My understanding is “affecting of – or attempting to affect – the actions/decisions of the public sector by the private sector“. Clumsy I know but it’s a starting point for discussion.

The publication Lobbying: Access and influence in Whitehall by the House of Commons Public Administration Select Committee (First Report of Session 2008–09) has some good insights on how things work at the moment. It’s a bit heavy and 2.2MB download but if you can just read enough to get the gist of I think you should.

Economist Thomas Sowell defends corporate lobbying as “simply an example of a group having better knowledge of its interests than the people at large do of theirs.” (from Wikipedia)  So, people at large, are you happy with that?

One question that arose in early LobbyGroup discussions was “Would it be legally (or ethically) ok for ANY public servant to be a member of this lobby group?”  According to Rahere “The Civil Service Code is explicit in encouraging a degree of political involvement, as long as it does not compromise the Civil Service’s neutrality in any way – watch the Damian/Galley case with care, as although there is every indication there may be insufficient evidence to prosecute Damian Green.”

Decisions that you may want to effect may be anything from whether or not your track (that has been washed away by the rain) gets repaired to getting troops out of Afghanistan.  It is not the purpose of LobbyGroup.org to say which decision is important to you.  Though discussions are welcome.

LobbyGroup.org has been in existence for almost a year now and has varied in its aims and objectives as members have come and gone.  From now on,  its purpose will be to act as source of information for people – to give ideas about how they can affect what they want to affect.  The next post will hopefully be more detailed on this. In the meantime you can always check out DemocraticBritain..