealed.
APPGs are little-scrutinized cross-party groups set up by backbench MPs to explore policy issues or to forge closer links with foreign nations, and are the focus of an ongoing POLITICO investigation.
The China APPG notoriously invited the Chinese ambassador, Zheng Zeguang, to speak in parliament in 2021, despite Beijing having imposed sanctions on nine British MPs who had highlighted alleged human right abuses in Xinjiang (East Turkestan).
The visit was swiftly blocked by the speakers of both houses of parliament, with Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle commenting: “I do not feel it’s appropriate for the ambassador for China to meet on the Commons estate and in our place of work when his country has imposed sanctions against some of our members.”
All the donations to the China APPG were made and declared in accordance with parliamentary rules. However, MPs and transparency campaigners have questioned the appropriateness of the gifts, given the business interests of some of those involved.
Conservative MP Tim Loughton said: “Companies invest in APPGs because they believe their interests will be served. You can be certain that if the APPG China started complaining about HSBC freezing Hong Kong legislator Ted Hui’s bank accounts, the bank would stop coughing up.” HSBC faced widespread criticism in 2021 after freezing the local banks accounts of Hui, a pro-democracy activist, under pressure from Chinese authorities.
Loughton noted that “many of the [MPs involved in] the China APPG are deeply worried about the threat Xi Jinping’s government poses to the U.K.,” and that it was imperative the APPG “should be serving the agenda of the politicians, not the other way around.”
Steve Goodrich of Transparency International U.K. said that while APPGs can sometimes help inform policymaking, “far too many just provide privileged access to parliamentarians for private companies and foreign governments,” noting that the China APPG “holds uncomfortably close ties to those with vested interests in the country.”
Blue-chip firms with Chinese interests pour cash into UK parliament lobbying group. Wealthy donors including HSBC and the City of London Corporation make the China APPG one of the best-funded in parliament by Esther Webber, Politico, 13 January 2023. see the full piece here.
For a contemporary account of the row over Chinese ambassador, Zheng Zeguang, being invited to Parliament by the China APPG, see Chinese ambassador to UK banned from event in Houses of Parliament by Jim Pickard, in the Financial Times of 14 September 2021.
At the end of the Guardian piece linked to above, a table showing support given to APPGs also lists bodies that are proxies for Xi’s regime including the Hong Kong Government as supporting the China APPG. Likewise the table shows the China APPG as receiving money from DLA Piper – whose partners, including Vincent Keaveny and Alison Gowman, are also prominent in the leadership of the City of London council. As this blog has documented, the City of London council leadership has a notorious record for supporting Xi’s oppressive regime.
Xi Jinping signs the City of London Corporation’s distinguished visitors book watched by then lord mayor Alan Yarrow on 21 October 2015.
The City of London council and its leadership are, among other things, lobbyists for both neo-liberalism and repressive regimes around the world. Due to its rotten borough status including business votes, this local authority is not democratic and ought to be abolished. However, until that happens, for Parliamentary purposes the City of London Corporation should be registered and treated as a lobbying organisation.
Notes
For a further take on how Xi’s repressive regime uses APPGs and proxies to lobby on its behalf see The Mirror story, Chinese tech giants Huawei and TikTok bankrolling MPs and peers in lobbying effort. Tech giants from China like TikTok and Huawei have donated tens of thousands of pounds to a parliamentary group, sparking calls for a review of lobbying rules to MPs and peers by John Siddle, The Mirror, 21 January 2023 (full piece here):
Chinese firms Huawei and TikTok are among big tech firms bankrolling MPs and peers.
More than £400,000 has been donated to a parliamentary group set up to explore technology issues since 2019.
Most of it came from the likes of Google, Facebook and BT.
Chinese giants Huawei and TikTok have given £42,000.
The money went to the influential Internet, Communications and Technology all-political parliamentary group.
The cross-party group, which has 21 MPs and peers, is said to be the largest of hundreds set up to explore policy issues. These are often targeted by lobbyists and corporate donors seeking to influence government policy on behalf of big business.
They rely on donations and benefits-in-kind to fund their operations, which have to be published in a register.
Last night the group said Huawei was not “currently” involved or donating.
But anti-corruption charity Transparency International UK called for a review of lobbying rules.
Policy manager Rose Zussman said: “It’s astonishing that the rules allow companies with such close ties to foreign governments to bankroll these groups and gain privileged access to the legislature.
“They leave the door wide open to foreign interference in our democracy.”
Cyber-security expert Anton Dahbura added: “I am concerned about potential conflicts of interests.
Other All-Party Parliamentary Groups the City of London council has used for lobbying purposes include Financial Markets and Services (see here) and as indicated by The Guardian table, India. See also the 2018 report written by Emma Wade on behalf of Paul Double (City Remembrancer, i.e. chief City council lobbyist in Parliament) and Damian Nussbaum (Director of Economic Development) for the council’s policy and resources committee, which recommended the City Corporation fund the Indo-British APPG.
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