“The following costs are not Eligible Expenditure:- Payments that support activity intended to influence or attempt to influence Parliament, Government or political parties, or attempting to influence the awarding or renewal of contracts and grants, or attempting to influence legislative or regulatory action”
In short, this means that local authorities cannot spend money lobbying the government. Pickles says:
"We hope this can and will be rolled out more widely across the public sector."
Amen to that.
Read more—including the full text of his statement—at the IEA lifestyle blog.
4 comments:
I'll give him a pat on the back for that
Occasionally, you do get people in Parliament who can actually do the job their paid for.
With this Blog he probably would never have know it was happening. Great news - someone with some guts (ahem) in Parliament.
Meant to say... Without this Blog....!
Shouldn't this be a really big thing? What about all the academics who have been using public funds to sustain themselves while they indulge in 'research' funded by external organisations? An academic who does research, funded by, say, Big Pharma, and using the results of that research to lobby Government, is using public funds (student fees etc) to facilitate the objectives of Big Pharma, even if indirectly.
Politicians make me ill. There is absolutely no justification of the 'smoking in cars with kids' or 'PP' other than misplaced sentimentality. What on earth has possessed Hunt and Cameron? Have they been bewitched?
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